Frobozz's Journal

BP may have capped the oil well. And only three months after initiating an ecological catastrophe on a scale that beggars the imagination.

Goldman Sachs just got dinged by the biggest fine in Wall Street history due to their massive corruption and egregiously fraudulent behaviour.

Obama's financial reform bill just passed, after... well, you're living it too.

Today is the single greatest and most triumphant day in the history of closing the barn door after the cows have left!

Peace and cud.

While browsing through my RSS feeds over lunch, I came across yet another article which examines how technology is destroying some aspect of our society or another. In this case, it was how books are the gatekeeper for our free time, and if we move towards electronic books, we're moving towards an ever-growing threat of never being able to 'turn off'.

I understand that this is a problem that strikes a lot of people; I know more than a few people who can't deal with being out of contact for more than a few minutes. This is probably not a good thing. It's probably not very restful to constantly be wondering what's going on with... say, twitter or Facebook or Friendface or Twitface or whatever.

There are several problems that I have with articles which try to mine this problem for its journalistic gold. The first is that I really do think that most of them have a tendency to lash out at a symptom rather than at the root cause. Are some people compulsive about information because they have gadgets that can go with them everywhere, or are they people who have a problem, a compulsive disorder, a hole in their lives... something that leads to them getting always-connect gadgets and never turning them off?

It's always easier to point to a very visible symptom and say 'THIS IS BAD' than to dig deeper and then say '...and this is why'. Causation is generally a lot more complicated than people assume. But because of that, it's so dreadfully easy to look at the symptoms and decide that they are what's causing problems with society. Then, because you're discussing problems with technology (which is always good for driving a few sales), other people will pick up on the trend and discuss the same thing you are. And there's never a shortage of people who will moan about the 'good old days', who will be glad to say how things are just getting worse and worse because of technology.

But in many cases, I feel that those people are really missing the point. One of my least favourite journalistic memes has been how the iPod culture is destroying civilization. 'We aren't talking to one another', they screed. 'We're just... always plugged in. We're now a society of strangers.'

Bullroar.

We were able to tune out the world long before the iPod. We did tune out the world before the iPod. It's just that 'men and women reading newspapers on the subway are destroying society' isn't a terribly sexy headline. Technology is facilitating the desire of those of us who enjoy being misanthropes; I don't believe it's causing it. Maybe there's something deeply wrong with me, but I don't enjoy random social encounters all that much (and sadly, I guess I have the kind of face that says 'Come! Talk to me! Unburden yourself. Tell me things that I don't want to know about you. Make me VERY UNCOMFORTABLE, please!'). To deal with this, I took books with me every time I got on the bus. I could read and hopefully just enjoy my transit in peace (didn't work as well as it should've. Darn it). I wanted to tune out the world, and so I did. That I could do it with an iPod these days is just gravy.

And really, technophobia... no, strike that. And really, phobia sells. If you can make a problem seem like it's a novel one -- like technology overwhelming the world -- you can enlist a portion of the people who grew up before such innovations into your arena while making them nod in unison as they remember that back in the day, they had no such thing, and weren't things so much better then?

Yes, often technology doesn't help and will often enable problems. I'll be the first to admit that it's much easier to be addicted to updating Facebook if you can actually access Facebook. Yes, it's probably not that healthy for kids to be playing video games all day. But both of these are, again, symptoms of the problem rather than the problem itself. The solution is not to take the technology away from everybody, but to either impose limits on yourself (or for the children, have parents impose those limits... which may well include taking the technology away from the children...) or getting some help (which doesn't have to be professional. Some of my worst compulsions have been set-asidable with just someone else around to help me from going into a shell).

But diving back to what set me off on this rant, the premise of the piece was that books -- by virtue of being not connected to the network -- allow us Free Time. Whereas ebooks -- because they can be connected to the network -- do not.

I really don't know what to do with this. There are virtues that books have over ebooks (they're (often) easy to replace if damaged, they never run out of power and stop being books, and they don't attract undue attention when brought into public places); but I really don't think allowing us to have free time is one of those. If someone is using their ebook reader in a way that frustrates their ability to relax and enjoy a book, maybe that person needs to figure out why that is. Maybe that person does need to put down the ebook reader and pick up a paper book. Maybe that person needs to figure out how to make Wikipedia less attractive than reading. I don't know. But I think the blanket 'we are all DOOMED because of this' warning has stretched to about its breaking point.

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Peace and distractions.

I think our biggest problem with Earth Day -- aside from the fact that it gives us a day to feel virtuous and thus forgive ourselves for the other 364 when we're doing our level best to destroy ourselves -- is that we're not really trying to 'save the Earth'.

Look, the Earth doesn't need saving from us. We -- Humanity -- don't have the chops to render the planet sterile and lifeless. We could nuke the planet until it glowed like Play Doh destined to be yanked off the market really fast, and some form of life would survive. Over the centuries, this life would adapt to its conditions and thrive. This life wouldn't be us, but it would be life. And the biosphere in which it thrived would not be the one we're kinda fond of, but it would be a biosphere. Earth would go on, life would continue.

No, we're not trying to save the Earth. We're trying to save ourselves, and all the cute, cuddly, furry, scaled, finned or whatever species that we've come to enjoy both as company and as delicious meals (I'm an omnivore. I accept this). The Earth isn't our victim; it's the quiet, nurturing fellow in HR who might one day get pushed too damned far by people taking him for granted and come in to work with a shotgun and an epic dis of the gruntling. It should more rightly be 'Don't Wake Daddy' day.

I think we've spent way too much time trying to make people care about saving the Earth. People need to understand that the Earth not only doesn't need them, it can cut them. Earth be crazy, dog. You don't mess wit' dat.

(As you might guess, I work at a school and have just been subjected to Earth Week, which -- no matter where you go, really -- is full of WAFFish Save the Earthery and stern but ultimately toothless warnings about how the planet may fall down go boom. The thing I've seen very little of here, however, is someone making the problem truly, really, personal)

Oh, for those of you reading this on Livejournal, I've migrated to Dreamwidth. I'll keep crossposting to LJ, but Dreamwidth is now the blogging hub of choice for me.

Peace and put down that crowbar, Earth...