Comment lengthy response: easier to read (Score 2) 179
In response to both parts of the "Cyberclysm" series: (the > symbol denotes Katz's comments, and the * symbol denotes my comments)
>Even now, nobody can really keep up, and only a few can even fake it. Everyone is frantic, stressed, tethered, broke or worn out trying to manage. We are bombarded by inventions and advances we might not need or understand, that move more quickly and do more things than we want, that we can barely grasp, let alone service or repair.
*While I would wholeheartedly agree with the fact that the average American's life's complexities have most decidedly multiplied exponentially since the time of the subsistance farmer, it is foolhardy to assume that "keeping up" would be ANYONE's goal. With the advent of efficient communications, humans have adapted and developed an ability that would have been of little use in previous civilizations. This ability is known in modern vernacular as "tuning out." If we are not interested in something, or we think it is superfluous, we ignore it. I doubt that humans feel much more intimidated by the abundance and prevalence of technology than they would feel in the face of any other mountain of information with which they have little experience, be it philosophy, math, or any other discipline.
>Author James Gleick in "Faster" complains that technology is forcing everything to move too quickly. In his new collection of essays, Arthur C. Clarke writes "I have seen the future and it doesn't work."
*Unfortunately, I've not read either work, so I can't comment.
>The typical twenty-first-century person's day, he predicts, will include: "Skimming five hundred channel program listings, two hours; viewing television programs selected, four hours; catching up on recorded programs, six hours; exploring the hyperweb, six hours; and adventuring in artificial reality, four hours." He didn't even mention checking e-mail, answering fax-spewing and stock-listing cellphones, or responding to pagers and beepers.
>This is, of course, satire; and, as satire, it is completely, utterly absurd. Most of what is mentioned deals with communication. It might be important to remember that it is only through these "complicated" means of communication which were undoubtedly considered to be "advances we might not need or understand" that KATZ's opportunity to write to us exists.
>Neo-Luddite Kirkpatrick Sale goes further, warning in his books that technology is destroying the world. He wants us to smash our computers to save the planet.
*A) This radical action is not very different than burning books, if treated a certain way. If one were to really examine the purpose of computers, one would begin to see that their purpose centers around the facilitation of sharing and storing of information, in one form or another. From playing games to email, from desktop publishing to networking, from accounting and database programs to web surfing, etc. these are all related in one way or another to the proliferation of information. That information may not be useful or important to everyone, but it must be important to somebody or IT WOULDN'T EXIST IN THE FIRST PLACE.
B)"Saving the planet" sounds grand and many people spout that phrase as their intention, but it is meaningless. I can bet that Sale doesn't really care about the planet, not in abstract he doesn't. He only wants to see planet and, more to the point, civilization conform to the model HE deems best. How noble.
>In his apocalyptic new dirge "Staring Into Chaos," author Bruce Brander proclaims that western civilization itself is coming to an end.
*I would hope so. The time for a WORLD civilization is nye. The establishment of worldwide communications help to make that finally possible.
>The term Ubiquitous Computing is technological historian Langdon Winner's, who in Netfuture... warns that society is drowning in a wave of absurd and unnecessary appliances and electronics, continuously and wastefully cranked out by some of the best minds alive.
*Of course these items are unnecessary. So is your car. So is the furnace in your house. We could survive without these just as many people survived without them before they were invented, and just as many people still do today. Absurd? Well, that depends on what you define as absurd technology. Many people (often of older generations) would argue that they got along perfectly well with their businesses before computers, and they do not understand why we "need" them now. It is all about efficiency. Are computers more efficient? I say yes, although like any tool, it takes time to learn how to use them, they can break down, and not all computers are equal. The same applies to other "appliances and electronics." Not all these tools are as useful as one would like, but hey, were the first cars all that useful? That is what innovation is all about: you might not get it perfect the first time, you might not have even come up with a useful invention, and maybe no one will want it. If it is absurd, then it won't sell (not much anyway). Finally, "wastefully?" We live in a society where you can buy silly string, edible underwear, pez dispensors, and beanie babies; and he is just NOW complaining about wastefulness?
>Winner, a critic of the Wired-era hype about the Internet and networked computing, exults in what he perceives as a growing realization that Ubiquitous Computing isn't making life simpler or better, but harder, more expensive and chaotic:
*One might say that about all technology. Cars are a prime example. What American hasn't complained about car troubles? If he wants to live in a cave and walk everywhere (because horses would be just as pesky, if not more) then that is his choice. It might not be a rational choice, but it is his freedom nonetheless (Ted Kazinsky anybody?).
>"Simplify. Save time. Reduce effort. Liberate yourself from toil. This has been the continuing siren song of consumer technology through the twentieth century. Unfortunately, in its own terms, the dream is always self-defeating. As people add more and more time-saving, labor-saving equipment to their homes, their lives do not become simpler and easier. Instead their days become even more complicated, demanding and rushed."
*Why are our lives more demanding, rushed? Could it be that we have the opportunity to do more with our lives than ever before. I can guarantee that the subsistance farmer was not rushed like the average businessman. As we do more, we begin to want to do more than that. We realize that the possibilities endless, and we want to have those stock quotes a button away, because information has become key. The gradual migration of the focus of our lives away from the muscular to the cerebral is to be considered an evolutionary step forward, not a fatal mistake. As for our lives being more demanding I have to points. A) We make that choice. As our education increases, the demands we place on ourselves increase too. There are real reasons why time saving devices sell. B) Are our lives more demanding than the subsistence farmer? Or maybe just different. I don't have to go plow a field all day and pray that the weather is right so i can feed my family. This is made possible by people who decided there had to be a better way to do something, and so they invented an "unnecessary" device.
>A disclaimer here : I don't share Winner's summary view of computing. For me, appliances, hardware and software are the least interesting aspects of technology. For me, the siren song would be: Speak and Think Freely. Connect. Learn, and Share What You Learn. Then learn and share more. Grow. For me, this promise has been fulfilled, a thousand times over.
*If Katz don't agree with Winner's view, why is Katz using it using it in this article? If it does not illustrate what katz is trying to say, then why include it at all?
>But Winner, one of the sharpest thinkers about technology in American society, does have a point. We are making a lot more things than we demonstrably need. We give far more thought to making and marketing them than we do to whether they are truly useful. TV's and sound systems, watches that monitor global time zones, multi-function phones - keep adding features daily, many of them of doubtful necessity to most of the people who buy them. One ad blanketing commercial TV touts new wireless phone technology that will allow people to get their e-mail, weather and sports scores instantly from anywhere. Does anybody really need to be that wired?
