For my Wise and Generous Parents; to creatures of the Blue Planet:
he deadly price of sophistication
My host thinks too much of late. Acquiring decades in concert with chins, he now mulls over his childhood and the social change experienced during considerable time in this realm.
Revisiting a series of entertainment known as ‘007′ or some such, he nestled into the habits of youth and comfortably passed the hours in a mode so common to your species - a state of suspended belief such that any predigested audio-visual input is ‘lapped up’ (as you say) no matter the quality.
And, more astonishing than any realize, relinquishing your biocomputer’s program to the control of that most primitive proto-code, a banal film script.
I find him reflecting on those all-too-frequent occasions when the ageing storyline falters - when it sets aside complexity and strategic cunning for intellectually-barren, mindless, compulsory simplistic action, frequently to the grave detriment of storyline and obvious chagrin of actors.
He ponders the tremendous social and technological changes in the forty years since 007 first bestrode the magic of cinema screens.
“Good Grief,” he startled. “No computers in Bond’s world! People seem quite healthy, prosperous, and happy and not a PC in sight, or out of sight.”
All this without silicon (though much germanium) nor even so many transistors - those simple tri-junction devices, fledgling replacements for seemingly unassailable vacuum tubes. This vibrant social document (the James Bond film) portrayed a busy successful civilization of people for whom computer ubiquity is two decades hence! Unforeseen, unwanted, ridiculous in the very thought of, computers.
He (my host, not Bond) was astounded and dumbfounded by this.
Born in a pre-plastic age of Bakelite, mica, casein, steel, wood and glass (the latter still secretive of it’s silicon cousin’s promise of wafered junctions) it deeply impressed him that the world attained eminent success, such flourishing vibrancy, only three decades ago, with no more complexity than vacuum-bred ions in a handful of Univacs.
What if the large scale integration of silicon sandwiches never eventuated, and the world’s complexity plateaued with electronics stalled and computing a promising curiosity?
What strengths of humankind would have evolved to the fore, driven by the surging potential of this era in its cheeky thrust at the future?
Where are the dreamers today?
The ages of man have always held warriors, philosophers, priests, and statesmen, afloat upon a vast uncaring commonality. And there were idealists - now strangely missing, or silenced, mute, dare I suggest .. hypnotized?
The third millennia exposes a lethal change in common attitude that renders null, in a consensus paradigm shift, the concept and desire to better humanity’s lot.
As the rate of technological change becomes noticeable to all, with its shortening life-cycles, it might be imagined the curve is now too steep for noble sentiments to gain purchase.
Discussion about great plans of humankind has fled public dialogue, five and ten year national plans now policy pariahs.
School, college and campus lack former fervor or passion for social justice and ills of the world. Labor unions stagger like wounded dinosaurs, bleeding membership till only the stubborn remain. Once great political parties of the people scuffle for conservative footholds on the sunlit corporate cliff-face, drawing the electorate’s gaze with policy platitudes to disguise gutting of social care.
Scholars hide gagged within commerce-driven missionless academia, gagging on their swallowed pride. Or worse, much worse, gorging on military research.
Only Miss Universe, in unison versed by runners-up, cries for world peace.
Ugly savage rage of anti-globalists finds the grazing herd simply staring in bemused uncomprehending contempt.
A great society of greater ideas, that seemed within your grasp a mere half-century ago, now resembles a crass, noisy, intellectually-bereft bazaar.
Hawkers and tin men represent prized vocational crowns of commercially astute youth, while ‘educated’ plodders covet a coding cog in the I.T. behemoth. And for sharper of the educated elite, life’s profound and limitless potential suggests no more than a quick dash to wealth in the oxymoronic glamorous climes of cosmetic healthcare.
Technology in all its myriad diversity now dulls your aspirations by so fully engaging the intellect that reason and analysis no longer twinkle your eyes.
For ye, the lucky few of this Earth, life and land is too bountiful, artifacts too-distractfully shiny, the marketing hype too relentless a din.
Meanwhile the havenots kneel, invisible social lepers upon whose laboring backs you selfishly wallow.
You are completely besotted by your own creations, and in blind self-gratification fail to see the door to your species future swinging shut.
