Just about twelve times a day, if you read the advertising press, if you sit in numbing meetings led by social media experts, etc., you hear about some technology that will change everything. Technology that will change the fundamental wiring of the human brain. Technology that will change the way the world works. Technology that will transform everything we know and love.
Then, it snows.
Here we are, the most advanced society on Earth and when it snows, transportation and most everything else is sent back to medieval times.
My point is fairly simple, and I suppose a bit simplistic. Despite all the technology advances humanity has made, when it snows, when something elemental happens (and elemental things happen quite often) we revert to the shovel. The old tools are the best tools and technology--affordable, fast and available, has yet to supersede the old.
I suspect the same is true with communication technology. We will, before long, be assaulted by holographic ads shimmering in front of us. Information will be beamed into our left nostril and tickle our frontal lobe. Some of this might even been efficacious.
But nothing will replace one human telling a simple, interesting and warm story to other humans in human terms.
enter through our left nostril to tickle our frontal lobe, that was very funny. might even be the future, you never know.
ReplyDeletekeep the humour, geo
keep the insanity,
and keep the faith.
I half agree. Though if all New Yorkers had during the recent snow falls were shovels, I fear little would function. Think of all the snowplows clearing roads and airports. And those fancy motors street cleaners push along to cover a block in salt in under 15 mins. Old tools do work well - that's why we still have them. But give me a mighty snowplow anyday. Or perhaps a robot.
ReplyDeleteThanks for getting me thinking.
Did you hear Robert Krulwich's piece on NPR the other morning: "Tools Never Die." Good stuff.
ReplyDeleteEric, I posted about it a couple days ago.
ReplyDelete