Resistance is Futile
by modern living editor Jason Capodimonte
December, 1983, is etched on my memory as the time that I got a calculator which could calculate square roots for free. I got it as a premium for buying a couple of shirts. Fewer than ten years before that, a calculator which could calculate square roots had cost about $250 (or a grand or so In 2007 money). The big thing about those $250 calculators had been that you could pick them up in one hand. A few years before that a strong man still had to use both arms to pick up any calculator that could work out a square root. I recall being astounded around that time by a demonstration of a calculator which could work out a correlation coefficient completely on the keyboard. It took up about six square feet of table (0.5662 square metres).
And by 1983 they were giving them away at Simpsons. The calculator I got couldn’t do all the things the old $250 calculators could, but neither could the earlier behemoths. And I did have a use for a calculator with a square root key, and not only did I no longer have to take out a bank loan to afford one, I didn’t even have to reach into my pocket.
I was reminded of this the other day when I received a flash drive as a premium. It wasn’t the world’s greatest flash drive – only 512 megabytes, while the less-than-cutting-edge one I carry around with me holds two gigabytes. On the other hand, the free one can hold the equivalent of over 350 of those gigantic floppies we used to carry data around back in the late 80s. I quickly found a use for it.
Technology just lulls us to sleep. One minute it’s amazing us with its miraculous capacities and the next it’s so commonplace we take it for granted and the next it’s taking over our lives without us even noticing.
Before cheap calculators, people could do arithmetic, or at least more people could than can do it today. They used to be able to make change. Now they just give you the money that the cash register tells them to give you.
And before computer technology took over our lives, we used to get service. I used to:
Today, however, I:
- go into the bank,
- hand over my bank book and a withdrawal slip,
- wait while the teller wrote the transaction in the bank book,
- get some money.
It’s the same everywhere. Everywhere you’re waiting for the computer. Instead of being served, we serve the machines. I suppose most would argue that we are actually serving the machines’ masters. I don’t know. Given the dependence of the economy on machines these days, I think maybe the machines’ supposed masters are serving them, too.
- go into the bank,
- hand over my bank book (withdrawal slip no longer necessary),
- ask for money,
- wait for the teller to punch the branch number and account number into the computer,
- wait for the teller to punch the transaction into the computer,
- wait for the bank book to be printed out,
- sign a receipt,
- wait while the teller swipes his or her card in the cash dispenser and punches in the denominations I asked for, and
- get the money.
Hallelujah! we have reached the promised land! The land in which there are no masters! Only machines.
Resistance is Futile © John FitzGerald, 2007
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