PEAK TECHNOLOGY HAPPINESS—IS IT OVER?
Yay, we got barstools! We’ll figure drinks. But firstly, a question:
Did technology make our lives better until it didn’t?
Humanity’s raison d’être is turning the Earth into golf clubs, cars, Happy Meal toys, plastic flowers, Coach bags, air fryers, TV’s, bunny slippers, fridge magnets, space ships, nose rings, and so on ‘n on. For most of this stuff, you need not go far back in time to see that more technology was clearly better.
When did better become worse? Any picture of the 70’s screams “please upgrade the technology!” By the 80’s tech was exciting. Video killed the radio star but MTV was fun for everyone else.
Was the Walkman the first step into the hole the Me Generation fell into, as it morphed into the I Generation? Me Generation: “I’m too cool to need you.” I Generation: “I’m isolated, I’m afraid, I’m lonely, I, I, I…”
Lightbulbs, a miracle invention, evolved brighter and brighter— is there a point where brighter is not better? New car headlights illuminate the road and melt the faces off oncoming traffic. The blue light from new TV’s can fry the sleep regulator in a human brain to goo. Tactical flashlights can start fires—okay, that’s a selling point. But, really: what was the high water mark for lightbulb happiness?
Was it the invention of LED grow lights? Which are totally awesome. So you’re not growing tomatoes in that indoor grow revolution in your basement but you could.
In Pete Hamill’s salubrious book A Drinking Life, he spoke to the moment when people disappeared into their TV’s, in the 1950’s. The streets of New York City, emptied of children’s wildly played games, filled with the bodies of addicts. Heroin and TV arrived together.
Smartphones seem like a loud echo of that moment: a new technology that replaces physical interaction with an electronic soporific, that arrived hand in hand with massive wave of drug addiction. Though along with heroin we now have oxycontin, meth, and fentanyl because drugs are technology too and time only offers more.
How about the mastodon in the room, social media? We had town criers, then pamphlets, then newspapers, then digital news— at which point news dissolved back into the quantum foam of disorganized information. More technology gave us social media: a brain pump for rumor, opinion, propaganda… Y’know I think I’ll do a shot of tequila here and jump right over this pit of vipers? Sheesh!
Speaking of drinking, we learned to brew beer forever ago. From stouts to porter, weisenbeer to pilsner, turning the mead of the ancients to the varietals we enjoy today is akin to the breeding of wolves into schnauzers and bichons and golden doodles.
We’ve whacked our way through technology’s garden of good and evil far enough to find beer, so… Whatchuwant: IPA, IRA, ESB, pale, sour?
I’ll give beer a win, on the technology happiness meter. Huzzah!
How about drugs (now that we’re drinking, ha-ha). Humans enjoyed weed for eons before tech amped the THC content. Now people have psychotic breaks after eating a gummy because smoking is dangerous.
Natural hallucinogenics like mushrooms and ergot featured in religious rituals for thousands of years. But then we invented LSD. Unless you’re Bob Weir or (huge buzz-kill) the CIA, LSD seems a bit much?
What about non-fun drugs?
Catching “Scarlet Fever” meant going blind and then insane before dying until the invention of antibiotics in the early 1900’s. Now we just call it “strep throat.” So far, so good?
An occasional aspirin was always a good idea. Socrates recommended it. But a few well placed pharmaceutical reps later, and doctors were telling everyone over 50 to take an aspirin every single day. Which turned out to be a bad idea. Who’d a thunk? And you’re right— that’s not technology, that’s capitalism. Wrong rant, ha-ha!
What were we on about? Ah yes, tech and drugs…
More technology’s given us wonder drugs. It’s certainly given us more drugs. But how wonderful is that pharmaceutical cornucopia making our lives?
Getting old used to mean moving south to lay in the sun and do shots of cod liver oil backed with gin and soda. Now old people spend their days trying to remember when to take which pill from a dizzying array of pills, many of which are pills to counter the effects of other pills, and yet more pills to counter the interactions between all the pills.
And for the young? Used to be, If kids were acting up you sent them to the playground to get knocked off seesaws and cry until trading homework for a comfy bed made sense to them. Now we give them psychotropics so they can remain traumatized children for the rest of their lives. Improvement? I think not.
So— whew, pause for refreshment!— What’s to be done?
Thank your gods— and for you atheists, your not-god— we’re drinking. Aka “problem solving the E Z way.” Cheers to getting wicked smart!
Here’s a thought I’ve just distilled: it’s time to face technology the way we face food.
We’ve learned to at least try to avoid trans-fats, extra helpings of cheesecake, and bacon wrapped doughnuts. To stop bingeing on Cheetos, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and red wine (unless you’re feeling blue! That mix is wayyy more effective than Prozac, not to mention easier to quit, once you see your face in the mirror the next morning).
If corpulence doth overwhelm me, and timor mortis conturbat me, I cut back. I eat more salad and less bread, and blah blah blah.
If I can go on a food diet, why not go on a technology diet? Leave the smart phone at home and carry a dumb one?
Sales of dumbphones like BLU and Tracphone are soaring. Even the iconic Nokia 3310 is back with a “new” 3310 which is in hot demand because—yes!— it does nothing more than the old one did.
A technology diet— I like this idea.
I can enjoy the improvements of next-gen ski boots, music streaming, safer cars, and wrinkle free clothing while avoiding the bad stuff.
Less social media, more beer, anyone?
PS: As an aperitif, here’s a final snark:
The energy available to do science—“fire” a thousand years ago, and “particle accelerator” today— barely grew until the 1800’s. Then it began a steep curve up. The shape of this curve is what math types call an “asymptote.” That’s a line that curves up to infinity (simplifying because we be drinking aye?). At our time in history, that curve is rocketing.
In another couple hundred years the energy available to do science would be equivalent to the Big Bang. Which presumes not only destroying our planet but the entire universe along with us. That does seem like rather more technology than happiness, does it not?
On a slightly less alarming note, asymptotes occur frequently in financial markets. Like tulips in the 1700’s or tech companies in 1999 or houses in 2008. What happens next is not infinity—a singularity equivalent to The End—but a correction. A cooling off. A time to discover things that matter more, and make us happier, than more more more.
Here’s what an asymptote looks like:
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