the problem with technology - a philippic

I hope you've liquored yourself up properly before clicking your way over here. This here post is yet another vitriolic op-ed. If the word 'philippic' in the title wasn't enough to scare you off, heed this final warning, go back to your pay-per-view and microwave some lasagna.

I like to think of myself as a principled man. I'll grant you that some of my principles probably aren't all that productive, or even healthy. I go out of my way to step on those extra-crunchy leaves, I write people parking citations whenever they miss the bloody white lines, and I try never to pay for my own drinks.

Diseased as my principles are, however, I stick by them. To betray them is to betray the very essence of my being.

Well, the very essence of my being is feeling a bit betrayed right now.

I read somewhere once that the philosopher Plato despised the invention of paper, alphabets, and written language. If he'd had his way, nobody would ever so much as scribble "bagels and cream cheese" on a Post-It note and tack it to the fridge.

Why?

Writing degrades the memory, he said. If people could just write stuff down, nobody would ever have to remember anything, would they? They'd just let their bloody memories go to pot.

Plato practiced what he preached. He never touched paper. The man routinely memorized verbal treatises on rhetoric (thousands of words long). He remembered the trial of his mentor Socrates verbatim, and in so doing single-handedly set the principle of stenography back by a millennium.

(If Plato were alive today, I wonder what he'd think of things like datebooks, and gingko biloba, and all those memory puzzles on the supermarket racks. Apoplexy anyone?)

I'm kind of the same way. Technology bugs me. By nature of its omniscience and accessibility, technology, as a medium, degrades the quality and uniqueness of the works it so greedily subsumes and regurgitates.

Case in point...

MUSIC

People don't enjoy music anymore; they saturate themselves with it.

My grandfather had a tradition. One night every week he'd shut himself in his den, put a record on, and listen to it, beginning to end, without interruption. My cousins and I could hear him in there, whistling along with Mark Knopfler and Chet Atkins. I could almost picture him sitting in his armchair, replete with sweater, penny loafers and black socks, tapping a toe in time to the beat, his eyes closed in concentration like a marquis at the opera.

Nowadays, sitting on the subway, I find it difficult to find anyone under 30 who doesn't have a pair of earphones stuck to their head.

People listen to music everywhere: at work, at the gym, at home, in their cars, on airplanes, even when they go out on an introspective walk in the country.

I'd love to know how you're supposed to commune with nature when Rage Against the Machine is raping your eardrums.

(I don't exempt myself from these habits; read on and you will see how I, likewise, have become a member of the digital generation. Hell, you're reading this very post on the screen of a computer or a smartphone, right?)

I'm not saying people shouldn't enjoy music. I'm not even saying that there's a wrong way to do it. It just irks me that, thanks to technology, music has shifted from being an occasional, introspective, evocative, enlightening treat...and has become business as usual. Nothing special. Small potatoes. Et cetera, et cetera. 

People used to look forward to live concerts for months, hoarding tickets like fragments of the Covenant. What with live-streaming video and camera phones and fiber-optics and Wi-Fi, they can push a button and tune into to U2 (Live at the Rose Bowl) from anywhere on the planet.

Whereas folks used to have a collection of ten or so prized vinyl LP records (you may want to Google the terms "record," "LP," and "vinyl"), nowadays they'll have something like ten gigabytes of music. That's hundreds and sometimes thousands of songs, any one of them accessible in an instant. You don't need to put a needle into a groove anymore; just hit a button and spin the wheel.

You could almost argue that people have too much music. People (me included) find themselves slewing wildly through their music collections, skipping song after song until they find one they haven't heard 30,000 times over. Sometimes there's too much even to fit on a single device, and said music magnate must either retain multiple MP3 players or simply rotate their library out every six months or so. (I'm talking to you, Miss H.)

Think of the way it used to be, people. If you wanted music, you had to wait for a band of strolling players to waltz through your village—or make the music yourself. It's everywhere now, all at once, in your face and as loud as possible.

I'm not exempt. I (occasionally) have my ear-buds on when I go out on walks, and my headphones are almost always glued to my cranium when I'm working on my computer. (I'm a little obsessed with LMFAO's "Party Rock Anthem," okay? Sue me.) But I can still appreciate the specialty of a particular group, artist, song, or album. I still buy most of my music on CDs, so, when the mood takes me, I can pop one into my stereo set, crank it up, and enjoy an entire evening listening to only one band. Crazy, huh?

