So if Martha Stewart became a tech geek... would she say "Technology: it's a GOOD thing!" or "Technology: it's a BAD thing!" I was looking at her October 2007 magazine and she'd split it in half with Halloween GOOD things on one side and Halloween BAD things on the other. It seems to me that one could do a very similar issue on technology.
Unlike Martha Stewart, I don't have a team of minions to direct and do my work for me so this technology exploration stuff is incredibly TIME CONSUMING! (see blog from Oct 16 - technology is my most difficult task)
However, I do have this twisted fascination with the progress of technology and listening to cyber geeks like my husband talk about predicted leaps and bounds in the near future. For me, it's like listening to anthropologists who are studying another culture on the other side of the world. I don't have a clue about most of what's being said, but its intriguing and sounds cool.
For example, the other day I listened to a discussion about how every so many years technology makes some giant leaps that occur sychronistically around the world and affect the course of humanity in some major way. So this conversation revolved around the year 2012 and how all these ancient calendars and modern predictors end at 2012. The calendars just stop. Like it's going to be the end of the world or something equally profound. Then my husband interjects that between 2012 and 2014 it is projected that three major technologies will peak and converge: artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and nano technology. In some ways I can see that this would be a GOOD thing - think of the medical science and transportation issues that could be solved! Then I think about the movie The Matrix and that episode of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits with the head in the jar hooked up to electrodes because the brain didn't need the body anymore. I'm not sure that's such a good thing. It's actually pretty freaky to think about.
The other things that are not so great about technology are the matters of time and expense. Where in heck am I supposed to find the time to do all this cool stuff?! And isn't technology becoming one of the major dividing factors between the haves and the have-nots? The uber-rich have the time and the means to entertain themselves with the latest in virtual advances. The middle class drools over the new toys and racks up more debt on their credit cards as they attempt to assuage their techno-envy. And the poor and underprivledged have zero or at best, very limited access. Makes me wonder if these ever-widening gaps between the classes... including the struggle for fair and equal access to technology... will be what pushes American society over the brink and into a mass social uprising.
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I like where your head is at BF. We are becoming more and more consumed with technology. Cellphones are a prime example. Nowadays people seem to spend every waking moment talking on them. It's become a new extention of their body.
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