The American Spectator : I, Technophobe

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I, Technophobe

By Christopher Orlet on 5.26.11 @ 6:04AM

Standing athwart technology and yelling "enough already."

Because the apocalypse stubbornly failed to arrive Saturday evening, I had to report for training first thing Monday morning. It wasn't just me; all employees were to be trained to use the new content management system. The new system promised to make the old system look like something discovered in a Dead Sea cave.

Reluctantly, I reported for duty. I say reluctantly, because in bygone days a man of my years was not expected to learn new things. He was believed to know everything there is to know about his job. He was seen as the embodiment of institutional wisdom. Young apprentices squatted eagerly at his feet in hopes of hearing his sage advice and learning the secrets of the trade. The idea of some hotshot college boy coming in and teaching the old dog a new trick was unthinkable.

But today's employers know the score. Anyone over 45 is considered an ancient ruin, at least when it comes to new technology. Employers know we are less amiable to acquiring technical skills, and, like an old dog, we just want to curl up on a rug and be left alone, which is what you'll do if you know what's good for you.

A few years ago, I was given the gift of an iPod. For a brief moment I was intrigued. However, being a typical guy, I naturally refused to read the instruction, so I never did learn to operate the device correctly. To this day it remains buried in my desk drawer under some old utility bills, a bottle of Jim Beam and my revolver. Who needs it? I am of the generation that still listens to record albums in their entirety, like music was meant to be listened to. I don't have the time or the inclination to spend hours downloading individual songs from iTunes. What am I, in high school?

As for the iPad, I'm still trying to figure out what that is, and whether I need one. Meanwhile my coworkers seem glued to their iPhones and can't imagine how they got by without one, as if it were a pacemaker or an oxygen tank.

Increasingly, I see evidence of what us techno-cynics have been hinting since the advent of the cell phone: that all this new technology is laying waste to the quality of our lives. Or so says Ad Age:

When we asked how their lives had changed over the past decade, "infused with technology" was the most widely cited answer. But equally telling are the phrases coming next on the list -- "more complicated," "more stressful" and "focused on finding ways to do more with less." In contrast, fewer than half said their lives had become "more fun" or "easier."

Apparently, otherwise rational adults believe the only way to make our lives "more fun" and "easier" is to carry around 24/7 a portable computer/telephone/mailbox/DVD player/Wii/television set. And we are surprised that life has become more complicated and stressful.

WHEN I TOOK MY first job in newspapers, I was given a Smith Corona electric typewriter (pretty fancy for its day), a stack of paper and a (touch tone) telephone, and told to get to work. Not only did we manage to put out a paper every day, but the entire industry had never been healthier.

The paper employed 22 people. A year later, Macintosh computers were introduced into the newsroom. Today, the paper is hemorrhaging money and the staff has dwindled to a skeleton crew of six.

I tried desperately to stay abreast of the latest technology. I welcomed the arrival of the PC, the Internet, the new software programs that were supposed to make work easier and workers more efficient.

But somewhere along the information superhighway I got passed by.

Before long bloggers were talking about stuff that sounded completely foreign to me. It was like I'd missed a year of school. Every week some techie was hyping an important new gadget or upgrade, but for all I grasped he may as well have been singing in Mandarin Chinese.

I've gone about as far as I am willing to go with new technology. In a few years I will be a half century old. There comes a time when even the most die-hard Popular Science subscriber has to say: enough is enough.

If I'm on anybody's gift list, do me a special favor and spare me the latest gizmo. A good old-fashioned book will do nicely.

By the way, anybody want to buy a barely used iPod?

About the Author

Christopher Orlet writes every Thursday from St. Louis.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (85) | Leave a comment

Kitty| 5.26.11 @ 7:05AM

I grew up in a village where there was no Ma Bell, just the Dimmock Hollow Telephone Company. The switchboard operator worked out of her living room in the home across the street from us. Our phone didn't even have a rotary dial. You just lifted the receiver and told Mrs. Goodyear who you wanted to call. There are now whole generations of young people who have no idea what a switchboard operator was. I used to say, "Like Ernestine on Laugh In -- 'one ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy.'" But that was at least a generation ago.

With all this reach-out-and-touch-y'all technology, we seem to communicate less.

Occam's Tool| 5.26.11 @ 3:35PM

I have never found more technology Liberating, except the ability to order books on Amazon.com, which makes it possible to live a bookish existence in the rural Great White North.

R Martin| 5.26.11 @ 7:09AM

I share your sentiments. You must not have any children, or you would have surely added how they refer to you as a Ludite.

Dee See| 5.26.11 @ 7:10AM

The 'End of Days' psy op has been used by
capstone creep Freemasonry for well over
a century and a half to discredit Chrisitianity
and religion generally, while providing warm
cover and distraction for the perps.

If one knows scripture, one KNOWS no man
knows such things ---"not even the engels in heaven".

AS far as all those nifty, convenient tech
gadgets and accessories ----it's now FINALLY
been revealed they are one and all tracking,
eavesdropping and surveillance devices.

Sort of explains WHY there's not even a wisp
of genuine and vital opposition to be found
in our congress. Blackmail, afterall, is STILL
the most effective means of keeping the ITs
in line.

