asshole? how big?
Ok. So my old ibook, g3 600mhz is dead. the logicboard finally died. and i've been acting like i lost a best friend or something, although i been hating the hell out of that machine for a year now. and i didn;t want to hate it. really. i wanted very much to like it. but they made it wrong. like me. a wire loose or somthing. so, while i can rant on & on day in/day out abotu how i think it should have worked, etc. i actually had compassion for a thing that never had a chance from the gitgo. which actually made me more angry at the people that made it. unlike humans, like me, (i think) we can work around our circuitry to a large extent. machines can't. poor things! which bring sme to my next question:
WHY THE FUCK ARE WE RELYING ON THESE THINGS TO RUN OUR WORLD? I am absolutley amazed at my own reaction to the fact that a piece of metal, lump of plastic and carbide battery stopped working, and upset me to no end. I've gone through the equivalent of a mourning process for a pet rabbit on this. And what makes me even more upset is the facat that the few clowns at the top of this silicon food-chain have engineered their products and the indistry so that people like me, (meaning anyone with a pulse) becomes so hooked and so reliant on their products and systems that we equate inanimate, faulty machines with our own phsysiological species.
Now, you may see where i might be going with this. So I won't go too far. But safe it to say, that right now I am thinking about all the kids, on this sunny afternoon, sitting in their airless, musty, feet-smelling bedrooms with their tv's on, chat lines going and video games cranking. I'm thinking of all the lonely people, sometimes myself included, who, instead of getting out into life and meeting a new friend, are convinced that IRC and JPEGS are sufficient.
Like lambs for the slaughter, we upload our lives onto these things. Our bank accounts are direct-debited into oblivion. Our work is archived somewhere in Switzerland, probably in the same vault as the the remaining Nazi gold. And then, the 'official line' is some philosophical comparison to the dawn of television, radio or some other technology...and reassurance that man will triumph over his own inventions of self-infliction. Let's get one thing crystal clear, straight and pristeenly accurate: the only people this technology is ultimately serving, in the manner it is proported to provide, are the ones at the top who are making it.
I don't think my Grandfather worshipped his tractor. I know my Great Grandmother never bowed at the altar of the automobile. My other Grandmother threw out her TV, and blissfully talked abotu how she enjoyed the peace and quiet for the 30 years following, along with the newspaper, books and visits with friends.
I'm not trying to advocate a luddite revolution. But my god ladies and gentlmen, these things are tools. Nothing more, nothing less. I used to tell this to people I taught desktop publishing to every day, and they didn't believe me. However I believe, thaty if we demanded some price controls in the computer industry - or at least some non-monopolization and price-fixing statutes and that the manufacturers stand behind their products, it would be a start. Second, if we, the consumer, started refusing to give out our bank details to greedy companies, demanded immediate action for servcies not rendered and denying access to every inch of our lives, now I'd call that progress. What's wrong with paying in cash??? The chances of getting mugged or robbed by another human being is far less than the chances of getting mugeed and robbed for faulty services, add-on fees and corporate mistakes.
One of the most liberating things I've doen in years: Balling up my right hand into a fist, raising it high into the air, and smashing it down onto my old laptop, through the keyboard, flattening the hard drive. The bruises are less painful than the rejection of a faulty piece of machinery.
WHY THE FUCK ARE WE RELYING ON THESE THINGS TO RUN OUR WORLD? I am absolutley amazed at my own reaction to the fact that a piece of metal, lump of plastic and carbide battery stopped working, and upset me to no end. I've gone through the equivalent of a mourning process for a pet rabbit on this. And what makes me even more upset is the facat that the few clowns at the top of this silicon food-chain have engineered their products and the indistry so that people like me, (meaning anyone with a pulse) becomes so hooked and so reliant on their products and systems that we equate inanimate, faulty machines with our own phsysiological species.
Now, you may see where i might be going with this. So I won't go too far. But safe it to say, that right now I am thinking about all the kids, on this sunny afternoon, sitting in their airless, musty, feet-smelling bedrooms with their tv's on, chat lines going and video games cranking. I'm thinking of all the lonely people, sometimes myself included, who, instead of getting out into life and meeting a new friend, are convinced that IRC and JPEGS are sufficient.
Like lambs for the slaughter, we upload our lives onto these things. Our bank accounts are direct-debited into oblivion. Our work is archived somewhere in Switzerland, probably in the same vault as the the remaining Nazi gold. And then, the 'official line' is some philosophical comparison to the dawn of television, radio or some other technology...and reassurance that man will triumph over his own inventions of self-infliction. Let's get one thing crystal clear, straight and pristeenly accurate: the only people this technology is ultimately serving, in the manner it is proported to provide, are the ones at the top who are making it.
I don't think my Grandfather worshipped his tractor. I know my Great Grandmother never bowed at the altar of the automobile. My other Grandmother threw out her TV, and blissfully talked abotu how she enjoyed the peace and quiet for the 30 years following, along with the newspaper, books and visits with friends.
I'm not trying to advocate a luddite revolution. But my god ladies and gentlmen, these things are tools. Nothing more, nothing less. I used to tell this to people I taught desktop publishing to every day, and they didn't believe me. However I believe, thaty if we demanded some price controls in the computer industry - or at least some non-monopolization and price-fixing statutes and that the manufacturers stand behind their products, it would be a start. Second, if we, the consumer, started refusing to give out our bank details to greedy companies, demanded immediate action for servcies not rendered and denying access to every inch of our lives, now I'd call that progress. What's wrong with paying in cash??? The chances of getting mugged or robbed by another human being is far less than the chances of getting mugeed and robbed for faulty services, add-on fees and corporate mistakes.
One of the most liberating things I've doen in years: Balling up my right hand into a fist, raising it high into the air, and smashing it down onto my old laptop, through the keyboard, flattening the hard drive. The bruises are less painful than the rejection of a faulty piece of machinery.
posted by Martin B at 9:28 AM
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