1.
I’ve been really interested in smartphones lately. My Verizon contract is expiring soon, and I’m thrilled that I’ll have the option to upgrade to phones like the new droid, the blackberry and the iPhone. For the past four years, I’ve been stuck with these tiny, cheaply made cell-phones that can’t do anything except call people. Now, I’m finally going to get my next chance at purchasing something legit.
I’m the polar opposite of a technophobe. Though I’m admittedly bad at figuring out computers, and though I can’t really afford most of the electronics I wish I could be sporting, I love technology. As I browse Verizon’s webpage and see the various upgrades available to me, I’m practically in heaven. I can’t help but start thinking about what the next big thing could be. The iPhone, for example, is a digital camera, MP3 player, and internet device all in one. When I rode the bus into school in highschool, I used to carry a CD player with two or three CDs, my cellphone, and a couple of books. With the iPhone or any of the other smart phones, I could have the phone, my entire CD collection and my library of sci-fi and fantasy with me in the palm of my hand.
Seriously. The iPhone and most of these other phones weigh less than five ounces. How can you do better than that?
To be honest, though, all of this stuff is still kind of new to me. Though the iPhone and the Zune have been out for several years, I still have yet to purchase either. The Amazon Kindle is on my wish list, too, but that’s something else that I’m probably not going to be purchasing. What’s the point of having a Kindle, anyway, or an IPod, when the smartphone does it all in one? In all honesty, the iPhone is far from perfect, according to what lots of people have told me. It’s less of an MP3 player than the iPod, but it’s still a pretty good one. It’s less of a reading device than the Kindle, but it’s still pretty good. The internet isn’t comparable to the kind of internet you get on notebooks, but, again, it’s still pretty good. So, obviously, there’s still some room for improvement. Why buy now when there’s always something a little bit better on the way?
2.
One of my best friends from highschool, John, considers himself to be what’s called a Transhumanist. The World Transhumanist Association, now called Humanity+, is an organization that wants people to be able to be, for lack of a more apt description, better than well. Though I’d like to avoid caricaturing the beliefs of people like my friend John, I’d say that Humanity+ is the kind of organization that wants to ensure that when the stars are right, your government has granted you the liberty to graft your iPhone into the back of your head and communicate telepathically with others who have opted to do the same thing.
John and I started being friends in high school because we were both kind of interested in dorkier things. Though, initially, our interests ranged widely from science, science fiction and literature to anime and video-game inspired philosophies, John graduated and went into the sciences while I stuck with the humanities-- more due to a perceived lack of mathematical skill than anything else.
John and I still see each other relatively often, though, and on any given day he might mention something that’s called the G.R.I.N. technologies- Genetics, Robotics, Informaton, and Nanotech. These fairly recent technologies make a plethora of promises. Genetics can one day eliminate disease. Robotics can ensure cheap manufacturing and put an end to unfair labor practices, as well as help people who’ve been in life changing accidents. Information tech like the internet and cell-phone can be improved and made into insurance against corrupt authoritative government, despite the seemingly authoritarian leanings of my own Verizon. Finally, there’s Nanotech. Nanotech is the most far off, and the most difficult for me to understand, but seems to have more promise than even the rest of the technologies-- for better or worse.
The two of us generally find enough common ground to stand on. Despite being a science guy, he’s pretty well read, easily just as well read as me even though I’ve devoted the last four years to learning literature and language. And despite me not being a science guy at all, I am interested. I’ve told John plenty of times that, though I don’t know a lot about future tech, I’m a believer. I don’t see how anything that liberates people can be that big of a bad thing.
What surprises me, though, is John’s foresight. He, unlike me, has not yet succumbed to the current batch of smart-phones. Surprisingly, his cellphone is even lousier than mine. I want to call him cheap, but it’d be a copout. It’s like he already knows something better and less expensive is on the way.
3.
My entire life, I’ve been surrounded by my Anglo-Irish Catholic relatives who assert that “the world would be a better place if everyone was a Christian.” I’ve always wondered about what owning things like iPhones meant for Christians. My parent’s families are full of what’d I’d consider upper-middle class white collar types who go to better schools than I do- but, to be honest, all of us own nice things. I haven’t gone to mass regularly for ages, but I’ve always been curious as to how accruing personal property and owning nice things is answerable to that line in the bible about getting into heaven wealthy like getting a camel through Eel’s Eye.
Even if their Christianity is more out of convenience than anything else, though, these people are decidedly right leaning. They are disillusioned youths who grew up to be soft libertarians. Never will you hear them utter that technology is the answer to a better planet like John will, or higher taxes like my friend Pez the socialist will, or doing anything other than going to work and abiding the important laws. Their excuse is their religion, even if their religious experience is mostly inactive and takes the back seat to the rest of their lives.
I like them- I love them all, actually- but I feel different enough from them, even if we all agree that the iPhone is a fantastic device that we all want. For awhile, I thought that I might be a socialist. I even joined a group on Campus and went to a few protests. I found that while that label might apply to me in some circumstances, it certainly doesn’t apply in all of them.
4.
I’ve found that I, too, am a religious person. In her book The God of Small Things, Arudhati Roy makes a creative comparison between Christianity and Marx that I still remember clearly, even though I read the book at least two years ago. Communism is like Christianity, she says. Both are obstacle courses with prizes at the end. All one needs to do is replace Marx with God, and Satan with the bourgeoisie, Heaven with Marx’s ideal society, and there you have it.
Roy could have just was well substituted Marxism with Technology. People like my friend John and Humanity+ have, in some ways, done what religion used to do before God became (in Joyce’s words) “a personal God.” But who are the believers? Authoritarian Verizon clearly isn’t a believer, even though they sell this stuff. Same goes for Apple—there’s nothing technologically “liberating” about a computer that you need a unique set of screws only the Mac store have to open up and mess with. My relatives aren’t believers either. Nice cell-phones and computers and being able to afford expensive ways of combating cancer might be trendy, but they don’t mean anything if they support these things in ways which help break down class barriers. Christianity tried (and failed) to create a new system of equality. Democracy tried (and failed) to create a new system of equality. Marxism tried (and failed) to eliminate class boundaries. But nothing is more capable of flattening the world than cheap technology everyone can afford and everyone has access too.
I, too, believe that technology is the asnwer. I pay top dollar for it, too, whenever I can, regardless of whether I’m buying the iPhone or an electronic copy of a new novel or record. Whether my consumerism validates my beliefs or is a reflection of my own insecurity about it, though-- I’m not really sure.