*I refer to my argument on "necessary." Also, Katz is really complaining about the whole theory of capitalism with the advent of advertising. This is not specific to technology. Breakfast cereals, anyone?
>Even the most ardent geeks complain that they can never be out of touch, never have time to think, never completely catch up. As the world is able to reach us more easily, it expects us to be always available and more or less instantly responsive. This rushes us and our responses. It makes us edgy, grumpy, impulsive. Technology becomes a means of harassing and pressuring us instead of improving our lives. The genuine blessings of technology - information, opportunity, community, the portability of work - get overlooked in all the gadgetry.
*Again, every one of the technologies Katz attribute to providing "informatino, opportunity," etc., were considered "gadgetry" when they were first introduced. As for the never having time to think, etc., this is why we can "tune out." Our environment has changed, and we are adapting, just like any other organism. As we and the world get more in touch, it reaffirms that we are ceasing to be completely solitary individuals, but instead members of a functioning civilization. Finally, in the words of George Carlin, "Did ya know there are two knobs on a radio, minister? One of them turns it off...AND THE OTHER ONE CHANGES THE STATION!!!"
>All labor-saving devices don't necessarily improve the quality of life. Autonomous human beings can - and maybe should - take responsibility for the smaller details of life. After all, these labor saving devices require considerable labor: they need installation, adjustment, repairs and replacement - often at considerable time, cost and annoyance. There are enormous ecological consequences as well, to making so much plastic and metal, so many wires and chips.
*Again, innovation is not always perfect. Almost never, in fact. It is a judgement we are required to make; is the effort it takes to use this device more than the effort required to do the task myself without the device. As for the ecological consequences, why is plastic so hateful? We are not creating anything, really. We are simply shuffling around different configurations of atoms, and it is only a matter of time before we learn how to unshuffle them effectively. Recycling aluminum cans is only the tip of the iceburg concerning what we will be able to do in the future.
>Newsweek enthused last week, in a gee-whiz cover story about how the Internet is changing our lives, that tomorrow's automatic coffee maker will have access to our online schedule so it can automatically withhold the brew if we're out of town. This is by -now - instantly-recognizable media language of Technohype, computing and technology wrongly presented as a barrage of gizmos with chips that do things we can just as (or more) easily do for ourselves.
*An internet-ready coffee maker is probably just as absurd as it sounds. Consequently, it probably won't catch on. That is how innovation works. Practical technology is just that: gizmos, chips, etc.. If we find that doing it ourselves works better, then that determines the success of the technology. And practical technology is what we are concerned with. If a theoretical technology (a.k.a. a concept with technological applications) never makes it into practice, then it is useless for anything other than brain aerobics.
>But if the laws governing technology are unpredictable, those governing capitalism are unwavering: What is made must be sold and, therefore, hyped.
*I agree. Capitalism is anything BUT rational. Advertising is all about creating need, or at least the semblance of it. But that is a deeper evil that what we are discussing here.
>Such overheated predictions don't evoke the future so much as the past. Remember Walt Disney's Tomorrowland with its notions of intergalactic travel, hover cars, people movers and other things that still don't exist? We may be closer to genetically engineering perfect humans, or even curing cancer, but we still can't cure the cold or come up with a practical battery-powered car, or make computers that don't drive the people using them nuts.
*Well, without these outlandish ideas, these theoretical technologies, then we would never have had practical technologies like the satellite (which, interestingly enough, Arthur C. Clark invented in the 1940's). Also, as for the curing the common cold and battery cars, Katz is hitting on a major flaw in capitalism. There is absolutely NO money in cures. Not comparatively. The multi-billion dollar industries of cold medicine and gasoline would collapse if we no longer needed their products. Consequently, a good investment for a gasoline company would be to buy off those well-meaning alternative energy source innovators. Sad.
>Alas -- according to almost every business or marketing projection, R&D labs will usher in the Millenium by making the creation and sales of info-gadgets and appliances an even greater preoccupation of the next century.
*Probably true, only I don't shudder at the prospect. I have owned for 8 years one model or another of a casio watch that stores my phone numbers. I love it. Some might consider that superfluous. I have DECIDED that it is extremely useful and would rather have it than not. It is not NECESSARY, but it is so useful that i love it.
>On the East Coast (where I live), in the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd, one little-noticed consequence of the storm was that power interruption rendered cordless telephones useless even if the phone lines were functioning. Moreover, the flooding of an AT&T installation in New Jersey knocked out hundreds of thousands of cellphones. For a few days, the only phones that worked were the Lo-tech sort, the non-electronic, non-digital kind that plugged into the wall jack, receivers attached to the base with curly cords. That's as apt a metaphor for the coming Cyberclysm as any. Perhaps the survivors will be the people with the simplest, not the most sophisticated, machines.
*This is true of all technology. If suddenly there was no gasoline and no gasoline alternative, then those who only ride bikes (if that is not to hi-tech for them) and ride horses would be the only ones who could effectively ambulated larger distances. Does this make them superior?
>Whose responsibility is all this? Nobody's, of course. Technology has a mind, life and direction all of its own. It's inherently uncontrollable, even if anybody was up to trying.
*The same could be said of amassed human knowledge. People have tried. They burn books and prohibit the theory evolution from being taught in schools.
>But some of the fault lies in the way our institutions - education, politics, media - deal with technology. We're trapped between two useless states - alarm and euphoria. Either we are railing about pornography, disconnection, and addiction or we are banging the drums for Gee-Whiz Computing that exists much more for its own sake than for our benefit. Like cell phones that receive faxes in taxicabs or 21st century toilets that will monitor the family's health through chemical sampling of fecal matter, or mirrors over bathroom sinks that flash the day's headlines, so nobody in the family has to wait until they get downstairs to get the news, if their wireless phone hasn't already alerted them.
*Humans fear change and at the same time embrace it. All progress brings with it negative consequences. It is how we deal with those negative consequences (assuming that they are negative and not just so unfamiliar that they invoke fear) that determines the success of a civilization.
>Perhaps the idea that there are people who keep up with all this stuff is in itself a technological myth.
*Could anyone say that they know everything there is to know about mathematics? Philosophy? Technology is no different.
>Clarke warns that we're headed for a Cyberclysm (he and others have used the word), a catastrophic collision between computers, technology and humanity. We won't be consumed by evil aliens or runaway AI machines, as sci-fi futurists have long predicted. Instead, we'll conquer ourselves with too much information about too many things and too many appliances performing too many services.
