Writing can be considered as a kind of technology. The physical form varies according to local circumstances (availability of clay for tablets, say, or of papyrus, or of light-emitting diodes), but the conceptual advance was far-reaching. How did this new technology enable the development of mathematics in particular?
The Ancient Roots of Modern Mathematics
This blog accompanies the short documentary film "Plimpton 322: The Ancient Roots of Modern Mathematics” and will host a discussion of issues arising from the film. It’s for Professor Laurence Kirby’s students at Baruch College, and anyone else interested.-
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Writing is our form of communicating things to each other. If it wasnt for writing we would have no documents. If it wasnt for documents we would have no idea of how the ancient mesopotamian or babylonians thought. Writing is a form of technology. It is our first form of technology. As civilizations began to advance writing became typewriting than eventually typing on a computer. The ancient mesopatamian and babylonians used clay tablets and papyrus to write down their mathematical ideas. Today we use computers to save and process mathematical ideas, formulas and proofs. I believe as technology advances mathematics advances as well.
I do not believe as technology advances mathematics advances as well, because we notice that pure Math today is really a dead art. Technology has replaced the nature of a true mathematician. Even during the 90’s, Math was always revered as superior. Having a college degree in Mathematics was equivalent to being a doctor, there were many job opportunities in any field. Now a days instead of hiring a mathematician to calculate algorithms, integrals, or differentials all you need is a basic computer. I believe Math is a very important part of society and history but technology has shifted the meaning of pure Math. Mathematicians today are geared towards research and engineering.
the new technology enable the development of mathematics in negative and positive ways.
POSITIVE: before the technology it was very hard to keep document save. people would have to make sure that the clays tablets and papyrus did not get damage. if they did what ever was writen on them would have been lost forever. For example, in one of our reading we read about a king in Asia who order his people to distroy all of the mathematical document and people had to depent on their memories to rewrite those document and all of the information was not rewriten about certain subject. if they had technology back then that would not have been the case, all they would have to do is to save all the document on computer or storingdevice.
NEGATIVE: Technology has big affected on mathematic in particular. the reason i said that is because mathematrician are not being respected the way they use to be. now almost any body can do math. all you have to do is be good at technology. take acturialscience for instant. that was a job for mathematrician. But now a day any body can be an acturial science major including Eglish major all they have to do is pass few exams and be good at programing. this job use to be for mathematricians, not anymore technology chang all that. we as people do not use our brain any, we do not think the way ancient people did it is not because they were smarter than us, but because they use what god gave them. Us on the other hand if we are asked to draw a graph all we need is TI 89 or some fancy softwear that is not being mathematrician that is just being LAZY.
I think that while the Babylonian and Egyptian math can be considered an early form of technology, its not what we would call technology today. The technology of today is what replaces (as noted above by Christopher Brunet) mathematicians. Rather than needing a mathematician to work out complex problems as was done by the Egyptians for example, now we have computer problems that automatically assimilate the problems simply by plugging in the numbers. Now, we write computer problems instead of writing out problems and I believe this is possible only since some of the first writings was of math, a version of technology.
As a mathematician, I’m naturally reluctant to think that technology will make mathematicians unnecessary! Surely someone has to think up all the theories, and design all the nice algorithms, that our electronic devices use?
It would be nice to think that machines take the drudgery away from calculating or accounting, and leave us more time to be creative and productive. It doesn’t seem to turn out that way though. And we are constantly being told how important it is in the modern world to be numerate and mathematically competent. Important for us individually, and for society. Is this official line wrong?
As a future accountant I have to say that when I am in school I learn the “archaic” version of accounting, using T-charts for debits and credits. However, when I work I use an accounting software for which I simply input numbers and do not really have to think twice about whether or not the number was a debit or credit. So while I agree that today’s advancement with technology does not really eliminate the mathematicians or accountants of the worl I do think that we may not be as creative due to the use of technology. We may be creative but in a different sense than if everyone had to be done from scratch.
Today new technology enables people to solve tasks and problems much easier than in the ancient time. That also helps us to work better and more productive. However, I see the disadvantages of the new technological society. First of all, people just stopped thinking and calculating by themselves. Some of them even can not multiply 2 by 25 without using the calculators. Second, most mathematicians lost their jobs, just because computers can do everything now. That really makes me upset. I think most people do not understand the importance of math.
There are few people that I personally know who says “I love math”, everybody I knows say that they hate math because it’s complicated and hard. They put in their head that it’s a very had and complicated subject and therefore don’t even appreciate the subject. They rely on electronics to solve any mathematical problems. For example, I witnessed in a math class a student using his calculator to add 12+10 which is a very simple calculation. Students use less percentage of their brain and memory to solve a problem. They want things to be quicker and easy. I was just asking myself if in the future people would even have nice handwriting because we rely on the computers to write a paper.
However, technology makes things faster and help saves time. People don’t need to worry about their documents to be stolen because technology makes it safer and also help in privacy.
Writing allows to put thoughts onto paper and express thinking. So for the advance of math, it let those put down their thoughts onto documents and let the thinking spread. Writing is a technology that allows information and ideas to be recorded and spread.