When you mass-market anything and make it available at the push of a button, it loses its specialness, its rarity, its unique nature. It's not a treat anymore. It's more like...coffee. Or gasoline. Or Pop-Tarts. Just another consumable resource to help get you through your day.

Technology cheapens art. That's the crux of my argument.

LITERATURE

My biggest beef with the techno-revolution. It's screwing with my beloved books.

(Yes, this is a pathetic argument, meaning that it stems from an appeal to human emotion, rather than a logical argument appealing to rationality and common sense. Bite me.)

The Kindle^® is the bane of my existence. I know it's the wave of the future. I know e-book readers will replace printed works in a deplorably short time. I'll even acknowledge that they're a helluva lot more convenient for carrying around your reading material. But I don't like 'em. They can't replace a lovely, dog-eared, care-worn paperback with yellowing pages, coffee stains on the title page, a broken back from all those times you propped it up on its spine instead of using a bookmark, and which smells so deliciously of the wooden cases, gritty carpet, dusty counters, and sagging shelves of every used bookstore you've ever ventured into.

Sure, the Kindle^® and its ilk may do wonders for literacy. Most e-books are only about $2-$3, I hear. And my Kindle^®-owning friends tell me that they can get most of the classics for free. That's all right by me. If a device brings the best literature in the world before the eyes of the proletariat, I'm all for it. Free books for the people, I say. But I dislike the idea of the e-book reader. The primal feeling and sensual joy of reading is no more. You can't smell the binding, feel the rough edges of the paper, read the author's signature on the inside cover. You can't hold the work in your hands and wonder how many other people before you have done the same thing. You can't ostentatiously flash the cover at passersby when you want the world to know that you're an intelligent and well-read human being for reading The Brothers Karamazov. Nor can you hold a Kindle^® up in front of your face when you're sitting on the train next to somebody you really don't want to talk to. And worst of all, at the end of the day, you can't walk into your private library, sit down in a comfortable chair, and cast your eye over the familiar spines of your favorite books crowding the mahogany shelves.

Oh yeah, and books don't need batteries.

That is all.
 
AVIATION

Technology is pervasive stuff, ain't it?

I feel the need to say a little something about airplanes. Aviation has customarily been on the forefront of the techno-tsunami. That's both good and bad, as it turns out.

I had the opportunity to fly a Cirrus SR20 recently.

What's a Cirrus SR20, you ask?

Cirrus Aircraft is a Duluth-based company which prides itself on its line of advanced, user-friendly, safety-focused aircraft. Right now that line consists of two airplanes, with a third in the works: the SR20, the SR22, and the SF50. The SR20 is the basic model; the SR22 is the same airframe with a better engine; and the SF50 "Vision" is a sleek-looking VLJ, or Very Light Jet, projected to hit the market in 2012.

The circumstances which allowed me to pilot a $750,000 airplane are not important. Suffice it to say, however, that though I found the SR20 pleasantly simple to fly, I did not approve of it. The thing is soaked, sopping, steeped in technology.

You remember how I said that Cirrus prides itself on designing safe, user-friendly aircraft?

Yeah, well, they do that by analyzing accident reports, determining what most commonly causes malfunctions, and then designing aircraft that even a knee-biting dumbass could fly.

To give you an example, Cirrus's experts decided that, no matter how safe or intelligent a pilot could be, he might still forget to put the landing gear down sometimes. So they made the SR20's landing gear fixed instead of retractable.

I don't like that. I don't like it when a company assumes I'm going to do something stupid. I don't like it when they try to think for me. I don't like it when they decide that I can't be trusted with retractable landing gear and give me fixed gear just to be on the safe side.

Tish and blather. Fiddlesticks, I say.

Cirrus airplanes have a boatload of built-in fail-safes and recovery devices which are ostensibly intended to help a pilot prevent and/or recover from a dangerous situation. The most notable of these is the SR20's built-in parachute. That's right. The airplane has its own parachute. It's controlled by a red handle on the ceiling of the cockpit, over the pilot's seat. Yank that handle and a solid-fuel rocket blasts out of the airplane's roof, just behind the rear window. Straps unfurl all along the airplane's sides, the canopy deploys, and the airplane floats gently to earth at 15 mph. The aforementioned landing gear is designed to collapse in just such a way as to cushion the impact and protect the fuselage (and its passengers) from damage.