*Interesting prediction. We will see. For my part, I think that it will be a self righting system. When we get too much information, we "tune out." When the gadgets aren't worth it, we don't buy them.
>Clarke has written often of the pitfalls of the Dream Machine, the seductive idea that gadgets will run the world and monitor the most intimate details of our lives while we are free to enjoy ourselves.
*Well, that would be an end of progress, now wouldn't it? If all we did was pursue what fills our appetites for pleasure, we would then cease to find them pleasurable. For an activity to be truely worthwhile, it must be an end in and of itself. If the activity is merely a means to some other end, then it won't be truly pleasurable. If one's job is simply a method of getting money so that one can enjoy something else, then the job won't be pleasurable, will it? If pleasure for someone consists only of entertainment, sex, food, drink, etc., then the dream machine society would work for that person. I postulate that the dream machine society could never come into being simply because humans would not be content to do nothing. The american dream of making money so one can enjoy oneself is false. This has been proven over and over again by rich, unhappy people. Devoting oneself to seeking pleasure does NOT make one happy, so we humans would never REALLY want the "dream machine." Ask Aristotle.
>"There have been many science fiction stories," writes Clarke, "about frantic human attempts to unplug disobedient computers. The real future might involve exactly the opposite scenario. The computers may unplug us." And, he adds: "it would serve us right."
*Read Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot." The model for his robots is more likely how it would come to be.
>That leaves most of us holding the bag, confronted with two noxious choices: to fall back with the hare-brained Luddites who want to return to the sylvan forests, or to follow the Techno-Utopians on their runaway CyberBinge.
*I argue that the Cyberbinge is not so heinous as Katz makes it out to be. Of course there has to be moderation, but I propose that that will come about naturally, and that it is not something to be all that alarmed about. I also find it hard to believe that digital wristwatches and cordless phones with added features will be the downfall of this civilization. There are MANY more likely candidates. If a Cyberclysm is a candidate at all, it is definitely a fair distance down the list, right along side the earth spontaneously exploding.
>End Part One.
>Part Two: How to stave off the Coming Cyberclysm, to find some rational choice besides the backwards-looking Luddites and the Gee-Whiz Techno-Heads who dominate discussions about technology? Only the Gods can help, and I might have found one who will (one of the Fates, as it happens), with the help of AI computing advances and intuitive software.
How to survive the coming Cyberclysm? To find a rational position between the alarmists and the utopians? Salvation may come from the menace itself.
*Okay, assuming that a "Cyberclysm" is a viable possibility...
>Whatever mischief technology creates, technology can undo. The tools of our redemption - and the means of chasing off the ever-circling Luddites -- are right under our noses. Perhaps the great website of the 21st century - or even the last half of this year -- won't sell stocks or auction off goodies. It'll be an Intervention Program, something between a SuperSearch Engine and Information Foraging Site.
*Hmm, like slashdot?
>We need Websites that really understand us, protect us and go to bat for us. I'd call my personal version Clotho, after one of the lesser gods of Greek mythology. The ancient Greeks are definitely the place to turn for protection against the Cyberclysm. Their poets and playwrights wrote all the time about humanity's tragic inclination to fiddle with the world and screw it up at the same time. Clotho was one of the Fates, gods given the subtle but awesome power to decide a person's destiny. Clotho (the other two are Lachesis the measurer, and Atropos the shearer) is the spinner, who spins the threads of life. Thunderbolt-throwers like Zeus are useless to invoke in this context, too blustery and ill-tempered. Only the Fates have the perspective required, the range of skills. They're used to sorting through complex choices. They assign men and women to lives of good and evil. They decide the length the length of human's lives. The Fates are discreet, largely unknown, and it's never been precisely clear how far their power extends. What is known is that even the most powerful of the other Gods won't mess with them. I imagine a Clotho program as an intermediary, standing between me, Gee Whiz Computing and technology, not so much to keep them away as to manage how much I have to deal with.
*KATZ IS POSTING ON ONE!!! They exist all over the net, and they do not just deal with technology. Name a division of knowledge, and you can find an "intermediary" specific to it.
>Intervention Software isn't a fantasy. It's a practical possibility with the advent of intuitive software technology and AI computing advances. Futurists from Freeman Dyson to Ray Kurzweill predict computers will be making rational, human-like decisions in a few years. We could put them to work for us.
*Isn't that exactly what Katz is scared of? Isn't a machine that makes our decisions for us FAR more heinous than just producing gadgets we can CHOOSE or not CHOOSE to buy?
>The notion that a computing program could intervene in this way - come between us and the Cyberclysm -- and bring some sanity and coherence to an individual's experience of runaway technology and Ubiquitous Computing is hardly far-fetched.
*If this machine is "making rational, human-like decisions" for us, isn't that just one step closer to this "dream machine" of which Arthur C. Clarke warned us? Sounds like a voluntary step toward this "Cyberclysm."
>I don't want Clotho.org to turn back the clock, just to regulate the pace of change, leave me the dignity of autonomy, and do me the courtesy of letting me check my own refrigerator for milk instead of letting a digitalized refrigerator do it.
*How autonomous is an individual if he or she is not making their own decisions? In order for an individual to be autonomous, the individual must act on his her own choices, not someone (or something) else's choices. We are more autonomous now, having the ability to choose to buy that over-featured refridgerator than we would be if we had something choose for us whether or not it that refridgerator is worth buying.
>In place of computer-equipped health-monitoring toilets, I'd just as soon retain the right to decide when and if I go to the doctor to have my bodily fluids chemically analyzed. I'd rather see technology deployed in some of the wondrous ways of the Net and Web in recent years --- the open sourcing of computing and the liberation of information, the use of supercomputing to take on social ills from cancer to Ozone, the growth of personal communications and community-building.
*That is our choice now, and it probably always will be, no matter how many gadgets are on the market. One doesn't need a new web page making those decisions for you to preserve autonomy; that would be diametrically opposed to whole concept of autonomy.
>But we need help. This is, after all the, the job of the Fates -- to manage coherently.
*Cute, but wrong.
>Clotho.org could stand between us and Ubiquitous Computing, growling back the Microsofts, governments, media - hypemongers and arrogant hordes of programmers, gadgetmakers and marketers. Unlike information-sorting programs and sites - there are dozens - Clotho wouldn't present us with fewer choices, but making tough choices for us. She would function as our Big Sister when it comes to technology, keeping the predators away, occupying the space between humans and the new technologies scaring the hell out of them.
