Thought-provoking article, or rambling of an idiot?

[feren]

I strongly suggest that those of you who are dissatisfied with today's technology-driven society go read Bruce Sterling's Ten Technologies that Deserve to Die.

I agree with the author on a number of points, but he adopts an "all or nothing" approach that is so damned typical of Two-tone Perception Disease that I honestly want to discount the fellow as a kook.

Comments

[taper.livejournal.com]

Isn't "Thought-provoking article, or rambling of an idiot?" kind of a two-tone itself? ]:^)

Bruce is a smart guy generally, he has definite opinions on certain things -- and generally he won't declare that you're saying spaceflight opponents are mega-gooberheads from hell.

[feren.livejournal.com]

[Isn't "Thought-provoking article, or rambling of an idiot?" kind of a two-tone itself? ]:^)]

That was rather the point of my title.

[and generally he won't declare that you're saying spaceflight opponents are mega-gooberheads from hell]

No, but let's use this as an example for the exercise. It seems to me that his reasoning against further space explanation is flawed at best, and it certainly doesn't take much into account beyond "this aspect is sort of bad, so it's entirely bad and should be done away with," lending it a dinstinctly "all-or-nothing" feel.

I mean, look at it this way: I'm fairly certain that the Santa Maria (and undoubtedly the Pinta and Nina) had a leak or two in its day, so should Columbus have just stopped sailing and exploring because his ships were "inherently rickety and dangerous?"

I read this eralier today...

[brianblackberry.livejournal.com]

At first I thought it would be an interesting read of obsolete technologies that people still use for rather unknown reasons. Unfortunately it degenerated into rather blanket ranting with no real offers of alternative techonologies or solutions to the "technology that must die" he railed against.

Of course what was real odd is prisons as "technology"..

[rcking]

Authors are almost forced to use Two-tone style writing to appear "decisive" "insightful" and "clear thinking". Everyone wants simple answers to complex problems. So what if they are not the correct answers.

Real, balanced discussions are boring, right ?

[lcremeans.livejournal.com]

The first five of these I can actually agree with, to some extent, though I doubt the ICE will be going anywhere anytime soon. The problem with getting rid of nuclear weapons, though, is that the radioactivity doesn't just go away -- it'd have to be reprocessed into fuel rods for reactors, or stored away someplace "geologically safe".

The second five is where it gets dicey. Manned spaceflight? Prisons? DVDs? Okay, I can kind of agree with prisons, but as imperfect as DVDs are, there aren't many better solutions, and (of course) he doesn't present any...he just lets the entry turn into an anti-CSS rant. Yes, we know, CSS is bad, Hollywood is SO TEH EVAL, blah blah blah. NEWS FLASH: You can MAKE A DVD WITHOUT CSS! It's just that few people bother. Besides, CSS itself was cracked long ago, so if you want to play DVDs without having to suffer through the commercials on the disc, you can. As for the physical media thing? Too damn bad. Silicon is (still) far too expensive to use for mass storage on a DVD-size scale, and hard drives are even more fragile than DVDs.

Manned spaceflight is still viable, it's just that, as he said, no one really seems to care -- and that's too bad.

Implants? Well, some people still need/want prosthetics, but I can see why elective breast augmentation (among other things) would make the list.

-lee

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

Definitely agree with some, and disagree with others. Land mines definitely SUCK. Internal combustion engines and incandescent lightbulbs do have their drawbacks, and maybe someday they will be replaced with that new Hy-Wire car I've read about, and fluorescent bulbs. (We've replaced most of the incandescents in our house with fluorescents, and they're great!)

But DVDs deserve to die?! What does he want to do, go back to cruddy old videotape? Or do away with home video entirely? Sheesh! Yeah yeah, I know, one scratch can ruin a CD or DVD. You know what I do about that? I keep my CDs and DVDs in their cases when they're not in use. Simple!

[yotogi.livejournal.com]

I arrived on this one late, but if you want to see something really frightening, go look at DARPA's website. They have a project running to produce landmines that hop now, and communicate for the purpose of redistributing themselves evenly after a breach is conducted in the minefield. What gave me the creeps was their Flash demo, narrated by a little Knight chessman. I want to know why the little Knight winks at you at the end.

I for one welcome our new autonomous explosive overlords.

[jingle.livejournal.com]

The author makes -some- good, albeit common sense, picks as far as technologies that need to be eliminated or at least overhauled. I definately think nuclear weapons, standard light bulbs, and combustion engines (at least incredibly inefficient ones) can be done away with. I do have disagreements with the following:

Prisons: While I don't like the prison system and the idea of inmates costing taxpayer money and getting free perks that normal law-abiding joes do not, for now prisons are necessary. I'm not ready to trust electronic tags and collars to keep rapists and murderers out of my neighborhood. The effort needs to be put into improving economic and health conditions (physical and mental) for people to cut causes for crime.
Manned spaceflight: There are and always will be things that only humans can do adeptly and quickly. Which sounds better... a robot with a camera who takes a picture of a rock, beams an image back to an Earth-based station, waits for a command to be beamed to it to flip the rock, and then slowly extend a robot arm to turn the rock painstakingly over? Or a knowledgeable human who can reach down and flip the rock in a matter of seconds? Just make the travel process safer with better construction and competent ground staff.
Cosmetic surgery: Um... talk to the dozens of accident and crime victims who have been disfigured by injuries. Yes, the technology can be improved, but it should not be 'killed'.
DVDs: There's always going to be a way to circumvent any digital encryption you try to put on media, so I'd give up looking for a 'holy grail' of secure storage. DVDs are cheap to mass produce and work well. We're going to need larger media as resolutions and number of features improve, but there's no need to dis the disc. I think the editor is just grumpy because his copy of 'Lord of the Dance' got scratched. ;)

As far as other technologies to do away with, I'm sure I could think of others, given time, but how about fax machines? I think with e-mail as near-instant and prevailent as it is, bulky fax machines can be done away with in favor of small e-mail stations or existing scanners and printers.