And so -----BEHOLD the mystical body of AntiChrist

---------------------------------------------BEHOLD

Nate| 5.26.11 @ 9:43AM

Lot's of good conspiracy material here. Great stuff.

Patrick| 5.26.11 @ 12:52PM

He's always worth a laugh.

Occam's Tool| 5.26.11 @ 3:36PM

Hey, at least he doesn't go viciously insulting with Capitals.

Appleby| 5.26.11 @ 7:21AM

Ditto, ditto. I have a cellphone from 2001 that does nothing but make and receive calls -- in the USA, which most Canadian phones do not -- so I can call my family from the Amtrak Train and let them know how late I will be in arriving. I have a VCR. I have learned 7 or 8 different software systems, from Wangwriter to the current monstrosity Word 7 that every one of the secretaries hates because its arrangement makes no sense. Every day I am shoved, run into, battered and elbowed by wireheads and binkie twiddlers who zombies in the world I live in; their souls and minds are inside that two-inch screen. This has not improved my life.

I am ready to retire; all I need is the money my government is draining from me in order to *fund* punk bands and binkie twiddlers. Feh.

Lullabys, Legends and Lies| 5.26.11 @ 7:38AM

Bill Clinton was famous for saying, "I feel your pain", he was also famous for saying, "come here and sit on my lap", but I digress from my point.

Back in the 1980's, I was on top of technology, I was the guy that answered all the "stupid" questions that other people had, I was the guy who could actually set the time on the VCR. And not only that, I could program it too, to record any show I wanted to see, on any channel, for up to two weeks in advance. I was on top of the World, I was the technology guy, I knew the secrets, and I had all the right answers!!

Then one day I got drunk, and when I stopped drinking a decade later, the entire World had changed, and I didn't like it one bit!! Absolutely nothing was the same, everything had change, and I didn't know the answers to the stupid questions anymore.

I remember my first encounter with a mouse, my Boss sent me into his office to confirm the information he had on me, and if it was all correct, he just wanted me to click okay. That's all, nothing tough!! So after about ten minutes, he comes in there and says, "what's taking so long"? I'm standing in front of the computer, holding the mouse in my hand with the roller under my thumb (it was one of them old mouses), using it like I used to use the track ball for the video game Missile Command. I told him, "this thing is retarded, every time I try to click on the okay button, the damn cursor keeps moving". He looked at me and said, "are you retarded"? He grabbed the mouse out of my hand, put it down on the table, and clicked okay. I looked at him and said, "oh, that's how you use it"!! Right then and there, I knew I was doomed!! The train had left the station, and I was left walking down the tracks after it, never to catch up to it again, but forever doomed to keep tracking it.

John Rambo was famous for saying, "back there I could fly a gunship, I could drive a tank, I was in charge of millions of dollar's of equipment, back here,.... I can't hold a job,... PARKING CARS"!!!

I feel your pain John, I really do, now go kill some more people!!

Today, I'm the guy left asking those stupid questions, and the World just continues to change, leading to more stupid questions!! But at least I'm not alone, there's lots of People walking down the tracks with me now.

Nate| 5.26.11 @ 9:38AM

Too funny...Love the Rambo quotes too.

I haven't been around as long--I was just a kid in the '80s--but definitely share your sentiments regarding technology.

Patrick| 5.26.11 @ 1:00PM

Don't worry, there are still people this very day that can't use a mouse. They are called the sales department.

In the end, you just have to ask more stupid questions to the right people, and faster than they can come out with more widgets. It can be done.

Rich Berger| 5.26.11 @ 8:53AM

Isn't this just a subdivision of the closing of the mind to new approaches? I have become more discriminating in choosing the new gadgets that I will purchase, but I hate to think a day will come when I am no longer open to new ideas and experiences.

Jeamar37| 5.26.11 @ 1:13PM

Rich. The day will come when you are as old as the previous posters are. Then you will realize that new ideas and experiences are likely not attached to new techno gadgets. I'm following LL&L, who sounds like a youngster, down the RR track.

Occam's Tool| 5.26.11 @ 3:38PM

Dear Rich,

that day is coming. By the nature of my job, I must be in constant learning mode, but I do look forward to the day coming when I can take college classes at reduced rates and just review Byzantine art in retirement.

I can buy whatever I want in terms of gadgets, but they bore me.

Sam Vaughn| 5.26.11 @ 8:54AM

My career began with diskpacks and 10" floppy disks. 10Mb of disk storage would cost you over $10,000. It's been my living through every iteration. Old concepts get rebranded and they are new again. Such is the ebb and flow. However, I sat in an audience witnessing the demonstration of Mosaic by Andreesen (pre-Netscape) and listened to Vinton Cerf present a paper on the exponential growth of the World Wide Web (WWW). Most of the CIO's chuckled and some openly laughed. Those of us used to using Archie and Gopher (ancient pre-Yahoo search tools) gasped and thought the world would change radically. We knew the pace of change was going to speed-up, that's the reality when information flows freely and instantaneously available, ubiquitous. Having been wired myself for over a quarter century and embracing every wave of innovation with curiosity I hold up my hands now and say STOP. Just for me, unplugging from the grid is now the dream of freedom. I look with greater wonder out the window now as a Bald Eagle swoops to snag a fish out of the cold bay water. I notice those things now, where even a couple of years ago the wonder of a Bald Eagle would not have caused barely a ripple in my consciousness. I thank technology, it's been great to me, at the end of the day though it was the pursuit of freedom that drove me towards technology. An old friend once said "..... own your things, don't let them own you...."

