America – to much of the world that word means the future.
We get drunk on the future easily. In the 50’s we were besotted by nuclear power. That was supposed to be the future. Nuclear power would do every little thing. The advertisements said that in the nuclear future we would only have to work 10 minutes a day.
We get high on technological break-throughs. At the beginning of the first Iraqi War, smart bombs were the rage. The image of a bomb that had human characteristics caught our fancy. The bomb with a brain could make sharp turns, circle around, make decisions, stealthily stop and go. Newspaper cartoons featured bombs knocking on the front door of a dismayed Saddam Hussein, politely asking to pay a visit.
Wall Street applied a mathematical technology to securities, and invented “credit default swaps.” The land of derivatives suckered much of the financial world, but also took in the United States government hook, line and sinker. The magic of it allowed millions of us to use our homes like ATM machines, and retailers beamed their advertising at the impossibly rich American family. Our future became increasingly narcissistic, even bizarre. Our leaders told us to go into permanent, personal debt for our country.
We have a record of getting drunk on the wrong future. Generally someone makes a great deal of money on our delirium. Now we are supposed to breathe heavily over the hand-held gadget of gadgets, the iPad. We are assigned our euphoria once again – this time at how we organize and ship and display information. Soon we’ll have super-computers for hands. But like nuclear power, smart bombs and credit swaps… this jacked-up anticipation of the future is quite different from the future we finally experience.
We’re wising up. There is a simmering uneasiness around the computer revolution. Some of the citizens of the world wonder ...
We get drunk on the future easily. In the 50’s we were besotted by nuclear power. That was supposed to be the future. Nuclear power would do every little thing. The advertisements said that in the nuclear future we would only have to work 10 minutes a day.
We get high on technological break-throughs. At the beginning of the first Iraqi War, smart bombs were the rage. The image of a bomb that had human characteristics caught our fancy. The bomb with a brain could make sharp turns, circle around, make decisions, stealthily stop and go. Newspaper cartoons featured bombs knocking on the front door of a dismayed Saddam Hussein, politely asking to pay a visit.
Wall Street applied a mathematical technology to securities, and invented “credit default swaps.” The land of derivatives suckered much of the financial world, but also took in the United States government hook, line and sinker. The magic of it allowed millions of us to use our homes like ATM machines, and retailers beamed their advertising at the impossibly rich American family. Our future became increasingly narcissistic, even bizarre. Our leaders told us to go into permanent, personal debt for our country.
We have a record of getting drunk on the wrong future. Generally someone makes a great deal of money on our delirium. Now we are supposed to breathe heavily over the hand-held gadget of gadgets, the iPad. We are assigned our euphoria once again – this time at how we organize and ship and display information. Soon we’ll have super-computers for hands. But like nuclear power, smart bombs and credit swaps… this jacked-up anticipation of the future is quite different from the future we finally experience.
We’re wising up. There is a simmering uneasiness around the computer revolution. Some of the citizens of the world wonder ...
