It dawned on me today I’ve been involved with the personal
computer for twenty five years now. No
parole. From a 286 at 16mghz and a
whopping 40meg of storage to this thing, considered obsolescent now running
somewhere in the 2gigahz range with a terabyte of drive. From DOS4 to XP (I suppose I’ll have to
upgrade soon, but why? For what I do it
won’t make a fardling fart’s worth of difference). Quite a run, really. Model T to Mazerati in a quarter of a
century. WoooHooo.
Not to say I don’t see advantages, I do. I collected up and backed up my work the
other day, those twenty five years worth of effort fit comfortably on a thumb
drive. Printed on twenty pound bond
there would be a pile of paper weighing hundreds of pounds. The thumb drive can ride in my pocket, the
paper would need a large bookcase. Add
in the collected music and images and stuff other folks wrote? Go from large bookcase to large closet, from
front pocket to pickup truck and that pushing load limit. So all and all a good thing, that side of the
equation.
But that’s just the PC itself. When you look at the full consequences of the
evolution, the digital domain as a communication device rather than a creative
medium? When you look at the other side
of the equation? Different story entirely.
That whole hive mind thing and all, humanity set insectile by so much
communication that it compresses the individuality right out with fusion level
peer pressure. You know, the reason that
if you put twenty kids and an elephant in a room 18 of them will be staring at
their cell phone begging the Gods of Google to give them the proper and
politically correct etiquette to use for commenting on the elephant taking a
dump in the doorway and the other two are sound asleep.
The chance to save the human race as human passed somewhere
in the 90’s. By the time we first heard rumors of a spider big enough
to spin a web around the entire planet things were already almost hopeless,
almost. I was there and I will go to my
grave repenting the fact I trusted the tech heads to have wisdom to match their
electronic savvy. They don’t. Not even
close. We heard rumor of that spider and
we should have, should have unleashed every tactical strike fighter on the
planet with orders to cook the bitch where she sits, we’ll clean up the mess
later. It should have been the UN’s
finest hour, the worlds largest single one day napalm usage in military
history. We should have camera footage
of the Mig’s and the Eagles exchanging that wing-wag salute as they break in
opposite directions for base to get fuel and more munitions to dump on the
bitch. But it didn’t happen and now it’s
to late. She got the chance to hatch out
a clutch of eggs and now we’d have to torch the whole globe to get rid of ‘em.
Oh well, there goes the neighborhood.
Dunno, 'nos, left to run without tech, we'd be polluting the planet even worse than we are, with fewer folks knowing a thing about it, other than it's getting warmer and smoggier. More people knowing, even though there is a wealthy and powerful elite working to control the knowledge, we are further ahead than we'd be without it, I believe. Yes, there are trade-offs in freedom - necessary in my book. I harbor no dangerous secrets, in fact invite the digital observance to identify the many psychopaths among us. Population and its needs are inescapable. Sustainability, globalism,
ReplyDeleteprotection and sharing of the commons - those are the answers, IMO, unless one would let it proceed on automatic to food, water and land wars, and the dying off of probably a full third of the planet's species, including us. And what would come after that? The Cheneys of the world would run what's left. :) pip