Sam Vaughn| 5.26.11 @ 9:15AM

it just occurred to me... I referred to CIO's above, the title did not exist then......either

Aquanomics| 5.26.11 @ 10:33AM

I too remember sitting in on a demo of Mosaic, circa 1993. After a decade of Usenet news, watching the new WWW unfold at the breakneck speed of a dial-up modem left me dumbfounded. I knew the world was now different, but failed to grasp just how much.

Today, despite having to live with a world full of clueless 'infonauts' disengaged from reality and connected only to their wireless applaiance, I can't imagine a world where I am unable to query the web insearch of whatever information I need at the moment.

The presence of their earth's entire database at the end of my fingers far outweighs the irritations.

Sam Vaughn| 5.26.11 @ 1:10PM

yep, 1993 conference in NYC

SF_Exile| 5.26.11 @ 12:47PM

My husband and I went "off the grid" for the better part of seven weeks while driving cross country in 2007. Most of the places we were in didn't have cell service so on those weekly forays back into civilization (to do laundry and stock up on supplies) we'd link up. Heck, even radio signals were spotty! However, we did rely on mapping software and GPS though - hey some of those backcountry BLM roads are in the middle of nowhere!

But once we got used to it we enjoyed every sunrise and sunset, and spent lots of evenings contemplating the universe as we watched satellites zip by along with the occasional shooting star. Those were the best seven weeks we've ever spent.

Occam's Tool| 5.26.11 @ 3:40PM

Aren't the Bald eagles wonderful? We see a lot of them on the North Dakota Minnesota border...

My Blackberry is my Slave Chain. When my time is mine, I turn OFF the phone and the Blackberry and read and think.

Sam Vaughn| 5.26.11 @ 5:41PM

yes indeed, it's amazing to see them among the islands off the coast of Maine.

Dee See| 5.26.11 @ 9:30AM

'New' and no doubt 'on the way' experiences?----

FEMA camps managed and operated by that
RED Chinese 30 MILLION man surplus and
all to an ever-repeating ABBA soundtrack.

-------------------It's comin' down the Albert Pike!

We can ALMOST guarantee it!

SO ENJOY!

Roy| 5.29.11 @ 3:40PM

"all to an ever-repeating ABBA soundtrack."

NOOOOOOOOO!

Ken (Old Texican)| 5.26.11 @ 9:37AM

Appleby,
I use a cell phone a LOT...as a cell phone.
A wonderful invention for a busy traveling exec. and no more sweaty phone booths.

RCV| 5.26.11 @ 4:44PM

You can make telephone calls on those things?

Occam's Tool| 5.26.11 @ 9:45PM

I believe that's what they were ORIGINALLY used for, RCV, but things mutate.

Dee See| 5.26.11 @ 9:58AM

More than a gesture to take back the country
from the Globalist RED China TREASON op
would be getting rid of as much tech as you can
from your home and personal spaces.

Of course the TV and radio were, from their
introduction, social conditioning (ie cultural
subversion) devices.

Even the flicker rates are cued for mind control.
NO JOKE.

There's NO arguing about this ----it's ON RECORD.

FACT IS your cellphones, PC and even your
applicances are equipped with 'backdoors' for
covert surveillance and worse.

We strongly suspect our entire establishment
is now, more or less, living in blackmail.

SO, as much as you can --------eliminate them.

And for those REALLY committed to having
their space ----rip out those UN mandated,
RED Chinese manufactured, mercury filled,
eavesdropping and microwave operational
light sockets, along with the hideous flourescent
flicker rate bulbs.

REALLY, a first step.

Get to have your own consciousness ---maybe
for the first time in your life.

REALLY-------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------TRULY

mjfin| 5.28.11 @ 5:19PM

DC:

I like your stuff. Good to have a raving conspiracy theorist in the group. But just remember, things haven't changed that much. The changes have been mostly in scope.

These days government men (and private market research teams) can (with some difficulty and little interest) tap your phone and your computer, track your travels by monitoring your purchases and (sometimes) your GPS presence.

But back in the old, rural village days nobody went anywhere and your neighbors knew exactly where you did go and what you did and what you liked and didn't like and what you bought and when you got up and went to bed, how much you drank, and how you treated your horses and your wife.

And so did your local sheriff, and if you were subject to membership in the local branch of the National Guard, so did your regimental commander.

Some of this is harmless and even useful, but did, and does, encourage, and sometimes enforces, a certain . . . conformity.

Petronius| 5.26.11 @ 10:46AM

Chris
Your timing is impeccable after yesterday's blurb about schools dropping instruction of cursive penmanship. Click buttons. Hit send. No thanks. I needed to talk to an associate and called him at his office. His voice mail told me to text and broke the connection. The same happened when I called his cell and his home. When I finally caught up with him at our club, he asked why he didn't hear from me. I told him I couldn't respond, and if I could not record a request for a call back I wouldn't bother him again. So mote it be. Maybe a support group is in the offing: i nonomous. Include me out.

fmm| 5.26.11 @ 12:10PM

This "associate" is obviously an extremely self centered egotist, characteristics which he magnifies with the way he uses this technology. Your response to not bother him again is right on as he has no regard for you or anyone else.

