Peeve Farm

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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
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Sunday, January 27, 2002
01:23 - Vague Simmering Discomfort http://www.werewolves.org/~two/2rant-technology.mp3	(top)
The above link leads to the "Technology" rant by 2, and as always, those who follow it should be aware of nasty language and other such bear-traps for the unwary. Don't be unwary. I normally enjoy 2's rants very much. I agree almost entirely with just about all of them, and that's not purely because they're all very entertaining, which they are. They have a way of getting into your brain, disarming you with humor, and pasting their point all over your frontal lobe while it's unarmed and gasping for breath. But the "Technology" rant is the only one (so far) that I really feel uncomfortable about. Its premise, and I don't think it's tongue-in-cheek, is that going outside and doing "real stuff" is overrated. Specifically, those of us who place undue value on running around in the sunshine are fooling ourselves into thinking that there's some inherent virtue in it that can't be matched by simply sitting inside in front of a computer and playing Tribes 2 and chattering on ICQ. See, I have the distinct impression that I was the person who set 2 off on this rant. Maybe my memory is faulty, or I might be creating a fictional past to fit my discomfort, but I seem to recall that I had been e-mailing with him about the general state of things, and I happened to mention that I wished more people in our social circle (a very indoorsy kind of group, true) would get outside and "do something real". After that, the e-mails sort of petered out a little-- you know how that happens-- and then shortly afterwards, this rant appeared. Well, I must say I don't find it necessary to apologize for enjoying skiing and hiking and traveling and... other pastimes that don't involve computers. In fact, I've gone to a fair amount of effort to gain the wherewithal to enjoy those things pretty much whenever I want to, and not to be tied down to the computer unless I choose to be. Especially because I really do enjoy being outside, and I don't care if there is skin cancer and gang violence and air pollution out here. I don't relish the idea of being a brain in a jar wired into a VR existence where my wildest fantasies can come true-- while outside it's the world that Morpheus showed Neo in The Matrix. Indeed, I find it kinda hard to relish the idea of such a future at all, now that that movie has entered our collective consciousness. Not that I could before. Look, I don't consider myself a technophobe or a Luddite. Heaven forfend I should ever reach that point. I know I spent my childhood playing NES games and actively thinking, "I sure hope I never get to be so grown-up that I lose track of the new technology that kids understand but that seem to bewilder all the adults I know". And I don't plan to. Hey, my life revolves around technology and geek toys to a pretty significant extent. True, I despise cell phones, and I find PDAs to be largely a useless form of conspicuous consumption that solves a problem nobody really had, poorly. But that doesn't mean I don't understand them, or think they're inherently evil or a plague on society. My vision of a beautiful future has to do with a guy standing on a grassy hilltop, surrounded by trees and rocks, looking out over a wide, expansive, urban valley with clear air and a dusting of snow on the distant peaks where the observatories are. He's got one, maybe two devices hooked to his belt, and a head-mounted, inconspicuous communications and computing device attached like a pair of glasses. He uses all of these things for everyday purposes, but he doesn't use any of them when he doesn't have to-- and while he's looking out over the city, he's using both his organic eyes the way he normally does: without any communications connectivity or messaging options or anything digital floating in his field of view. It's an actual, real-live view, not Channel Zero. And he actively chooses to see it that way-- and not because his implants are broken. Is it too much to imagine that technology will eventually become pass�-- not so much that we don't want it, but enough that we use it exactly as much as we need it, like a car? Is it too much to imagine that technology will exist in order to enable us to enjoy the outdoors and real social interaction and a game of pick-up softball, rather than being the entirety of our virtually-realized lives?