Tool Users
I remember a conversation back when the home computers were getting up to speed. The missuz had one and so did a neighbor friend, sort of the digital vanguard of the South End in retrospect. Like a lot of my cronies, I was mostly distrustful of this new-fangled technology, probably the way my monkey forbears worried about fire. I said, being the philosophical ape I am, that this was the equivalent of the spinning jenny, a revolution that would change everything.
Naw, they said, it’s just a Tool. Don’t be afraid, little man, it won’t bite. It’s at least 25 years later now, a quarter of a century, a big chunk of my life, not a long time in geologic terms, but the world isn’t the same now. I’ve got my own computer, my own website, my own blog. The missuz has a cellphone, I-pods, mp-3 players. We order movies off NetFlix, we got wireless connections, most of what we do is on-line. The kids that visit stay right in touch with their friends on Facebook. So do their parents. My truck is half computer. My life is too. Some folks, it’s mostly digital, virtual, instant. They’re Connected most all of the time. The kids, they’re 100%.
I’m not saying this is bad. Sure, I miss a conversation without being interrupted by an urgent Text message telling my visitor about their grocery purchase. The kids who came this weekend wanted to stream sitcoms off Netflix, most frineds ask what our wireless password is second thing after hello.
This Tool we got has rocked our world. This Tool is picking up speed, accelerating exponentially and it’s all most of me and my pals can do not to watch it disappear over the Event Horizon. There’s a notion called a Singularity, a point of time where there’s a break, a complete quantum leap, from what was to what is completely different, something like the Tool making itself, fixing itself, designing new selves. Something like a moment when the Tool Users – me and my cronies – become irrelevant. We won’t know, of course, because we’ll be mostly digital component parts ourselves, happily dependent on the Tool.
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