Petronius| 5.26.11 @ 1:39PM

fmm
Not so. It's about privacy issues. Office communication systems are company property. So is any content recorded on them. Call it extension of any no personal calls policy.

Gary| 5.26.11 @ 1:08PM

What gets me is that people everywhere you go are talking, texting, using "aps" to the exclusion of the humans they are physically near. Even if they are with "friends" the person or thing at the other hand of whatever device they are using is more improtant

Harry the Horrible| 5.26.11 @ 2:07PM

I'm an old fart, but I'm a tech savvy old fart. Some of this stuff (like my blue-ray dvd player that gets on the network to bring me films from Amazon and Netflix) I don't know how to install, because I never saw a need for them. Others, like the Kindle, I consider a true blessing.
But the day is coming when all your files will be on your "smart phone" and backed on the "cloud" (silly name for distributed computing). You bring it in, it syncs with your peripherals (like keyboard, screens, mouse, etc.) and off you go.
Oh and you can still make calls and take pictures, even while you're computin'.

Occam's Tool| 5.26.11 @ 3:45PM

Yes, I love my Kindle. I think of it as a bookshelf. How many bookshelves can you buy for $200.00 that will hold 3500 books, that you can read on the beach?

Occam's Tool| 5.26.11 @ 3:45PM

I'll abbreviate my comments, Dave.

You lucky Bastard.

RCV| 5.26.11 @ 4:45PM

The thing I most like about my Kindle is being able to go on a vacation to some far off place and not have to lug around a suitcase full of books to last me the trip.

Harry the Horrible| 5.26.11 @ 6:54PM

And, as long as you have a connection, get new books.

But my wife also uses here Kindle's browser to update her Facebook page and send email...

Kindles are great. I hope the "mobi" format becomes the dominant eBook format and that Amazon keeps publishing!

Occam's Tool| 5.26.11 @ 9:46PM

Just DON'T Read it ON the BEACH---I did at Cape Cod, and the Salt Air fried the circuits.

Patrick| 5.29.11 @ 4:39AM

All too true. If there is anything more corrosive than salt mixed with moisture, it usually requires NFPA identification.

Patrick| 5.29.11 @ 4:39AM

All too true. If there is anything more corrosive than salt mixed with moisture, it usually requires NFPA identification.

John| 5.28.11 @ 6:26AM

$200? We had a thing called a library and it was free!

Patrick| 5.29.11 @ 4:41AM

Yes, but a library tends to wear out briefcases rather quickly when you try to put the former inside the latter.

mjfin| 5.28.11 @ 5:34PM

Harry:

You bet. If you mine for the diamonds in the rubble of modern gadgets, and leave the rest, you occasionally dig up a Kindle.

I wish it were bigger, and displayed color pictures in its non-reflective, no power-using technology ( no doubt coming), but I think of it (like my old 90's era cell phone) it as a piece of transformative technology. Like my refrigerator.

Dave Williams| 5.26.11 @ 2:28PM

Hear, hear! I don't have a cell phone, and don't want one. The look of shock on my students' faces when I tell them this is just priceless, as not one of them has the independence of mind to realize just how delightful being OUT of touch with the madding crowd can be...

Frank Tavos| 5.26.11 @ 3:11PM

I'm a busy lawyer and I still don't have a cell phone or Blackberry. If people need to contact me and I'm not in my office, they can leave a voice mail message on my desk phone or send me an email on my work computer and I'll get back to them. It's possible. You just have to manage client expectations.

The younger lawyers call me "Fred Flintstone" and I just smile and watch them become more and more enslaved to their hand held devices. Suckers.

JShizzle| 5.26.11 @ 3:50PM

Interesting points of view. Being younger, and being in charge of a computer network, I have a different perspective. I love tech toys, although I never race out to get the latest and greatest. I use these things: netbooks, smart phones, Wii, Playstation, iPods, etc. to enrich my life. I have no problems turning them off...in fact on the golf course and on vacation these items are verboten (well, an iPod in a speaker dock is OK). It's all about moderation, and not letting the device consume your life. A lot of people have trouble unplugging.

Sam Vaughn| 5.26.11 @ 5:46PM

well said, it takes discipline and the understanding of a company that the issuance of a BlackBerry does note denote 24/7 availability.

Renaissance Nerd| 5.29.11 @ 10:34AM

You made the point I was going to make. Moderation in all things, as Marcus Aurelius might say. I use my iPhone for far more than just a phone, but a lot of it is situation only. I take it hiking not because I want to be able to make calls, but because it'll keep track of how far I've gone, and will remember each change of direction and how many steps I took in each direction. I used to never get lost anywhere ever but then I went to Philadelphia and somehow found myself going south when I thought I was going north. Unfortunately I had no iPhone then, or my confidence wouldn't have been shaken so thoroughly. Now I still don't get lost, and never lose track of where north is, but I verify. After all, I might have to go back to some insane eastern city where the streets were designed for horse-and-carriage traffic.