*Katz's reference to Orson Wells' novel, 1984, is more fitting than he may realize. I don't know if Katz has read it or not, but 1984 hypothesizes about an entity that limits our choices, no, makes our choices for us. In the face of denial of choice, we are stripped of the ability to apply that which is uniquely human, namely rational thought. By denying us the choice of buying that stock-quoting cell phone, that all-encompassing web page assumes that we don't have the capability to make a decision one way or another using reason, i.e. this gadget would not help me so I won't buy it, or this gadget might be worth the price, so i WILL buy it. Oh, and one more thing. Technologies don't have to "scare the hell" out of people. That is simply fear of the "new and different." Outmoded concepts like racism and sexism have sprung from that source, and we fight those. Why not fight technophobia as well?
>A vigilant Clotho would design her site along the sancrosanct principles spelled out in O'Reilly's landmark guide, "Information Architecture for the World Wide Web," a book Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville. It should be the Web designer's Bible, if it isn't already, since it challenges us to put users, not makers, foremost when we think of the Web and the Net. A Clotho site would use logic and search engine technology to brutally edit the Web, weeding out the excesses of the Cyberclysm. She'd ask hard questions. Do we need refrigerators with computer chips that will alert the local supermarket when we're out of milk? She would scare off, or at least curb, some of the worst Cyberclysm offenders, the microelectronics industry.
*The reason I attack this article is that it proposes an entity of exactly this magnitude. An entity that could curb innovation to that extent is, in my opinion, exactly the "Big Sister" we should actively fight against. In response to the proposed METHOD of sifting, this completely contradicts Katz's earlier arguments. Couldn't humans do the sifting? Why all the "unnecessary" gadgetry and programming? Why not have a panel of humans decide what we can and cannot choose from? Because then it would be no different than having the government control our technology, our market, and, more importantly, our non-ethical choices (meaning those choices not directly related to law and ethics).
>Is this really possible? In his recent essay in Netfuture No. 94...Winner suggests that humanity's needs for the coming century be rated on a 1 to 10 scale. Do we need a Palm VII, or should we stop at the Palm IV? Do we need cellphones to access sports scores on the Web as we drive home from work, or can we wait a half-hour till we get home? Clotho would ask. If not, she'd vaporize the thing, or failing that rate it 1.5. She'd keep it away from us. Perhaps she could draw from Slashdot's amazing and elaborate discussion moderating systems (where offensive speech isn't banned but smothered in cool software programs), and meta-moderate technology for us.
*Now he's talking. But do we really need to create this cyber-entity when we already have many, many, many pages out in cyberspace that do these things for us and still leave us with choice? Maybe funding more and better review services would be more effective, meaning that one could go online and find multiple of reviews for almost any product. Or do we know have that now? It could be argued that we do, but I would always advocate more, better consumer resources.
>We might program her to screen out anything under a 4. We'd never get the chance to buy it, or maybe even know it was out there. The Cyberclysm would recede, at least for those of us in her care.
*Sigh. Chosen ignorance. Sad.
>Clotho would definitely play God (which is okay, since she is one.) We'd be presented with a handful of news stories each morning - the most significant, the most useful, the most entertaining, based on her own vision and on recognition software that comes to understand our needs, tastes and wishes. She'd rate our need for information in general on the same scale. No story, scandal, press conference, announcement or debate under a 4.0 would get by. If she'd been around, most of us might blessedly never have learned the names of William Bennett, Monica Lewinsky, Kenneth Starr, or Linda Tripp. As far as I'm concerned, Clotho could screen out virtually every debate on every Washington talk show and the country's civic life would be improved a thousand times overnight. This means I'd almost never heard anything from Washington, a technological boon to humanity if there ever was one. Clotho.org would also fend off much of the techno-news streaming toward us from C/Net and Wired News, and sift for technology information that we actually wanted to know. She could store information we might need to know for a later time.
*It sounds like Katz already does his own sifting. It sounds like he "tunes out." By his logic, Clotho would be another one of those "unnecessary" appliances. Would it really save time? Or would it be so complicated that it could be considered one of those "advances we might not need or understand." I am actually in favor of a webpage that could tailor our news and information to our PERSONAL needs and desires. That would be a worthy "gadget."
>She'd take revenge on behalf of the tens of millions of people forced to buy things they don't want or things they can't use, made anxious by poor instructions and buggy programs, coerced into hours and days of stressful struggles to reach people who won't take any responsibility for the things they've made and sold, who won't help people figure out how stuff works.
*A) No one is forced to buy these things. You can get a coffee maker that works simply by turning it on at Walmart for $10 dollars (i own one--i can't afford the "better" ones). You can also get a combination espresso-capaccino-ice cream maker that speaks out loud in 5 languages. That is your CHOICE. B)Hopefully, poorly made and poorly supported products (ahem, microsoft) will be crushed under the pressure of natural market influence. For the most part, this does happen. It remains to be seen what will happen in the case of some specific software companies and chip manufacturers.
>Clotho could be the Goddess of Unintended Consequences, forcing us to consider the implications of the things we bring into the world. Maybe she'd turn the CEO's of the most arroganant companies over to Hades (flamers, beware) for some roasting and agonies.
*Hmm, kind of like slashdot and other pages like it?
>Clotho would be tough minded, as befits a Spinner. She would ask questions about technology and information before stuff could get past her and reach innocents like me:
l. Is this information necessary? Do we need to know it? Does it advance knowledge, inform or entertain us? Or does it tell us something we already know, provide a service when we can easily do ourselves, replicate what already exists?
2. Do we need this new product? Does it have unintended consequences? Will it be almost instantly out-of-date?
4. Will the people who offer this product support it? Will help be available at all times?
5. Are we leaving human beings enough time, peace, and opportunity for at least some spiritual dimension in their lives? Or are we labor-saving and information-providing them to distraction?
*Sounds again like pages we already have, but by all means, go create it.
>Clotho could slow the pace of Ubiquitous or Gee -Whiz Computing, ruling that even in the Digital Age, perhaps we can simply turn our coffeemakers on when we wake up instead of programming them.
*We can all do that now.
She'd put a quick, merciful end to health-checking toilets. She'd created the mythical middle ground, missing when it comes to technology, a place where we grow, learn, and move forward in a reasoned, noncoerable, way. Such a kingdom would be a radical departure from the insane Technoville in which we now increasingly dwell.
*And it would be truly a trip down the road to stagnation, where ideas are moderated and choices are made for us. I object to clotho only because of its proposed magnitude. Everyone has the right to choose not to think, but they only have that right because they are given the option of choosing.
