In the bustling aisles of the Pasadena City College Flea Market, a remarkable machine caught my eye. I glanced at my smartphone, and humorously introduced it to its '10 billionth great-grandfather.' Can you guess what this mysterious contraption is? Before you find out, take three wild guesses or let your curiosity lead you to Google. While those born before the 1980s quickly identify it, Gen-Z often stumbles. Some speculate it's a gaming console, a printer, a DVD player, or even an instant camera! But the truth is fascinating—it's an external Floppy Disk reader that once connected to the old Commodore PC and read 5.25-inch Floppy Disks that can store an astonishing 170 kilobytes of data, equivalent to one Microsoft Word file. As I look back on my high school years when I designed a school magazine, I remember having to carry a bunch of these floppy disks to the printing center powered by a classic Macintosh computer with the old rainbow-colored logo. It's amazing to see how much technology has progressed since then.
Now, let's delve into the significance of the phrase 10 billionth great-grandfather.This statement stems from Moore's law—a visionary observation by Gordon Moore, an MIT graduate and co-founder of Intel. He prophesied that the number of transistors on a microchip would double every two years. Incredibly, Moore's prediction rings true. The first transistor was created in 1947 and was the size of a box that was ten inches in every dimension. Fast forward to 2020, and my MacBook, housing the M1 chip, boasts a staggering 16 billion transistors on a 119 mm squared-die size. It's a testament to our technological advancement that has changed our lives in countless ways, from allowing us to communicate via real-time video with people on the other side of the world to empowering artificial intelligence to aid me, a mere writer, in crafting this very article. The 10 billionth great-grandfather is not an exaggeration but a mathematical fact that we touch its profound impact every day of our lives.
However, an issue looms—psychology struggles to keep pace with technology. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a comprehensive classification system considered the bible of mental health published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). It first emerged in 1952 (DSM-I), five years after the transistor's inception. Commendable strides have been made until the DSM-5's published in 2013. The DSM-I, heavily influenced by psychoanalytic theory, described 106 mental disorders, while the most recent revision, DSM-5, published in 2013, expanded to include descriptions of 541 mental disorders. The DSM-5 adopted a more scientific and evidence-based approach, accounting for comorbidity and multiple mental disorders in one individual. Despite these significant improvements, both DSMs still rely on surveys, which is like asking someone today to use punch cards for computation, a technology from the 1950s. This gap between technology and psychology has implications that cannot be ignored.
Consequently, an enormous techno-psychological gap has emerged. Reports reveal a fivefold increase in the mental health crisis in recent years, paralleled by warning phenomena like the 'great resignation.' If left unchecked, this gap could expand to a staggering 100 billion fold—signifying a pressing need for a bridge between technology and psychology.
In my next article, 'Bridging the Techno-psychological Gap,' we will delve into the reasons behind this disparity and explore potential solutions to harmonize technology and psychology effectively.
Before you wrap up your journey through this article, I've got a little challenge for you. Sprinkled in these words is a sneaky factual error, placed there just to keep you on your toes. Go ahead, channel your inner detective, and see if you can spot it! Once you've cracked the case, share the correction with a touch of flair on our social media. Happy fact-checking, savvy reader!