I can't imagine why anyone would dislike the idea of carrying a combination compass, a library including dictionaries anddozens of survival and how-to books, a GPS, measuring tool, notebook (which backs up to the web when possible so you can't lose it, thank you Evernote), translator, measurements converter, photo gallery, camera, sketchpad, police-band radio, metronome, musical instrument, newspaper, bank teller, exercise trainer, calorie counter, knot guide, weather report, map folio (both online and offline), and video and voice recorder. And oh yeah, a phone and iPod too.

I think a lot of people presume that most of what is done on any nifty gadget is frivolous, like games or 'I

WRJonas | 5.26.11 @ 4:07PM

Living without the benefits of technology isn't just a cranky old guy thing. It's the beginning of a sane and redeeming mind.
I'm well past three quarters of a century and I thought the power lawn mower was the second most amazing thing in my personal lifetime .
The first was the time a guy installed a varnished box with a crank and a handset dangling on a cord in the living room of our old farmhouse . Turns out ,there was a lot more to come

RabidAmerican| 5.26.11 @ 4:23PM

Overall I fail to appreciate all this 'new' technology. Never before in the history of mankind has any 'discipline' developed with no/few standards, protocals, no training and riddled with dangerous consequences (malware, spam, identity theft, loss of important data, tracking, loss of privacy etc. etc. etc.).

About the only thing you can't do online is change the oil in your car.

People don't talk to each other face to face. (The younger the more prevalent). The myriad ways to communicate have resulted in a scatter-brained society. It used to be in my business, people came to meetings prepared, cogent and organized. Now I get emails telling me they faxed me the same info they texted that can be found on their website. Or I'm expected to look it up on their (butt)Face-book page. No phone number left on their voice mails because I guess the whole world has caller ID and last call call-back features.

Get a wild hair up your ass and call me and interrupt my work flow to only find out the project you needed yesterday, that I dropped everything to get into production because you're unprepared and disorganized must now be cancelled because a new hair tickled you up the ass--and hey, so what if you're sitting on the toilet that handy cell phone never leaves your right had.

I'm not against change but really, get a grip.

All this fuels our new economy, such that it is, because we can't manufacture, drill for oil or produce steel and build things. People are addicted to all their stupid gadgets. Actually, they never grew up. Everyday is Christmas at the PhoneStore.

One of the early Star Trek episodes was about crew returning to ship from a planet who brought a cute little gadget game that, if the user was successful a tantalizing brain-rush was produced by the gadget to the point the ship and crew were in danger due to inattention to reality.

Well, we're there. That inattention currently gives us the likes of the Imposter-in-cheif, fake money, fake grocery store food but that's a whole extra computer screen of discourse. I'm heading outside to talk to my tomato plants. Lately, it's the most intelligent conversation I have.

God save us!

Stuart Koehl| 5.26.11 @ 4:39PM

Was there a point to this, Orlet?

By the way, I will take you up on your offer of an (almost) new iPod. I'm as old as you, have used Macs since 1984, have owned several iPods, run my business from a home office equipped with five Macs and three printers, and have hardly ever found it necessary to crack the instruction manual. In fact, I don't think I ever looked at an iPod instruction manual--and that's the point: these things are intuitive.

The more complex they get, the simpler they are to operate. You can type, you can speak English, you can make these things work.

I started my career on an electric typewriter. I wrote my first book on one. No way you are going to convince me that the world was better or easier back then. Your rant sounds like nothing so much as a medieval scribe complaining about how the world has gone to hell since moveable type printing. "Look at all those cheap books! Soon everybody will be reading, and what then, eh?"

YeloStalyn| 5.26.11 @ 5:39PM

You remind me of my wife. Simply because you have mastered the technology AFTER developing into a competant human being doesn't justify the damage all this tech will do to the generations growing up under us.

My wife loves Facebook and uses it well enough. She keeps in touch with old acquaintances and that's about it. She doesn't seek out "friends" like so many younger people do. And this is the problem... the younger generation who grow up through their formative years all "jacked in". It's almost as if we have created the Matrix... only we carry the server in the palm of our hands rather than being truely, "jacked in."

And in this Matrix are people who miss "the real world" and are never the wiser. Among themselves, there is no problem. But introduce someone who is outside of this "Matrix" into that world and, by comparison, you start to see just how bad off we are. We are nothing more than "food" (money) for the "machines" (tech companies and our bosses who expect more with less from an already overworked and understaffed company).

Stuart Koehl| 5.26.11 @ 6:37PM

Spoken like every luddite since Thag discovered fire. "Yeah, sure, meat sure does look and smell and taste better after we heat it up, but our canine teeth and jaw muscles are going to atrophy without raw meat to rip and tear".

Occam's Tool| 5.26.11 @ 9:54PM

By the way, I snagged your 2008 book. Proceeds of sale go to an AIDS shelter. You're an excellent writer, Mr. Koehl.

Stuart Koehl| 5.27.11 @ 2:17PM

Which one? Icebergs and Fortresses, or Prospects for America's Future? I did not write all of those, just the good parts. In Icebergs, I wrote the sections on reforming the military, superpower relations, nuclear forces, and a couple of others. There were some written by others with which I violently disagreed.