>Even now, nobody can really keep up, and only a few can even fake it. Everyone is frantic, stressed, tethered, broke or worn out trying to manage. We are bombarded by inventions and advances we might not need or understand, that move more quickly and do more things than we want, that we can barely grasp, let alone service or repair.
*While I would wholeheartedly agree with the fact that the average American's life's complexities have most decidedly multiplied exponentially since the time of the subsistance farmer, it is foolhardy to assume that "keeping up" would be ANYONE's goal. With the advent of efficient communications, humans have adapted and developed an ability that would have been of little use in previous civilizations. This ability is known in modern vernacular as "tuning out." If we are not interested in something, or we think it is superfluous, we ignore it. I doubt that humans feel much more intimidated by the abundance and prevalence of technology than they would feel in the face of any other mountain of information with which they have little experience, be it philosophy, math, or any other discipline.
>Author James Gleick in "Faster" complains that technology is forcing everything to move too quickly. In his new collection of essays, Arthur C. Clarke writes "I have seen the future and it doesn't work."
*Unfortunately, I've not read either work, so I can't comment.
>The typical twenty-first-century person's day, he predicts, will include: "Skimming five hundred channel program listings, two hours; viewing television programs selected, four hours; catching up on recorded programs, six hours; exploring the hyperweb, six hours; and adventuring in artificial reality, four hours." He didn't even mention checking e-mail, answering fax-spewing and stock-listing cellphones, or responding to pagers and beepers.
>This is, of course, satire; and, as satire, it is completely, utterly absurd. Most of what is mentioned deals with communication. It might be important to remember that it is only through these "complicated" means of communication which were undoubtedly considered to be "advances we might not need or understand" that KATZ's opportunity to write to us exists.
>Neo-Luddite Kirkpatrick Sale goes further, warning in his books that technology is destroying the world. He wants us to smash our computers to save the planet.
*A) This radical action is not very different than burning books, if treated a certain way. If one were to really examine the purpose of computers, one would begin to see that their purpose centers around the facilitation of sharing and storing of information, in one form or another. From playing games to email, from desktop publishing to networking, from accounting and database programs to web surfing, etc. these are all related in one way or another to the proliferation of information. That information may not be useful or important to everyone, but it must be important to somebody or IT WOULDN'T EXIST IN THE FIRST PLACE.
B)"Saving the planet" sounds grand and many people spout that phrase as their intention, but it is meaningless. I can bet that Sale doesn't really care about the planet, not in abstract he doesn't. He only wants to see planet and, more to the point, civilization conform to the model HE deems best. How noble.
>In his apocalyptic new dirge "Staring Into Chaos," author Bruce Brander proclaims that western civilization itself is coming to an end.
*I would hope so. The time for a WORLD civilization is nye. The establishment of worldwide communications help to make that finally possible.
>The term Ubiquitous Computing is technological historian Langdon Winner's, who in Netfuture... warns that society is drowning in a wave of absurd and unnecessary appliances and electronics, continuously and wastefully cranked out by some of the best minds alive.
*Of course these items are unnecessary. So is your car. So is the furnace in your house. We could survive without these just as many people survived without them before they were invented, and just as many people still do today. Absurd? Well, that depends on what you define as absurd technology. Many people (often of older generations) would argue that they got along perfectly well with their businesses before computers, and they do not understand why we "need" them now. It is all about efficiency. Are computers more efficient? I say yes, although like any tool, it takes time to learn how to use them, they can break down, and not all computers are equal. The same applies to other "appliances and electronics." Not all these tools are as useful as one would like, but hey, were the first cars all that useful? That is what innovation is all about: you might not get it perfect the first time, you might not have even come up with a useful invention, and maybe no one will want it. If it is absurd, then it won't sell (not much anyway). Finally, "wastefully?" We live in a society where you can buy silly string, edible underwear, pez dispensors, and beanie babies; and he is just NOW complaining about wastefulness?
>Winner, a critic of the Wired-era hype about the Internet and networked computing, exults in what he perceives as a growing realization that Ubiquitous Computing isn't making life simpler or better, but harder, more expensive and chaotic:
*One might say that about all technology. Cars are a prime example. What American hasn't complained about car troubles? If he wants to live in a cave and walk everywhere (because horses would be just as pesky, if not more) then that is his choice. It might not be a rational choice, but it is his freedom nonetheless (Ted Kazinsky anybody?).
>"Simplify. Save time. Reduce effort. Liberate yourself from toil. This has been the continuing siren song of consumer technology through the twentieth century. Unfortunately, in its own terms, the dream is always self-defeating. As people add more and more time-saving, labor-saving equipment to their homes, their lives do not become simpler and easier. Instead their days become even more complicated, demanding and rushed."
*Why are our lives more demanding, rushed? Could it be that we have the opportunity to do more with our lives than ever before. I can guarantee that the subsistance farmer was not rushed like the average businessman. As we do more, we begin to want to do more than that. We realize that the possibilities endless, and we want to have those stock quotes a button away, because information has become key. The gradual migration of the focus of our lives away from the muscular to the cerebral is to be considered an evolutionary step forward, not a fatal mistake. As for our lives being more demanding I have to points. A) We make that choice. As our education increases, the demands we place on ourselves increase too. There are real reasons why time saving devices sell. B) Are our lives more demanding than the subsistence farmer? Or maybe just different. I don't have to go plow a field all day and pray that the weather is right so i can feed my family. This is made possible by people who decided there had to be a better way to do something, and so they invented an "unnecessary" device.
>A disclaimer here : I don't share Winner's summary view of computing. For me, appliances, hardware and software are the least interesting aspects of technology. For me, the siren song would be: Speak and Think Freely. Connect. Learn, and Share What You Learn. Then learn and share more. Grow. For me, this promise has been fulfilled, a thousand times over.
*If Katz don't agree with Winner's view, why is Katz using it using it in this article? If it does not illustrate what katz is trying to say, then why include it at all?
>But Winner, one of the sharpest thinkers about technology in American society, does have a point. We are making a lot more things than we demonstrably need. We give far more thought to making and marketing them than we do to whether they are truly useful. TV's and sound systems, watches that monitor global time zones, multi-function phones - keep adding features daily, many of them of doubtful necessity to most of the people who buy them. One ad blanketing commercial TV touts new wireless phone technology that will allow people to get their e-mail, weather and sports scores instantly from anywhere. Does anybody really need to be that wired?
