Bakelite and telephones
Sometimes the sheer amount of technology that surrounds us makes me reel. This sensation is strongest whenever I decant from my train carriage in the morning into the station, I guess because I’m mobbing from a world that includes me, my book and, if I’m feeling racy, a coffee into a world where you are assaulted with bright, loud advertising and announcements.
Before they banned smoking in public places, people would get off the carriages while simultaneously lighting up. Now they simultaneously light up their mobiles and tell work they will be there in ten minutes – great, just enough time to clear up the party that breaks out whenever the sort of person who ‘phones their work to tell them they will be there in ten minutes is not there.
The sheer number of high tech gadgets is bewildering. Not that I don’t enjoy them, like everyone else on planet earth who doesn’t give their address as ‘Number 1, the jungle’, I’ve got a mobile and an iPod. I really enjoy my iPod, not always playing it but knowing I can use it as a sonic screen if disturbed by conversation on the train that is loud, stoopid or, as is usually the case, both. Of course, using it as a sonic sword would be even better.
All these people on their mobiles all the time – wonder what it would look like if we could see the lines of communication reaching out from ‘phone to ‘phone, criss-crossing the street, penetrating steel and glass and concrete and flesh – imagine, impaled on txt mssges and inane conversation. Certainly in our cities it would be as intrusive as the roads that the traffic pours (or trickle) along.
Looking at the tremendous amount of consumption happening all the time in the cities, you wonder how it’s sustainable – who the hell is producing all that is needed to get a carton of juice onto the shelf at the supermarket – the exotic fruit themselves, juices, then packaged then transported then stored in a chiller cabinet – just so somebody can buy it, schlurp it and discard the package to stay in landfill for a million years. Sometimes I think that humanity at the start of the 21st Century is not at the peak of civilization after all, that we are in fact teetering on the edge of collective oblivion and that out decline into decadence has in fact started but we’re all too distracted to notice.
We’re even discarding modernistic words. A few days ago I read the phrase ’information superhighway’. Once upon a time this was a phrase that oozed modernity, now it’s as dated as the hairstyle of the wife of a Mercury programme astronaut. Other words have gone the same way. Bakelite used to be the apex of modern style, now it’s antique. Plastic is going the same way – once upon a time if something was describes as being made of rough, durable plastic, that would be so cool. Not so sure any more.
Maybe it’s a feature of getting older, being less and less open to the suggestion of ad men who tell you to consume for the sake of it, and the realisation that some things should last longer than a few years. Even royal marriages have a short shelf life these days.
As for suggestions of words that describe modern life now but will date quickly – ‘blog’ has to be a candidate. Surely in a few years the blog will be rolled up with your myface entry and your video log and on-line photo collection in one great big mish-mash that will be your digital reflection on-line. Which means ‘web 2.0’ will probably have faded from memory by then too.
Neither word, of course, is as charming as ‘bakelite’.
Before they banned smoking in public places, people would get off the carriages while simultaneously lighting up. Now they simultaneously light up their mobiles and tell work they will be there in ten minutes – great, just enough time to clear up the party that breaks out whenever the sort of person who ‘phones their work to tell them they will be there in ten minutes is not there.
The sheer number of high tech gadgets is bewildering. Not that I don’t enjoy them, like everyone else on planet earth who doesn’t give their address as ‘Number 1, the jungle’, I’ve got a mobile and an iPod. I really enjoy my iPod, not always playing it but knowing I can use it as a sonic screen if disturbed by conversation on the train that is loud, stoopid or, as is usually the case, both. Of course, using it as a sonic sword would be even better.
All these people on their mobiles all the time – wonder what it would look like if we could see the lines of communication reaching out from ‘phone to ‘phone, criss-crossing the street, penetrating steel and glass and concrete and flesh – imagine, impaled on txt mssges and inane conversation. Certainly in our cities it would be as intrusive as the roads that the traffic pours (or trickle) along.
Looking at the tremendous amount of consumption happening all the time in the cities, you wonder how it’s sustainable – who the hell is producing all that is needed to get a carton of juice onto the shelf at the supermarket – the exotic fruit themselves, juices, then packaged then transported then stored in a chiller cabinet – just so somebody can buy it, schlurp it and discard the package to stay in landfill for a million years. Sometimes I think that humanity at the start of the 21st Century is not at the peak of civilization after all, that we are in fact teetering on the edge of collective oblivion and that out decline into decadence has in fact started but we’re all too distracted to notice.
We’re even discarding modernistic words. A few days ago I read the phrase ’information superhighway’. Once upon a time this was a phrase that oozed modernity, now it’s as dated as the hairstyle of the wife of a Mercury programme astronaut. Other words have gone the same way. Bakelite used to be the apex of modern style, now it’s antique. Plastic is going the same way – once upon a time if something was describes as being made of rough, durable plastic, that would be so cool. Not so sure any more.
Maybe it’s a feature of getting older, being less and less open to the suggestion of ad men who tell you to consume for the sake of it, and the realisation that some things should last longer than a few years. Even royal marriages have a short shelf life these days.
As for suggestions of words that describe modern life now but will date quickly – ‘blog’ has to be a candidate. Surely in a few years the blog will be rolled up with your myface entry and your video log and on-line photo collection in one great big mish-mash that will be your digital reflection on-line. Which means ‘web 2.0’ will probably have faded from memory by then too.
Neither word, of course, is as charming as ‘bakelite’.
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