In Icebergs, the evaluation methodology and criteria were my invention, and I wrote most of the country profiles, together with the underlying analysis.

YeloStalyn| 5.27.11 @ 9:46AM

I didn't say tech was bad. I enjoy all sorts (I love my PC and really enjoy video games... it's my hobby). I have no problem with technology. But it's how we use it... and thus how it is designed, no days, to maximize how we use it in such a way as to get us "jacked in."

Take the Matrix movie for example. Those who are not "jacked in" still use tech. They even build their own mini-matrix to use for learning (where did Neo learn kung-fu?). But they didn't stay there. They knew there was something more in the "World of the Real." But today, too many people... ESPECIALLY younger people, never come out of their iVirtualReality and experiene plain old regular... reality.

Stuart Koehl| 5.27.11 @ 2:03PM

All technology is amoral. It is the use to which human beings put it that conveys moral value. A technology can be both good and evil, depending on the context in which it is used, and how it is applied.

Occam's Tool| 5.26.11 @ 9:48PM

Stuart,

come up to Minnesota and accompany me on my rounds as I am connected to my Blackberry. Then you will understand. ;)

Seriously, technology that helps you concentrate better and do things easier is wonderful. But many of these connection devices are just an excuse for meaningless distraction.

Stuart Koehl| 5.27.11 @ 2:06PM

I am well aware of Crackberry addiction, and am intimately familiar with the "Crackberry prayer". Try addressing a group of high powered lawyers and/or bureaucrats about a subject that requires their full attention, while the only thing you see is the top of their heads as they check their e-mail, surf the web or crank out text messages on their Crackberries beneath the table. I've been known to stop speaking, until the extended silence catches their attention, leading to some embarrassed grins and (at least a momentary) focus on the matter at hand.

Patrick| 5.29.11 @ 4:53AM

Now if only jammers were legal...

Sam Vaughn| 5.26.11 @ 5:51PM

Clarification - Technology can mean freedom. I no longer commute to work, that's the good news, the bad news is here I am looking out over a beautiful ocean on an island with no access to the mainland, but we have broadband. I've been telecommuting for over 10 years and there is no way I'd ever go back. Time to apply some discipline and sign off I think......Cheers

Stuart Koehl| 5.26.11 @ 6:42PM

I am very content to work at home, running a successful business out of my house. I'm actually a lot more productive without the stress and physical fatigue of a commute into the city, plus I can set my own hours, which frequently means doing most of my work from midnight to 6 AM. That means most of my creative work is complete long before the phone starts to ring off the hook with calls from clients and associates that would otherwise be cutting into writing and research time. Thanks to Skype and similar applications, I can video conference whenever necessary (at next to no cost) and can deal with clientele that span the continent and the Atlantic Ocean (which means sometimes an eleven hour spread between my clients in, say, Israel and the ones in California).

I also have the flexibility to meet my family's needs, whether it's doing the shopping or taking the kids to the doctor.

None of that would have been possible without the technology that Orlet finds so threatening.

OlPudgy| 5.26.11 @ 6:21PM

Oh you pathetic, unenlightened, old people (and I stress the word "old.") I loved computing the first time I laid my eyes on it. I started on an Apple II in 1978 that had a whopping 4 kilobytes of memory. I bought a Commodore 64 as soon as I could afford it and played Raid Over Moscow and Lode Runner. In 1988 I bought my first Amiga. In 1994 I switched over to PC's because Commodore was going out of business. I now have a computer with 6 core processors, 4 GB of system memory, 1 TB of storage space and the fastest internet connection I can afford.

I do have concerns about the growth of technology, but they are not the concerns mentioned here. Heck, I just bought a great, new touchscreen monitor and am looking to buy a Chinese knock-off Apad rather than an Apple Ipad. To be honest, your rejection of all things technological and your pining for the former days just seems old and out of touch. (Those dang kids and their new fangled rock and roll. Hey, you, get off of my lawn. And, now for a little alone time, just me and Ben Gay.)

The technology I fear is the integration of human biology with silicon technology. The tech I fear is artificial intelligence and machines that are smarter and more capable than we are. The tech I fear is designer cloning to produce strange, new species. But, these are not the things you are thinking about. Your attitude simply seems be a rejection of the new in preference for the old.

Stuart Koehl| 5.26.11 @ 6:50PM

OK, with the Apple II you have me beat--but I bought my first Mac in 1984, and wrote Dictionary of Modern War on a Mac SE that I got in 1988. It was one of those all-in-ones with the 9" B&W CRT, 40 MB hard drive, compact floppy drive and 256 KB of RAM. I wrote the book using Microsoft Word for Mac 5.0, the best word processing program Microsoft ever produced, and when the book got up to about 750 pages, I could hit "Repaginate", and then go get a cup of coffee as the mighty Motorola 68000 processor began sorting the document 1. . . 2. . . 3. . . 4. . .5 . . .

I spend $2700 on that machine. I spend $400 less on my last Mac, a 17-inch MacBook Pro with 2.5 gig Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB of SDRAM, and a 500 gig hard drive. This is a more powerful computer than most of those used by DoD when I first started working, and I am really grateful for this and all the other advances in information technology--without which, of course, the conservative revolution would not have been possible.