*I refer to my argument on "necessary." Also, Katz is really complaining about the whole theory of capitalism with the advent of advertising. This is not specific to technology. Breakfast cereals, anyone?
>Even the most ardent geeks complain that they can never be out of touch, never have time to think, never completely catch up. As the world is able to reach us more easily, it expects us to be always available and more or less instantly responsive. This rushes us and our responses. It makes us edgy, grumpy, impulsive. Technology becomes a means of harassing and pressuring us instead of improving our lives. The genuine blessings of technology - information, opportunity, community, the portability of work - get overlooked in all the gadgetry.
*Again, every one of the technologies Katz attribute to providing "informatino, opportunity," etc., were considered "gadgetry" when they were first introduced. As for the never having time to think, etc., this is why we can "tune out." Our environment has changed, and we are adapting, just like any other organism. As we and the world get more in touch, it reaffirms that we are ceasing to be completely solitary individuals, but instead members of a functioning civilization. Finally, in the words of George Carlin, "Did ya know there are two knobs on a radio, minister? One of them turns it off...AND THE OTHER ONE CHANGES THE STATION!!!"
>All labor-saving devices don't necessarily improve the quality of life. Autonomous human beings can - and maybe should - take responsibility for the smaller details of life. After all, these labor saving devices require considerable labor: they need installation, adjustment, repairs and replacement - often at considerable time, cost and annoyance. There are enormous ecological consequences as well, to making so much plastic and metal, so many wires and chips.
*Again, innovation is not always perfect. Almost never, in fact. It is a judgement we are required to make; is the effort it takes to use this device more than the effort required to do the task myself without the device. As for the ecological consequences, why is plastic so hateful? We are not creating anything, really. We are simply shuffling around different configurations of atoms, and it is only a matter of time before we learn how to unshuffle them effectively. Recycling aluminum cans is only the tip of the iceburg concerning what we will be able to do in the future.
>Newsweek enthused last week, in a gee-whiz cover story about how the Internet is changing our lives, that tomorrow's automatic coffee maker will have access to our online schedule so it can automatically withhold the brew if we're out of town. This is by -now - instantly-recognizable media language of Technohype, computing and technology wrongly presented as a barrage of gizmos with chips that do things we can just as (or more) easily do for ourselves.
*An internet-ready coffee maker is probably just as absurd as it sounds. Consequently, it probably won't catch on. That is how innovation works. Practical technology is just that: gizmos, chips, etc.. If we find that doing it ourselves works better, then that determines the success of the technology. And practical technology is what we are concerned with. If a theoretical technology (a.k.a. a concept with technological applications) never makes it into practice, then it is useless for anything other than brain aerobics.
>But if the laws governing technology are unpredictable, those governing capitalism are unwavering: What is made must be sold and, therefore, hyped.
*I agree. Capitalism is anything BUT rational. Advertising is all about creating need, or at least the semblance of it. But that is a deeper evil that what we are discussing here.
>Such overheated predictions don't evoke the future so much as the past. Remember Walt Disney's Tomorrowland with its notions of intergalactic travel, hover cars, people movers and other things that still don't exist? We may be closer to genetically engineering perfect humans, or even curing cancer, but we still can't cure the cold or come up with a practical battery-powered car, or make computers that don't drive the people using them nuts.
*Well, without these outlandish ideas, these theoretical technologies, then we would never have had practical technologies like the satellite (which, interestingly enough, Arthur C. Clark invented in the 1940's). Also, as for the curing the common cold and battery cars, Katz is hitting on a major flaw in capitalism. There is absolutely NO money in cures. Not comparatively. The multi-billion dollar industries of cold medicine and gasoline would collapse if we no longer needed their products. Consequently, a good investment for a gasoline company would be to buy off those well-meaning alternative energy source innovators. Sad.
>Alas -- according to almost every business or marketing projection, R&D labs will usher in the Millenium by making the creation and sales of info-gadgets and appliances an even greater preoccupation of the next century.
*Probably true, only I don't shudder at the prospect. I have owned for 8 years one model or another of a casio watch that stores my phone numbers. I love it. Some might consider that superfluous. I have DECIDED that it is extremely useful and would rather have it than not. It is not NECESSARY, but it is so useful that i love it.
>On the East Coast (where I live), in the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd, one little-noticed consequence of the storm was that power interruption rendered cordless telephones useless even if the phone lines were functioning. Moreover, the flooding of an AT&T installation in New Jersey knocked out hundreds of thousands of cellphones. For a few days, the only phones that worked were the Lo-tech sort, the non-electronic, non-digital kind that plugged into the wall jack, receivers attached to the base with curly cords. That's as apt a metaphor for the coming Cyberclysm as any. Perhaps the survivors will be the people with the simplest, not the most sophisticated, machines.
*This is true of all technology. If suddenly there was no gasoline and no gasoline alternative, then those who only ride bikes (if that is not to hi-tech for them) and ride horses would be the only ones who could effectively ambulated larger distances. Does this make them superior?
>Whose responsibility is all this? Nobody's, of course. Technology has a mind, life and direction all of its own. It's inherently uncontrollable, even if anybody was up to trying.
*The same could be said of amassed human knowledge. People have tried. They burn books and prohibit the theory evolution from being taught in schools.
>But some of the fault lies in the way our institutions - education, politics, media - deal with technology. We're trapped between two useless states - alarm and euphoria. Either we are railing about pornography, disconnection, and addiction or we are banging the drums for Gee-Whiz Computing that exists much more for its own sake than for our benefit. Like cell phones that receive faxes in taxicabs or 21st century toilets that will monitor the family's health through chemical sampling of fecal matter, or mirrors over bathroom sinks that flash the day's headlines, so nobody in the family has to wait until they get downstairs to get the news, if their wireless phone hasn't already alerted them.
*Humans fear change and at the same time embrace it. All progress brings with it negative consequences. It is how we deal with those negative consequences (assuming that they are negative and not just so unfamiliar that they invoke fear) that determines the success of a civilization.
>Perhaps the idea that there are people who keep up with all this stuff is in itself a technological myth.
*Could anyone say that they know everything there is to know about mathematics? Philosophy? Technology is no different.
>Clarke warns that we're headed for a Cyberclysm (he and others have used the word), a catastrophic collision between computers, technology and humanity. We won't be consumed by evil aliens or runaway AI machines, as sci-fi futurists have long predicted. Instead, we'll conquer ourselves with too much information about too many things and too many appliances performing too many services.
