By Keith C. Milne
Ask anyone who knows me well and they will be able to vouch for just how much I have embraced and enjoyed technology over the decades, especially since all things electronic really took off in the mid-1970’s, and just kept morphing into a bigger rocket along the way since then. Once home computers seriously took hold in the early 1990’s, there was never going to be any walking back from that! Ditto for mobile phones that are now everything, and also a telephone!
I lovingly embraced all of it. I was one of the first of my friends to get a really nice component stereo system and headphones, followed by a desktop computer. I remember those early days, zipping along on the internet using my first PC, which was a Packard Bell running an Intel 386sx20 with 1 megabyte of RAM, and DIALING UP the Internet on a what I considered to be a screaming fast 9600 baud modem! I thought I really had something serious at the time, too, and now that I was equipped with the latest technology, man the whole universe was going to be my oyster. Little did I know then that most of my time and efforts would be put to use just learning how to do the most mundane tasks on it, while also teaching my self how to touch type.
I always felt ultra excited about what was just on the horizon, and the horizon always seemed to have a bright sky! Odd how the sun never really came up though, rather it just threatened to come up with that endlessly bright sky, and strangely enough that was enough to keep me, and millions of other consumers buying the newest and latest gadgets regularly, even though we all swore that “this one” was so fast that you would never need another one (pick from main CPU, motherboard BUS speed, amount and speed of RAM, a new monitor, a faster external modem etc).
Later I found it amazing and really fun to “build my own boxes,” beginning with a new Windows box, and later also tried installing a few different variations and learning some of the LINUX OS before finally settling in a big way with the Apple platform. I think the combination of the UNIX platform that underlies Apple OS, along with all of the incredible software, and ease of use of Apple products makes them unsurpassed in the industry.
Back in 2002, I was the only person I knew who owned a ROKU box, which was when I also began using Netflix, and that was when Netflix’s whole business model revolved around renting movie disks through the mail!
I’ve been an early adopter of technology my entire life because I’ve always been fascinated by technology and all the devices and “out-of-thin-air” tricks they seem to enable people and other machines to do. When I was a little boy, I held one of the first SONY “transistor radios” in my hands back in 1964!
Sometimes, I think about those early days of technology and contrast it to the present time. It’s quite a comparison sometimes, for example it seems strange to hold my iPhone 12 Pro Max with all of it’s extremely sophisticated circuitry and capabilities and let all of that sink in, and then flash back to when I was four years old and remember when I helped my father take vacuum tubes out of the back of our television, and then went with him down to the local town drugstore to the “tube tester.” Plugging the tubes into the appropriate size female plugin and turning the test switch to “on” was my job. It was always a fun game to guess whether the analog needle would move all the way over into the green “good” zone, or land in the yellow “weak” zone, or the red “replace” zone. Then come back from that flashback to contrast those early vacuum tubes to my iPhone’s “retina display” meaning that my eye cannot discern anything finer than the images output by the phone at the highest resolution.
The Internet was once considered to be a real treat to have. It still is when the power goes out, but is largely taken for granted now as it has become as ubiquitous as television sets in peoples homes. Once the Internet began to take off, very quickly venues that gathered people to one place in large numbers also began to surface.
No, Facebook wasn’t the first venue of this type, nor was it’s predecessor, “My Space.” Rather, the first real social platform was the now largely forgotten America Online! America Online! was not only the first venue to offer a large social gathering space, but an actual internet account of your own as well. AOL, as it became known as, essentially was a Facebook/Internet Service Provider hybrid.
Once My Space, followed by Facebook, and then Twitter, and Instagram, and Tik-Tok and the like came out, there were already early generations living who have grown up knowing the internet since the very beginning of their lives. Contrast that against the little hand-held transistor radios I held in 1964, utterly fascinated that I could be listening to the disc-jockey at KIST 1340 in Santa Barbara, CA while standing on the sidewalk in front of my house in Carpenteria, CA! To me,that was MIRACULOUS, which is now something so benign in the grand scheme of what we now live with, that it’s barely a blip on the evolutionary timeline of electronics and technological advancement.