Patrick| 5.29.11 @ 5:01AM

Bah! Mac! Proprietary as all hell, never backwards compatible, and next to VW in smug, lefty status symbols.

Btw, I give no pass to Microsoft either, but at least they are honest about being evil, grasping bastards.

OlPudgy| 5.26.11 @ 8:46PM

I used the Apple when I was in high school. It was almost completely useless. I used it to write a few lines of BASIC for very simple and mostly useless programs.

I almost bought a MAC in the 1980's, but preferred the Amiga because it had color. The Amiga was a great machine and should have lasted into the 21st century. Commodore so enraged their customers that they destroyed the most powerful computer of the time, or at least the fanbase that used it.

Douglas Fletcher| 5.26.11 @ 9:02PM

I hear they're coming out with wheels next year. Those things are going to cause nothing but trouble.

Replica handbags&wallet;| 5.26.11 @ 9:17PM

The good thing of the internet is that i usually come across with unrelated to my interests posts but at the same time interesting.
http://www.shop-bag.net

PCP Smoker| 5.26.11 @ 9:52PM

What a fucking loser. No time to download songs? It takes a lot longer to listen to a record than the time it takes to find the songs you want, create a playlist, listen to the playlist, share it with friends.
Typewriter? Make a spelling error on a finish draft and you are back to starting over again.
You are likely the reason the customer services lines are always full.
I recommend you take the revolver, put it in your mouth (recommend pointing the barrel straight), and pull the trigger.
Loser.

YeloStalyn| 5.27.11 @ 10:53AM

How does it take longer to listen to a 45 minute album than it takes to find those songs, download them, put them in your playlist, THEN listen to the 45 minutes of music, then share it?

If you figure that out... why are you posting on AS rather than ruling the space-time continuum?

Patrick| 5.29.11 @ 5:03AM

Especially true if you want to listen to the record at 78 speed.

Dee See| 5.26.11 @ 10:53PM

AFTER you've checked out Alan Watt
and esp. his audios on NEO-EUGENICS
and the 'inner agendas' of the likes of the
Rockefeller/Milner/Carnegie/CFR/Ford/
GATES Foundations ---------CHECK OUT
that leaked video of Aussie PM Rudd
congradulating one and all for selling out
his very country to the Globalist set up RED Chinese.

CHECK OUT

'Fabian Socialists WIN' ---on youtube.

Step past the 'socialist' terms. It's international
banksterism pure and simple. Just as Marx,
a high degree Mason, was 'brought in' and set
up. ON RECORD.

Remember, the 'continuity of agenda' is
the same here. THINK 'continuity of agenda'
a 'fave' FREEMASONIC device.

GO! --------CHECK IT OUT!

HUAC meets NUREMBERG 2012 ---if not sooner.

Lynn| 5.27.11 @ 1:33AM

I am reading all of this on my Blackberry smartphone while relaxing on my couch...and while I was doing that my phone gave me a reminder of a doctor's appointment I have later. Tech makes my life easier, but I alsohave a reminder on my phone telling me to turn all electronics off an hour before bedtime and relax with a book. Hmmmm...
My grandma thinks cell phones are a miracle. I look forward to the day when I don't worry about satellites and signals but just view tech as my own personal miracle.

jgo| 5.27.11 @ 2:01AM

Don't worry. I understand them. I can make the gadgets "flop on their sides like a crippled minnow" without breaking a sweat. I just don't like them. I cut my teeth on super-computers and keep looking forward to signs of progress.

The cellular phones (not just the stupid phones they call "smart") are terrible privacy violation scams. (Don't even get me started on those accursed "social networking" scams -- of, by, and for privacy violation.) The portable music players all feature ear-buds and head-phones that will make you deaf before your time, and the music is hideously over-priced... yet they encourage copyright violation, a.k.a. "sharing". The iPads (and the GRiDpad predecessor back in the 1980s and all of the copycats) are pieces of junk that no one seems to want to beef up into something useful. Try reading books on those things or the various other single-purpose e-book gadgets, or even a high-end lap-top and by page 5 your eyes will feel like hot coals burning their ways through your head. I like Macs fine, but not so much Apple's schemes to control software markets rather than nurturing them.

It's like having super-powers. Every moment you have to question yourself and the suppliers of these gadgets and consider, each time you use it, whether it will be for good or only for evil.

Stuart Koehl| 5.27.11 @ 2:09PM

I've heard that those steam locomotives will cause chickens to stop laying, cows to stop giving milk, and women to become frigid. Gotta put a stop to that right now, I say!

Richard Baker| 5.27.11 @ 11:04AM

Used to be a math/science teacher in Florida and my kids were seemingly helpless without a calculator. They screamed bloody murder when I said they couldn't use them in my class as my goal was to get them to THINK their way through problems. Unfortunately, conversation, thinking, and reasoning are being replaced by mind candy as the tools become Life Itself. All this computational power and no real learning or wisdom. Add in accidents/deaths on the rise from texting/cell phone useage and maybe, on the road at least, self-selection will occur. Sadly, others get killed/maimed, as a result.