That's not all. The Cirrus SR20 has a blue "LEVEL" button in the cockpit which, when pushed, automatically returns the plane to straight-and-level flight. Let's say you're flying in IFR conditions (when you can't see outside the airplane, and are using your instruments to fly), and you get spatially disoriented. Or let's say you were flying on a clear day and you had to dodge a bird. The plane starts to go out of whack. Push that blue button and the plane quiets down, straightens up, and levels out. Bang, there you are, flying along just as if nothing ever happened.

The SR20 has built-in sensors which know when the plane is about to stall. (Remember, a stall happens when the air is hitting the wing at too severe an angle to generate lift. The plane basically stops flying and begins to fall out of the sky. In the hands of an inexperienced pilot, a bad stall can lead to a spin, rapid descent, and a big smoky hole in the ground.) These sensors simultaneously alert the pilot of a stall and tell the plane to fix it. The plane levels itself back out and recovers from the stall automatically.

The Cirrus company was also the first aircraft manufacturer to put something called a "hypoxia awareness system" into their airplanes. This is a sensor that monitors the pilot's control of the airplane above 12,500 feet. Above that altitude, without supplemental oxygen, the human body won't be able to take in enough O₂ to sustain consciousness. I've experienced this effect myself. There's lightheadedness, headache, decreased awareness, euphoria...and the blackout comes pretty soon after. So, if a Cirrus pilot flies up that high, and his oxygen system malfunctions, and he faints, and he doesn't touch the airplane controls for two minutes...then a computerized voice will ask him very loudly "Are you awake? Are you aware?"

Receiving no answer (or control inputs) the computer is then programmed to automatically take the airplane down below 12,500 feet, all the time asking "Are you awake? Are you aware?" until it gets a response.

Seems cool, right?

No. It isn't.

Look back through those last few paragraphs and you'll notice something. I used the word "automatically" way too much.

My question is this: if you're such a raging dullard that you're up above 12,500 feet with no oxygen, or flinging the airplane all over the sky trying to dodge birds, or letting yourself get stalled out, then what business do you have flying an airplane in the first place?

Okay, sure, this technology saves lives. I read somewhere that the Cirrus parachute system has saved 121 people from almost certain death. The hypoxia awareness thing sounds like it could come in handy. But look, you should be able to do all this for yourself. This technology makes it too easy for you. A pilot could get spoiled, and his skills dulled, flying in a Cirrus. And when the real emergency comes along, when the electrical system fails and he loses all that technological whizbang, how is he going to know how to handle the situation?

Cirrus is barking up the wrong tree. If anything they should be trying to find out how to make people safer, not airplanes. Last I heard, the NTSB had concluded that eighty percent of all airplane crashes, accidents, and mishaps are caused by human error. There's no way to design human stupidity out of an airframe. Cirrus won't be able to accomplish that no matter how hard they try. But they're still trying. And what they're coming up with might ultimately cause more problems than it solves.

Do you see where I'm coming from? Technology is convenient, yes, but there are things far more preferable than convenience. Skill. Talent. Romance. Sensuousness. Appreciation. Peculiarity. All the qualities which make music a treat, books a joy, and airplanes a challenge are being ingested and diluted by the unstoppable march of technological progress. I find this deplorable.

Technology has its uses. Moreover, it is a paean to the scope of innovation and the indomitable human spirit.

But does it have to take my precious books away from me?

Couldn't some of us, withal, remain happy in the Stone Age?

And now, just to prove how inescapable the thing truly is, and how immersed I myself am in it, despite all appearances to the Neo-Luddite contrary, I leave you with a song. A song synthesized with electronic instruments, mixed with digital recording equipment, distributed via laser and fiber-optic cable and data port, brought to you by a video download from a website on the Internet, appearing to you on your computer or smartphone with its LCD screens and high-fidelity sound reproduction, and packaged for you by an online personal blogging tool.

...through which the author has chosen to disseminate his anti-technology rants.

Go figure.

Even the singers are wearing those damn ear-buds...