So, it took the entirety of the existence of mankind up until the late 1950’s and early 1960’s to have finally asked enough questions and to have gotten the answers to them to finally prove electronic theory assumptions enough to have invented electronic circuitry, and then all of the hardware, computer chips, and networking capability to be finally able to talk to anyone else around the world directly, that is as long as both parties have the right apparatus for being able to do so.
So, I’m thinking that, somehow using all of this capability to read misinformation, or to “like” someone’s photo of their dog, or send a quick “John Dear” text before going to work isn’t exactly what the inventors envisioned when they finally had that “Ah-Ha!” moment and finalized the first computer chip or network ping.
Unfortunately, for some people, it is never enough, and their need to have power over others and to be seen and heard and thought about highly by others is so important to them that they will do anything to maintain that power. So, now our newly invented capability is being used to spread misleading and outright false information on a scale never before seen, and I now also see massive damage being done to undermine the democracy of the United States, and other democracies around the world.
I do not like . . . no, I cannot stand how divided American’s are now. The way we all live now, and how technology is utilized to fill our heads and ears nearly constantly with messages of buy me, buy this, hate these people, despise those who do these things or don’t do these things. All of it with constant noise, and chatter, and advertisements EVERYWHERE trying to convince you to part with your money, your vote, your mind, your sanity!
I have witnessed the death of conversation at the hands of texting for God’s sake! People would rather tap out cryptic messages to one another with their forefingers then effortlessly say five times more in half the time with their voice, I guess. Go figure! I never thought I would see that materialize to the level I have. Not in a million years!
Before mobile phones, let alone “smartphones,” people used wall and desk phones to call one another, talk, make dates to meet, and then go and actually do that. Yep, and we did it without phones with us as we drove to meet someone or our friends or to go to work for that matter. No, we had no real worries, we just made our plans, let others know what those plans were (most of the time), and then we just headed out into the world with no phone, GPS, Texting, Location Services, Waze, Google Maps, or anything else. We were naked and vulnerable in comparison to today. We were also happier, far more connected to other people, and accepted all of our differences enough to stand in unison as American’s, nothing more, nothing less, your politics didn’t matter and no one ever asked each other about political things-not like it is now where everyone wants to make sure you know where they stand and who their person is.
We were also not endlessly walking around carrying our semi-weighty rectangles all the time that costs a month’s rent, looking at them and then checking and rechecking, looking at that screen again, nearly constantly as we walk and talk and eat and shit and watch television and, dare I say it? Some of us even look at that damned screen while doing the deed! Just take a look around at any mall, airport, or large gathering. These days, you’ll see nearly every single man and woman, and quite a few children too looking at that rectangle at least a few times publicly even at formal gatherings. Many, if not most will be holding it constantly in plain sight and looking at it more than just about anything or anyone else.
Because we have let that rectangle become everything to us now. The calendar, your reminders, your passwords, someone’s weight watchers app that they need to log their calories into, the messaging, email, buzzing, tinging, beeping, chiming, honking, and haptic thumping that we’ve all grown accustomed to. ?? I’m no longer certain it’s worth the more serious implications that have born out of these capabilities any longer.
So much hyperbole about all the bad in the world brought to you in 4K everyday at high speed, from every angle, in slow-motion, and analyzed for every single potential implication of any given event, all brought to you by a long list of annoying advertisements interjected throughout the presentation that add to the overall noise of the experience. Everything happening at the speed of light so that one barely has any time to process what was just beamed at them. It is a barrage of distraction. It’s meant to shape how you think about the world in ways that benefit sales and profit in whatever sick ways that can be concocted, and corporations are working hard to maximize their profits, but in the process have, through technological innovation and new capabilities, begun to divide us, weaken us as a nation, and undermine all that has been sacred up until now in our history.