*Interesting prediction. We will see. For my part, I think that it will be a self righting system. When we get too much information, we "tune out." When the gadgets aren't worth it, we don't buy them.
>Clarke has written often of the pitfalls of the Dream Machine, the seductive idea that gadgets will run the world and monitor the most intimate details of our lives while we are free to enjoy ourselves.
*Well, that would be an end of progress, now wouldn't it? If all we did was pursue what fills our appetites for pleasure, we would then cease to find them pleasurable. For an activity to be truely worthwhile, it must be an end in and of itself. If the activity is merely a means to some other end, then it won't be truly pleasurable. If one's job is simply a method of getting money so that one can enjoy something else, then the job won't be pleasurable, will it? If pleasure for someone consists only of entertainment, sex, food, drink, etc., then the dream machine society would work for that person. I postulate that the dream machine society could never come into being simply because humans would not be content to do nothing. The american dream of making money so one can enjoy oneself is false. This has been proven over and over again by rich, unhappy people. Devoting oneself to seeking pleasure does NOT make one happy, so we humans would never REALLY want the "dream machine." Ask Aristotle.
>"There have been many science fiction stories," writes Clarke, "about frantic human attempts to unplug disobedient computers. The real future might involve exactly the opposite scenario. The computers may unplug us." And, he adds: "it would serve us right."
*Read Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot." The model for his robots is more likely how it would come to be.
>That leaves most of us holding the bag, confronted with two noxious choices: to fall back with the hare-brained Luddites who want to return to the sylvan forests, or to follow the Techno-Utopians on their runaway CyberBinge.
*I argue that the Cyberbinge is not so heinous as Katz makes it out to be. Of course there has to be moderation, but I propose that that will come about naturally, and that it is not something to be all that alarmed about. I also find it hard to believe that digital wristwatches and cordless phones with added features will be the downfall of this civilization. There are MANY more likely candidates. If a Cyberclysm is a candidate at all, it is definitely a fair distance down the list, right along side the earth spontaneously exploding.
>End Part One.
>Part Two: How to stave off the Coming Cyberclysm, to find some rational choice besides the backwards-looking Luddites and the Gee-Whiz Techno-Heads who dominate discussions about technology? Only the Gods can help, and I might have found one who will (one of the Fates, as it happens), with the help of AI computing advances and intuitive software.
How to survive the coming Cyberclysm? To find a rational position between the alarmists and the utopians? Salvation may come from the menace itself.
*Okay, assuming that a "Cyberclysm" is a viable possibility...
>Whatever mischief technology creates, technology can undo. The tools of our redemption - and the means of chasing off the ever-circling Luddites -- are right under our noses. Perhaps the great website of the 21st century - or even the last half of this year -- won't sell stocks or auction off goodies. It'll be an Intervention Program, something between a SuperSearch Engine and Information Foraging Site.
*Hmm, like slashdot?
>We need Websites that really understand us, protect us and go to bat for us. I'd call my personal version Clotho, after one of the lesser gods of Greek mythology. The ancient Greeks are definitely the place to turn for protection against the Cyberclysm. Their poets and playwrights wrote all the time about humanity's tragic inclination to fiddle with the world and screw it up at the same time. Clotho was one of the Fates, gods given the subtle but awesome power to decide a person's destiny. Clotho (the other two are Lachesis the measurer, and Atropos the shearer) is the spinner, who spins the threads of life. Thunderbolt-throwers like Zeus are useless to invoke in this context, too blustery and ill-tempered. Only the Fates have the perspective required, the range of skills. They're used to sorting through complex choices. They assign men and women to lives of good and evil. They decide the length the length of human's lives. The Fates are discreet, largely unknown, and it's never been precisely clear how far their power extends. What is known is that even the most powerful of the other Gods won't mess with them. I imagine a Clotho program as an intermediary, standing between me, Gee Whiz Computing and technology, not so much to keep them away as to manage how much I have to deal with.
*KATZ IS POSTING ON ONE!!! They exist all over the net, and they do not just deal with technology. Name a division of knowledge, and you can find an "intermediary" specific to it.
>Intervention Software isn't a fantasy. It's a practical possibility with the advent of intuitive software technology and AI computing advances. Futurists from Freeman Dyson to Ray Kurzweill predict computers will be making rational, human-like decisions in a few years. We could put them to work for us.
*Isn't that exactly what Katz is scared of? Isn't a machine that makes our decisions for us FAR more heinous than just producing gadgets we can CHOOSE or not CHOOSE to buy?
>The notion that a computing program could intervene in this way - come between us and the Cyberclysm -- and bring some sanity and coherence to an individual's experience of runaway technology and Ubiquitous Computing is hardly far-fetched.
*If this machine is "making rational, human-like decisions" for us, isn't that just one step closer to this "dream machine" of which Arthur C. Clarke warned us? Sounds like a voluntary step toward this "Cyberclysm."
>I don't want Clotho.org to turn back the clock, just to regulate the pace of change, leave me the dignity of autonomy, and do me the courtesy of letting me check my own refrigerator for milk instead of letting a digitalized refrigerator do it.
*How autonomous is an individual if he or she is not making their own decisions? In order for an individual to be autonomous, the individual must act on his her own choices, not someone (or something) else's choices. We are more autonomous now, having the ability to choose to buy that over-featured refridgerator than we would be if we had something choose for us whether or not it that refridgerator is worth buying.
>In place of computer-equipped health-monitoring toilets, I'd just as soon retain the right to decide when and if I go to the doctor to have my bodily fluids chemically analyzed. I'd rather see technology deployed in some of the wondrous ways of the Net and Web in recent years --- the open sourcing of computing and the liberation of information, the use of supercomputing to take on social ills from cancer to Ozone, the growth of personal communications and community-building.
*That is our choice now, and it probably always will be, no matter how many gadgets are on the market. One doesn't need a new web page making those decisions for you to preserve autonomy; that would be diametrically opposed to whole concept of autonomy.
>But we need help. This is, after all the, the job of the Fates -- to manage coherently.
*Cute, but wrong.
>Clotho.org could stand between us and Ubiquitous Computing, growling back the Microsofts, governments, media - hypemongers and arrogant hordes of programmers, gadgetmakers and marketers. Unlike information-sorting programs and sites - there are dozens - Clotho wouldn't present us with fewer choices, but making tough choices for us. She would function as our Big Sister when it comes to technology, keeping the predators away, occupying the space between humans and the new technologies scaring the hell out of them.
