In the text “Utopia” Thomas More presents an idealistic society. It’s very interesting to note that one of the refining attributes of this Utopian society is an innate love of learning.
They slowly go about seeking out for knowledge like a sponge reaching out seeping ever so slowly from the world around. They take every little lesson from the past and seek out the inspiration that the very authors once had. And once they catch a vein of intelligence that becomes enlightening unto them, they don’t stop learning. They keep going. They keep seeking and searching for more. They take the forgotten intellectual advancements of the past and put them into practice. In a very specific manner, this perfect society uses technology to promote the spread of quality learning. “Their minds thus filled with a love of learning, they are very ingenious in the discovery of all those arts which are necessary to its promotion.” They take the technological advancement of a new form of press to publish and spread great works of literature to the masses.
A Utopian society uses technology to deliver those things of the most worth to the masses. Technology can be used to support the spread of the knowledge of the greatest worth.
I think it's wonderful that we have such a wealth of information so readily available to us in our technological age. However, I would venture to ask if this immense amount of knowledge we can access through technology has in some ways become counterproductive to society's progression towards a utopian love of learning. First of all, there's such a massive amount of material to wade through to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were, that many people don't bother to make the effort to do so. People get just plain lazy sometimes. And with so many other purposes technology can be used for besides learning, people can be more easily distracted. Is this relevant? I don't know. Just something to think about.
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