gameboy
Ding Dang Doo
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2004
- Messages
- 4,305
- Reaction score
- 6
- Points
- 38
- Age
- 67
- Website
- www.gamezplay.org
- My Satellite Setup
- DreamBox 7000s - Nokia Freeview - Several GameBoys - DS Lite - ZX81 - SNES - N64 - Saturn - Dreamcast - PlayStation - PS2 - Gamecube - PSP - iPod - iPhone - XBox - PS3 - Wii - iPad - No Life!
- My Location
- Scotland
From Wired...
Today, sitting at home, you can dispatch an e-mail to your brother in another country - he'll be able to read within minutes. Or you can call him and leave a message. Heck, if you use text messaging, you'll be chatting almost instantaneously.
On balance, any of those are probably a better alternative to the mail. Hey, if I miss my brother it's kind of nice to be able to get hold of him - now.
But that's the point. My expectations have been raised to this ridiculous level by technology running amok through my heretofore-bucolic existence. I used to be a laid-back guy. Now I'm impatient. I chafe. I get irritable when my gratification isn't instantaneous. And it isn't just me. The whole world is bitchier these days.
I'm old enough to remember when waiting a few days for a letter to arrive was standard operating procedure, even in the bare-knuckles business world. I recall a time without answering machines, when you just had to keep calling back on your rotary phone until someone picked up. (Which had the unintended benefit of allowing you to reconsider whether the original call was even worth making in the first place.) The world moved at a more leisurely pace and, humanistically speaking, we were all the better for it.
Just because technology makes it possible for us to work 10 times faster than we used to doesn't mean we should do it. The body may be able to withstand the strain - for a while - but the spirit isn't meant to flail away uselessly on the commercial gerbil (mamster) wheel. The boys in corporate don't want you to hear this because the more they can suck out of you, the lower their costs and the higher their profit margin. And profit is god, after all. (Genuflect here, if you must.)
But what's good for them isn't necessarily good for you, no matter how much filthy lucre they throw your way.
But stock-market capitalism is today's coin of the realm, consumerism its handmaiden, and technology is the great enabler. You think technology benefits you because it gives you an easier row to hoe? Boll*cks. The ease it provides is illusory. It has trapped you, made you a slave to things you don't even need but suddenly can't live without. So you rot in a cubicle trying to get the money to get the stuff, when you should be out walking in a meadow or wooing a lover or writing a song.
Utopian claptrap, you sneer. So you put nose to grindstone, your life ebbing as you accumulate ... what?
Look around. Our collective humanity is dying a little more every day. Technology is killing life on the street - the public commons, if you please. Chat rooms, text messaging, IM are all, technically, forms of communication. But when they replace yakking over the back fence, or sitting huggermugger at the bar or simply walking with a friend - as they have for an increasing number of people in "advanced" societies - then meaningful human contact is lost. Ease of use is small compensation.
The street suffers in other ways, too. Where you used to buy books from your local bookseller, you now give your money (by credit card, with usurious interest rates) to Amazon.com. Where you used to have a car boot sale, you now flog your detritus on craigslist and ebay. Almost anything you used to buy from a butcher or druggist or florist you can now get online. Handy as hell, to be sure, and nothing touched by human hands. But little shops lose business and close, to be replaced, if at all, by cookie-cutter chain stores selling One Size Fits All. The corporations have got you right where they want you.
Is this the world you want to inhabit? Really?
Today, sitting at home, you can dispatch an e-mail to your brother in another country - he'll be able to read within minutes. Or you can call him and leave a message. Heck, if you use text messaging, you'll be chatting almost instantaneously.
On balance, any of those are probably a better alternative to the mail. Hey, if I miss my brother it's kind of nice to be able to get hold of him - now.
But that's the point. My expectations have been raised to this ridiculous level by technology running amok through my heretofore-bucolic existence. I used to be a laid-back guy. Now I'm impatient. I chafe. I get irritable when my gratification isn't instantaneous. And it isn't just me. The whole world is bitchier these days.
I'm old enough to remember when waiting a few days for a letter to arrive was standard operating procedure, even in the bare-knuckles business world. I recall a time without answering machines, when you just had to keep calling back on your rotary phone until someone picked up. (Which had the unintended benefit of allowing you to reconsider whether the original call was even worth making in the first place.) The world moved at a more leisurely pace and, humanistically speaking, we were all the better for it.
Just because technology makes it possible for us to work 10 times faster than we used to doesn't mean we should do it. The body may be able to withstand the strain - for a while - but the spirit isn't meant to flail away uselessly on the commercial gerbil (mamster) wheel. The boys in corporate don't want you to hear this because the more they can suck out of you, the lower their costs and the higher their profit margin. And profit is god, after all. (Genuflect here, if you must.)
But what's good for them isn't necessarily good for you, no matter how much filthy lucre they throw your way.
But stock-market capitalism is today's coin of the realm, consumerism its handmaiden, and technology is the great enabler. You think technology benefits you because it gives you an easier row to hoe? Boll*cks. The ease it provides is illusory. It has trapped you, made you a slave to things you don't even need but suddenly can't live without. So you rot in a cubicle trying to get the money to get the stuff, when you should be out walking in a meadow or wooing a lover or writing a song.
Utopian claptrap, you sneer. So you put nose to grindstone, your life ebbing as you accumulate ... what?
Look around. Our collective humanity is dying a little more every day. Technology is killing life on the street - the public commons, if you please. Chat rooms, text messaging, IM are all, technically, forms of communication. But when they replace yakking over the back fence, or sitting huggermugger at the bar or simply walking with a friend - as they have for an increasing number of people in "advanced" societies - then meaningful human contact is lost. Ease of use is small compensation.
The street suffers in other ways, too. Where you used to buy books from your local bookseller, you now give your money (by credit card, with usurious interest rates) to Amazon.com. Where you used to have a car boot sale, you now flog your detritus on craigslist and ebay. Almost anything you used to buy from a butcher or druggist or florist you can now get online. Handy as hell, to be sure, and nothing touched by human hands. But little shops lose business and close, to be replaced, if at all, by cookie-cutter chain stores selling One Size Fits All. The corporations have got you right where they want you.
Is this the world you want to inhabit? Really?
. Let the other bloke do the worrying and rushing about, he's the one to have a coronary (like wot i did 