*Katz's reference to Orson Wells' novel, 1984, is more fitting than he may realize. I don't know if Katz has read it or not, but 1984 hypothesizes about an entity that limits our choices, no, makes our choices for us. In the face of denial of choice, we are stripped of the ability to apply that which is uniquely human, namely rational thought. By denying us the choice of buying that stock-quoting cell phone, that all-encompassing web page assumes that we don't have the capability to make a decision one way or another using reason, i.e. this gadget would not help me so I won't buy it, or this gadget might be worth the price, so i WILL buy it. Oh, and one more thing. Technologies don't have to "scare the hell" out of people. That is simply fear of the "new and different." Outmoded concepts like racism and sexism have sprung from that source, and we fight those. Why not fight technophobia as well?
>A vigilant Clotho would design her site along the sancrosanct principles spelled out in O'Reilly's landmark guide, "Information Architecture for the World Wide Web," a book Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville. It should be the Web designer's Bible, if it isn't already, since it challenges us to put users, not makers, foremost when we think of the Web and the Net. A Clotho site would use logic and search engine technology to brutally edit the Web, weeding out the excesses of the Cyberclysm. She'd ask hard questions. Do we need refrigerators with computer chips that will alert the local supermarket when we're out of milk? She would scare off, or at least curb, some of the worst Cyberclysm offenders, the microelectronics industry.
*The reason I attack this article is that it proposes an entity of exactly this magnitude. An entity that could curb innovation to that extent is, in my opinion, exactly the "Big Sister" we should actively fight against. In response to the proposed METHOD of sifting, this completely contradicts Katz's earlier arguments. Couldn't humans do the sifting? Why all the "unnecessary" gadgetry and programming? Why not have a panel of humans decide what we can and cannot choose from? Because then it would be no different than having the government control our technology, our market, and, more importantly, our non-ethical choices (meaning those choices not directly related to law and ethics).
>Is this really possible? In his recent essay in Netfuture No. 94...Winner suggests that humanity's needs for the coming century be rated on a 1 to 10 scale. Do we need a Palm VII, or should we stop at the Palm IV? Do we need cellphones to access sports scores on the Web as we drive home from work, or can we wait a half-hour till we get home? Clotho would ask. If not, she'd vaporize the thing, or failing that rate it 1.5. She'd keep it away from us. Perhaps she could draw from Slashdot's amazing and elaborate discussion moderating systems (where offensive speech isn't banned but smothered in cool software programs), and meta-moderate technology for us.
*Now he's talking. But do we really need to create this cyber-entity when we already have many, many, many pages out in cyberspace that do these things for us and still leave us with choice? Maybe funding more and better review services would be more effective, meaning that one could go online and find multiple of reviews for almost any product. Or do we know have that now? It could be argued that we do, but I would always advocate more, better consumer resources.
>We might program her to screen out anything under a 4. We'd never get the chance to buy it, or maybe even know it was out there. The Cyberclysm would recede, at least for those of us in her care.
*Sigh. Chosen ignorance. Sad.
>Clotho would definitely play God (which is okay, since she is one.) We'd be presented with a handful of news stories each morning - the most significant, the most useful, the most entertaining, based on her own vision and on recognition software that comes to understand our needs, tastes and wishes. She'd rate our need for information in general on the same scale. No story, scandal, press conference, announcement or debate under a 4.0 would get by. If she'd been around, most of us might blessedly never have learned the names of William Bennett, Monica Lewinsky, Kenneth Starr, or Linda Tripp. As far as I'm concerned, Clotho could screen out virtually every debate on every Washington talk show and the country's civic life would be improved a thousand times overnight. This means I'd almost never heard anything from Washington, a technological boon to humanity if there ever was one. Clotho.org would also fend off much of the techno-news streaming toward us from C/Net and Wired News, and sift for technology information that we actually wanted to know. She could store information we might need to know for a later time.
*It sounds like Katz already does his own sifting. It sounds like he "tunes out." By his logic, Clotho would be another one of those "unnecessary" appliances. Would it really save time? Or would it be so complicated that it could be considered one of those "advances we might not need or understand." I am actually in favor of a webpage that could tailor our news and information to our PERSONAL needs and desires. That would be a worthy "gadget."
>She'd take revenge on behalf of the tens of millions of people forced to buy things they don't want or things they can't use, made anxious by poor instructions and buggy programs, coerced into hours and days of stressful struggles to reach people who won't take any responsibility for the things they've made and sold, who won't help people figure out how stuff works.
*A) No one is forced to buy these things. You can get a coffee maker that works simply by turning it on at Walmart for $10 dollars (i own one--i can't afford the "better" ones). You can also get a combination espresso-capaccino-ice cream maker that speaks out loud in 5 languages. That is your CHOICE. B)Hopefully, poorly made and poorly supported products (ahem, microsoft) will be crushed under the pressure of natural market influence. For the most part, this does happen. It remains to be seen what will happen in the case of some specific software companies and chip manufacturers.
>Clotho could be the Goddess of Unintended Consequences, forcing us to consider the implications of the things we bring into the world. Maybe she'd turn the CEO's of the most arroganant companies over to Hades (flamers, beware) for some roasting and agonies.
*Hmm, kind of like slashdot and other pages like it?
>Clotho would be tough minded, as befits a Spinner. She would ask questions about technology and information before stuff could get past her and reach innocents like me:
l. Is this information necessary? Do we need to know it? Does it advance knowledge, inform or entertain us? Or does it tell us something we already know, provide a service when we can easily do ourselves, replicate what already exists?
2. Do we need this new product? Does it have unintended consequences? Will it be almost instantly out-of-date?
4. Will the people who offer this product support it? Will help be available at all times?
5. Are we leaving human beings enough time, peace, and opportunity for at least some spiritual dimension in their lives? Or are we labor-saving and information-providing them to distraction?
*Sounds again like pages we already have, but by all means, go create it.
>Clotho could slow the pace of Ubiquitous or Gee -Whiz Computing, ruling that even in the Digital Age, perhaps we can simply turn our coffeemakers on when we wake up instead of programming them.
*We can all do that now.
She'd put a quick, merciful end to health-checking toilets. She'd created the mythical middle ground, missing when it comes to technology, a place where we grow, learn, and move forward in a reasoned, noncoerable, way. Such a kingdom would be a radical departure from the insane Technoville in which we now increasingly dwell.
*And it would be truly a trip down the road to stagnation, where ideas are moderated and choices are made for us. I object to clotho only because of its proposed magnitude. Everyone has the right to choose not to think, but they only have that right because they are given the option of choosing.