Social media is the worst at pitting folks against one another, but that aside, television isn’t far behind and the journalists on Fox, MSNBC, CNN, NewsMax, and more all HYPE THE DAYLIGHTS OUT OF EVERYTHING THAT PERTAINS TO THE “OTHER SIDE” and it’s all presented from the standpoint of making the viewer afraid. I’ve written about this before, but it hasn’t gotten any better in recent years, and it is also why people seem to be so much more afraid and nervous now, all the time, and about everything. But most worry about threats to our democracy coming from other Americans!
Nowadays, more and more, I’m finding myself thinking about the connections between where the great nation of the United States of America was back in the first few decades of my life, before the advent of technology, and where we are as a nation now, almost 60 years later. It certainly seems that the promise of technology is only a partial success, and for every success that can be quantified, there are just as many downsides that have manifested, like the spreading of lies and having them be believed by enough people to have a negative impact on our democracy.
It’s amazing and convenient as heck to be able to do secure online banking, but it’s annoying and even potentially deadly if someone hacks into your system and holds it for ransom, or turns off the breathing machine you’re hooked up to in the den.
It’s great to be able to file your taxes quickly, securely, and conveniently from your kitchen table on a laptop or tablet computer, but what if that same technology enables the planning of another January 6 insurrection, or allows for other nefarious types to hijack the next election in dark way that allow for the overtaking of the United States by Authoritarian, Fascist rulers?
It is a painful realization for me that all of this capability that came along with “technology,” is now being used mainly to spread lies, propaganda, and misinformation, or a million different ways of selling you something or getting you to part with another $5/month.
Ads are everywhere now and all the time. They are embedded into even the smallest image or at the bottom of what we are watching on any screen.
Cameras everywhere in order to keep people in line for fear of incarceration.
People photographing and video capturing everyone around them all the time with handheld devices that are, ironically also simultaneously keeping track of their own movement, heartbeat, and stride length.
It almost seems as if modern life itself is rapidly becoming “Life as a subscription.” Everything you want, your diet, your exercise plan, your audio and video entertainment choices, your sexual preferences and icky fetishes can all be just the way you like, all the time when you want them, along with a complete save list, recommendations, even trailers of “life to yet to come,” all for $4.99/month each.
Like little add-on life preference modules for you. A curated life, courtesy of preselected thoughts and opinions, via off-the-shelf content from your global conglomerate as either a-la-carte, mix-and match for you to choose from, or preselected complete lifestyle packages. It’s a mine field out here now, right?!
Anyway, before Putin declares himself God of the universe and threatens to nuke the whole world while professing to be able to be the only country left on the planet that will survive, I’m going to take a serious break and return to my formerly sane roots of yesteryear some, and eschew some of the tech for now.
I will hold real books more often, listen to silence more, rediscover the joy of listening to a 33-1/3 LP again, and give my mind the quiet it craves so that I can return to a more sane existence with much less alarmist news, constant noise and ads, without their squeaking and banging the big drum of fear and screaming their messages of division and hatred of other Americans to me all the time.
I am also re-evaluating just how much more I want to continue spending any time with television news, television programs and programming with all of the constant noise and ads, and even the crap oozing out of Hollywood that they continue calling movies that are mostly only stupid dialogue, stereotyped personalities, music that drowns out the crappy dialogue, and tons of computer graphics for filler.
Technology is here to stay, that’s for sure. Yes, it can be, and often is very useful and has done much that could even be classified as “miraculously good.” However, for me, I now see the dark potential use of technology equally along with the benefits, and will from here on out take a much more cautionary approach to how I use television programming and news that pound out ideas and information that can shape my mind permanently.
At the very least, the amount of media from any source I choose to consume will become far more limited, and also chosen with greater care and far more premeditation, rather than just a mindless, knee-jerk, habitual response of collapsing into a chair and clicking on the idiot box and start flipping channels.
It will be a dark day if technology is used to bring down the very nation that invented it.
Facts and truth are the foundation of everything.