Reply To: Luddite Geeks
I would love an iPhone, just can’t justify the cost, especially since the data rate plans here are DISGUSTING. Don’t even start me on that issue.
But I have a functioning (and cute, most importantly) cellphone and an ancient but still working 20GB iPod (with 13.45GB of music on it for Lex’s info 😛 ) so I can’t really replace them in good conscience til they stop working.
But I think that back to the topic, I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with technology. I grew up with computers since my dad has been a code monkey since high school, and had access to them when very few other kids did. I remember thinking I was pretty much the awesomes coz my assignments were typed and spell-checked when everyone else’s were still handwritten, even if the spellchecker thought my name was Rattley Eiderdown (something my parents never let me forget) but as a design student I found that I burned out on too much digital design and that I needed to temper my computer based design with handcrafted things and I admired really organic and green design.
I have a (what I believe to be healthy) fear of AI and cloning and that kind of stuff. Sure cyborgs are cool in songs but I don’t really want me or my children to live in a world where they actually exist. Technology should always stay a tool.
And now as an IT-ish person I sometimes feel that we kinda created a whole industry that does nothing but keeps itself in business when we brought out computers. They can be eternally frustrating and yet now we couldn’t live without them.
That’s kinda where I feel songs like that are coming from. The Future Soon isn’t really celebrating becoming a cyborg because he terrifies the love of his life. Better is sad but it speaks more about how 2 people could drift apart and become different people than they were than being a cautionary tale of self-improvement through robotics.
Respect technology but keep control over it, because it does have scary applications.