iGeek

Me.. like all of you, imagines that the latest thing is going to make my life easy....but it does not. Technology is for geeks by geeks... They are the ones who write those indecphirable instructions for the IKEA manuels, knaves that they are.
You have spent hours in your safe suburban home..putting together these intrisically devious pieces of clap board. You know what it is like to suffer the Scandinavian revenge.

Do you just "Have" to own it ? Even though it was the same as the last thing, but now somehow today, it has been re invented, with more stuff ? Stuff you do not need.
Take the iPhone, or the Nano.... No better sound, just things you do not need. Just "Enhancement". If you can do it on your phone or laptop, why do you feel the need to own more of this stuff ? Why does your ipod need to shoot video ? In my opinion, it is there to play music, a task it is wonderfull at why any other function ?

But you feel left out.....alone in the wilderness...Oh! My Goodness!... I do not have the latest thing !... My firstborn will die because I am bereaft of all things the Lord Jobs provideth.

Moores law says that what you buy today at top dollar is crap tomorrow. ( in a nutshell ).
When you buy your new shiny thing from the store, you have to accept that it is obsolete the second you sign for it.
Yet, we cannot refrain ourselves from wanting, yearning, aching, for that new shiny thing. It is better than all the shiny things on the street. We lust for it, We are totally at the mercy of the consumer state. Therefore my things are shinier than everything else...

When you buy a car you expect a decent length of time before you replace it. It is old technology, it has not changed since it was invented. It has been refined but the basic bits that make a car move are the same as they were a century ago. ( Unless you own an MG ) When you buy a mobile phone, it is obsolete within 6 months, even sooner.

Forty or maybe fifty years ago a man could fix everything in his home. With the dawn of transistor & Microchip technology that is no longer possible. Have you ever had to repair a washing machine only to be told that the part required costs more than the machine itself ? Instant obsolecence & what a waste of metal & plastic. It is easier to throw things away than try to service or repair them.

Is this what we are emerging in to ? An Orwellian version of a consumer future? A brave new world ? or more realistically, a Ballardian vision of hell....Where we play the part of a blind man, stumbling around from room to room until someone finds them a chair..in the adjascent room to where the real conversation is taking place.

Listening to:

Weather Report... A lot, Jaco Pastorious has to be the best bass player ever... discuss
John Coltrane... India....My favourite things.....Bliss