38 lines
1.9 KiB
Markdown
38 lines
1.9 KiB
Markdown
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title: My technological flag in the sand
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date: 2022-10-28T14:59:00-0600
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---
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Elon Musk just bought Twitter. It got me thinking about Twitter, something that
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comes up a lot, because a lot happens there in 2022, and some of that filters
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through to me.
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I've long known that the day would come when I would just not be willing to
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accept some sort of societal change, and this would be what defined me as an old
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person. This isn't some unique thing I'd be doing: this is a time-honored human
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trait. Previous generations have put their flags in the sand by rejecting polyphonic
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sacred music, rejecting automobiles, rejecting email, and rejecting smartphones.
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Today I realized what my flag in the sand is going to be. I am not going to
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become active on Twitter, or Instagram, or Facebook, or Myspace, or LiveJournal.
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I see no personal benefit to adopting the newer technologies, and I see a lot of
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personal benefits to avoiding them.
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I'm not doing this because I think it's just a fad that humanity will move past.
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No: now that we have it, and are beginning to realize how it actually works,
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we're having to figure out how to use it responsibly as a species. This is a
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pretty familiar story for any new technology. I'm just deciding I'm not
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interested in being a part of that process.
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At some point, some related technology will come along and sweep me up with it.
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It will be awkward for me, and young people will recognize that I'm just no good
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at it. They'll wonder how any human being could be so inept at something so
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obvious. It will become a mental shortcut for the elderly that they are awkward
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or near-inept at this technology, and people who can't get it will band together
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and discuss how pointless it is and how they just can't understand why anyone
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needs it. We'll watch with some degree of sadness as our way of life dies with
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us.
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When you hear writers and philosophers talking about how limited lifespans are a
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gift to humanity, they're talking about this sort of thing.
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