Patrick| 5.29.11 @ 5:18AM

I loved calculators when I was in high school. Not the stupid ones that only did mathematical functions. No, the programmable ones with calculus, matrix, and other functions were where things got interesting.

I remember my high school physics class where both calculators and "cheat sheets" were allowed. "Go ahead, it will only slow you down." my teacher said, and many who didn't study never came close to finishing their tests. As a matter of fact, the curve for an A was already set at 60%. Suffice to say, my cheat sheet had the code that was written in my calculator. I even went through the effort to have it display all "the work" to reach my answer. My teacher said, "If you went through all that trouble, and if it works, you probably spent more time studying than anyone else, and you earned the A before you even walked in the door." At a 40% higher test score than the second best student, I had no reason to complain.

Yes, technology can be a terrible crutch for the lazy, or it can be used as a lever by which to move the world.

Richard Baker| 5.27.11 @ 11:07AM

PS:
Before I get the "old guy" comments, I do find the replacement of slide rules and tables with computers a great advance. As thinking aids I think there is value in the chip. However, mindless is more prevalent among the youth with the availability of these devices. Mind your self while driving, now.

Richard Baker| 5.27.11 @ 11:10AM

mindlessness

Dee See| 5.28.11 @ 3:01AM

BTW---CHECK THIS OUT!

'The Long History of EUGENICS'
-ALAN WATT
youtube/online

------GO! CHECK IT OUT!

YOU'LL SEE----------------------------

REALLY!

Richard Baker| 5.29.11 @ 9:59PM

Patrick:
When I taught, I curved nothing! Utilizing that method only encourages the sick, lame, and lazy to NOT study, in my humble opinion. My kids had come from classes where the curving was done and my method shocked many of my so-called A students into the reality that they were truly that in name only. This method is foolish, as a result.

Francis W. Porretto| 6.2.11 @ 2:00PM

I sympathize, being of a certain age myself, and worse, a technologist in a field whose nuances are gradually slipping from his grasp. But there's fun to be had with pervasive technology, too. More, some of that fun is best deployed in your work environment. Herewith, a vignette.

Time was, the term memo grenade was familiar to all office workers. Before email became ubiquitous, workers bent on savaging one another did so through cleverly worded memos: paper instruments detailing some problem in a fashion that reflects poorly on a co-worker. In those halcyon days of yore, such instruments were normally typed up by the originator's departmental secretary, copied onto company stationery, and then dispatched to whoever was on the list of primary addressees or "CCs." It was obligatory that the target of such a vilification receive a copy, of course, but if at all possible as a "CCer" rather than a primary addressee; that way, he might think it didn't concern him and toss it without reading it.

Gone are the days. Today, we send attack email. The overall scheme is the same, but the departmental secretary is no longer involved, and there are many, many more possibilities for skullduggery. For example, Smith could "accidentally" send his attack email to a much wider distribution than the problem detailed therein would normally interest -- a distribution involving corporate officers and (in extreme cases) their spouses. Alternately, and somewhat more insidious, he might "forget" to include targeted Jones on the distribution list. Since no one but Smith sees the thing before it makes its rounds, he can always mount the "honest mistake" defense: Smile and say "my finger slipped," or "my mousing is getting sloppy."

(At this time there's no jurisdiction in which such actions are considered legal justification for homicide.)

Because I do laboratory simulations, I'm the frequent target of such emails. They usually allege that I agreed to do something that I thereafter failed to do. One who is less than scrupulous about saving all his communications can easily be victimized thus...but I am not one such. I print out all email and file it by date, purging the file only at the beginning of each new year. (No, there isn't much room left in my desk for office supplies.)

Recently, one of my corporate enemies caught on. This...person has put considerable effort into harming my reputation, for nearly a decade. When he realized that I empty my email file on January 1, he tried to exploit the phenomenon by alleging that he'd failed to meet a critical schedule because I'd sloughed a requirement he'd laid on me two years previously. That attack email went to his management, my management, and the vice-president of our division; I was "CCed."

Uproar. Phone wires hummed. Meetings were called. For the first time in eight years an actual paper memo was sent, from our vice-president's office, tartly reminding all division engineers of the centrality of laboratory simulation and the importance of meeting agreed-upon requirements.

But they don't call me Super Fran for nothing. As is the case in most corporate environments today, all email sent to, from, or within the company is archived on a big honkin' server used for nothing else. If you can make friends with its administrator, you have an asset of unique power.

Of course, it's also the case in most corporate environments that the IT administrator for such a facility is a nasty bastard -- think Don Rickles, but entirely without the humor -- who's about as available as the Pope. So to goose as much as a smile out of him, some ingenuity and effort will be required.

Super Fran isn't averse to ingenuity and effort, but he prefers to do things the easy way when possible. So I made note of the IT guy's schedule, and made a point of running into him in the parking lot.

Literally. I clipped his leg with my front bumper as he was walking toward his Hummer. (I wasn't about to hit his car; it's an M1-Alpha, with the armaments package.)

A few heartfelt apologies and a night of drunken debauchery afterward, I had both the IP address and the administration password to the archive server. And my enemy spent the next several weeks sleeping on the couch as he struggled to convince his wife, a harridan of legendary stature, that there's no such person as Estrellita Malvaux working, ah, under him.