Click On Title To Link To Wikipedia's Entry For Luddites.
Social Commentary, Of Sorts
Let me set the following scenario that will help explain the title of this entry. Recently, in preparation for a vacation I had to do the following things. Make sure that my cell phone and charger plug-in were set, including my capacity to text message, etc. Make sure that my answering machine was set with an appropriate message. Make sure that I had my DVD player at the ready so that I could watch rented movies from NetFlix that I had ordered on my computer. Well, of course, the ubiquitous computer, complete with card (and separate charger unit to boot that baby up). Moreover, no one can leave home without an MP3 player (and another separate) charger, including in my case an additional CD player (old fogy stuff) in order to play CDs to find tracks I want on put on the MP3 player. I could go on but you get the drift. And all of this is even before I even got out of the house. Enough, right?
Now before I am accused of being something of a technological Luddite (click on title to see Wikipedia’s entry on this subject, for those who are unfamiliar with the term) I want one and all to know that I am more than happy, on most days, to use all that technology has to offer, including the capability necessary to post this little pearl of wisdom. I confess that in the old days I WAS something of a Luddite, at least in those days when I purposefully lived in a rooming house, hitchhiked (for the younger reader you may have to look up that old custom on Wikipedia, no link though-for that one you are on your own), lived off the land, lived out of a knapsack and didn’t seemingly have the burdens of leaving the house that one incurs today.
Moreover, in the bright socialist future that I keep spewing reams of propaganda about in this space technology and its innovations that will make humankind lazy (in the good sense of being able to pursue more important goals than struggling for the necessities for survival) we will have scores of scores of troops of technocrats working on every conceivable practical(and some impractical) ways to make the lot of the human race easier.
What worries me, and ultimately is the point of this screed, is that not all technologies are created equal. For every breakthrough in, say, complex surgical procedures and the like that allow people to recover the function of some lost body part that does all of society proud there is a seemingly parallel use of technology that has a socially isolating, anti-personal and, I believe, thwarting effect on the development of the human personality.
Am I the only one who shutters a bit to see the almost universal use of the cell phone (or among the young, text-messaging) rather than face-to-face or other more personal way to communicate. The strangest event may be the use of e-mail to communicate with someone in the next room at work or school. Let’s leave it at this- let technology create abundance for all, everywhere under socialism so we can all be lazy enough to sit down and talk together. Of course, for all that we need to get rid of the capitalists and their system for openers, and to do that we need a workers party. So we have plenty to talk about face-to-face before that bright day. I'm off.
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