THOUGHTS FROM A COMMON MAN
News and comment LATEST: What our mania for gadgets is doing to us … PLUS … Solar effects on Global Warming? The reality of big business take-overs …
READ THE ULTIMATE MAGAZINE POST … from a real voice of Britain and the world.
NIGHTMARE TECH
The MSN Tech and Gadgets website has undergone a survey regarding what we think of modern gadgets. Whilst most people seem to love them, they have identified a ‘dark side of technology.’
They didn’t need a survey to realize that. All technology has a flip side of irritation. Sometimes the irritation is worthwhile, but as we now live in a gadget obsessed society, we will fight the irritation regardless, even if it is far greater than the benefit.
Extensions of Man
From speed cameras to novelty doorbells, from car alarms to security lights, tech is taking over our lives. One major factor in this is marketing. After all, if you’re told often enough that something is good, you’ll believe it – and ignore the pain.
But maybe the problem is more fundamental than this. From the birth of history, technology has been our saviour, making life better and protecting us from danger. Over millennia, tech has been the right thing to do.
Now that we live in a society where tech can be cheap and easy, history demands that we use it. But what has really happened is that tech has increasingly become the purpose for life, rather than being simply a form of assistance.
Machine Society
In effect, technology is increasingly taking over the human, and this can be seen in many areas of life. On any street, cameras have replaced the policeman; in any office, computers do the work of the clerk.
The gadgets we produce today are simply the trivial part of a much deeper problem – the mechanization of society. And as society becomes more and more mechanized, the more society will ape the machine.
This is because a machine can only do what it is designed to do. It allows no variation, no alternative. And as society becomes more automated, society, too, will allow no variation and no alternative.
Enjoy your gadgets while you can, for soon they may be enjoying you.
© Anthony North, July 2007
IS THE SUN IN THE CLEAR?
A report by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire seems to put the sun in the clear regarding global warming. Solar trends since the 1980s, they say, should have left to a cooling, not a warming …
… read more …
THE TAKE-OVER TAKE OVER
At last, even some people in business are beginning to understand that big-business stinks. Richard Lambert, DG of the CBI, has warned that UK businesses are being taken over by an elite band of financiers …
… read more …
Click Tony On for more current affairs.
While you’re here, why not have a look around? Check out the pages – you’ll also find sub-domains on the Blogroll. Beyond the Blog is the site that has everything.
Inde-Pol
BEYOND THE BLOG 