Fall Harvest Moon
I’m a geek of sorts. I love computers, have owned many and, in fact, plan to buy another one soon. Technological triumphalism, however, like most ecstatic extensions of an idea falls flat with me. Technology will not solve our energy problem, at least not without substantial non-technological work such as conservation policies and actions, political barriers to fossil fuel use. Technology does not make us smarter. It gives us information quicker so that our intellectual reach expands but we still use our old mental processes.
With that caveat let me say that technology is truly wonderful. I just spent half an hour with Mark and Mary again, connecting Minnesota, Saudia Arabia and Singapore with not only voice, but video. It was a chance to catch up on each other’s lives, to take the pulse of each other with visual feedback as well as verbal. This astonishes me.