Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
Since Marc and I had the discussion about how History of Technology relates to Small Wars, I've been rooting around, and surprisingly found the book "Technopoly; The Surrender of Culture to Technology" by Neil Postman in our post library.
He makes the point that things like writing and math are also forms of technology, in that they are tools, created by man, to accomplish man's tasks. So, therefore, I don't feel so all alone in asserting that the various forms of warfare also fall in the category of "man's tools" designed to solve political/sociological problems.
-Buttons of Existentialism
It's a problem of free time afforded by technology. It is about impossible in the mundane, work-a-day world of the average person to simply be alone with their thoughts. Convenience and efficiency afforded by technology leaves gaps in phases and cycles of activity - come on, we weren't given hundreds of muscles to sit and push buttons - and in these gaps we are invariably faced with our mortality and frailty, limitations and weakness, unattained goals, failed relationships, disease, aches and pains, deterioration of what we have accumulated and ultimatley death. Goals and action keeps death from the doorstep of our minds and what better way to accomplish something than with upgraded, updated, cutting edge technology, which in itself is also a status symbol, proof of success, power and ability? If you doubt that people are very uncomfortable and essentially incapable of really being alone with their thoughts, try sitting perfectly still with no distractions and minimal noise, doing nothing but thinking, not moving except to breathe, blink the eyes and occasionally slightly shift the posture for comfort for 45 minutes. Who can loaf anymore without doing something? Recreation involves motion and planning, accomplishing something. We are driven to engage and addicted to the means and methods of engagement, not the end results, and techology is the juice, the drug, the fix, the symbolic needle in the arm that promises euphoria and the lessening of psychic and physical pain.
~ they were flying kites
I cursed the wind
I guess they thought I'd sinned
for slandering such heights
sought by their paper kites
when they were on the other end