To thine own true self, be
To thine own true self, be
The Longest Day...
Finally, after some tinkering and getting a new host server, TTOTS,B has moved from the soon-to-be defunct MobileMe to bishopblogging.org. It no longer is just a pointer — it’s my domain name!
A dear friend, who designs glorious websites, once told me that website design is like drawing on water. A lovely image... whereas the journalist Jim Bittermann of CNN, after taping an interview with me, said, “Now it’s forever, on the Internet.”
Forever drawing on water? I can change previous entries, add new ones of course. But “forever” depends on the Net itself. Having to change ISPs or never see your blog again on the WWW undercuts infinity. On the other hand, somewhere, apparently, there is a copy of every email I have ever sent. As long as there is an Internet…
Which brings me to one of my favorite rants. We take technology for granted, but it has both emancipated us and enslaved us. Anyone who remembers “party lines” — not ideology but shared telephone line — knows how far we have come with smartphones. At the same time, without my smartphone I am disarmed. I recently lost my iPad2, and was amazed at how inadequate I felt. But I haven’t changed… have I? It’s worth re-reading Martin Heidegger’s essay “The Question Concerning Technology” (Die Frage nach der Technik). Heidegger’s point is that past a certain point, our technology controls us.
That is worth remembering when we criticize our ancestors for all their real and retrojected evils. They had different tech. What would we have done, for example, if our communal survival depended on having lots of children, as theirs did? Does anyone really think our ways of marrying, straight and gay, would cut it under that kind of pressure? Would women have the chances they have today without electrical power? For that matter, would most men?
No matter what happens to humanity, the Earth will revolve around the sun for billions more years — and today will always be the Longest Day.
Our technology blinds us if we let it. Ironic to write that forever on water…
21 juin 2012