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Brave
New TechnoPiphanyBy
Gael Montana
"Tonsorial Artist and Hill Country Contrarian"
Comfort,
Texas | |
My
husband and I were watching the NBA Finals this week, joyfully raising Cain and
being stand-up fans for our beloved Spurs. What a nice, old-fashioned, way to
spend a lovely spring evening, grateful not to have to make that hundred mile
round trip to Big Tony. We were feeling terribly up-to-date when it occurred to
us that nearly every commercial that wasn’t pushing new cars or beer featured
some kind of hand-held unit that we couldn't identify. The ad raved about 'Blue
Teeth' and 'Cool Rays' and features that would do everything from ring up your
late Uncle John to prepare (then eat) your lunch while making a 3D movie out of
the whole thing. This epiphany hit us around halftime between the high-tech ads
& movie trailers showcasing computer-generated creatures that are cuter and better
behaved than many of the youngsters currently working in Hollywood. For example,
take Ms. Hilton (please) who is making headline news just being the irascible
and juvenile 'Paris' we all love to hate. I daresay aspiring to be the 'bad example'
has become a further reach because of the young heiress, although it's hard to
tell whether the bar was raised or lowered. I digress...
Clearly computers
have won the race we were so concerned with back in the sixties when 'The Twilight
Zone' still seemed weird. I mean, are we, or are we not, working diligently to
upgrade, re-wire, defrag and clarify our increasingly complicated existence? Our
Grandmothers & Mothers (I among them) think nothing of proudly firing photo's
of their progeny off into space for anyone & everyone to see. As a species, we
spend untold billions on 'connectivity' and 'platform interface' and who knows
what all as if it were the very staple of life. In fact, we eat, sleep and dream
the Linux-fantastic as if it's always been this way. If we don't know how long
to boil our freshly canned vegetables to get the 'seal' why just ‘Google it’,
Grandma, and hope the information offered is real.
Real you say? Yet,
another wake-up call! The airwaves are rife with 'reality' shows where 'ordinary'
people pretend to be in a tribe or on a pirate ship or are busily eating worms
as they throw themselves off perfectly good bridges and buildings. They invite
us to observe them getting rebuilt, reduced, ratcheted and rehabilitated. Real?
Memorex? Don't even get me started. Have we somehow slept through the latest evolutionary
membrane? We cannot even seem to identify our own erroneous inventions. Who works
for whom now?
I believe the answer is painfully clear.
We can
relax knowing that our computers will happily do a superior job of what we have
become far too busy to accomplish. Of course, we’ll be busy saving every penny
for the next, shiny new version of…uh-oh. |
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