I'm darned if I can find where he or any of us are "coerced" into
making changes in the technology that we use to extend our reach.
I'm quite pleased to find an ever widening array of better hammers
within reach both physically and financially to make my life easier
and more productive. I have a DAT recorder very similar to the one
he described. It sits collecting dust much as his does. The reason
is simple - a much easier and more flexible tool that made that
recorder obsolete - at 10% of the cost. I'm sure it's possible,
perhaps even common to make poorly thought out choices about
technology purchases but then it's equally possible to make bad
choices about can openers. I don't see any of those choices as being
compulsory.
I think much of his lament is off the mark.
What is compulsory about our technology choices is the blindness of
the distribution market. We have a cornucopia of plastic and metal
flowing to us in a never ending stream of cardboard and styrofoam
packaging. Regardless of our use of those tools ( and our free
markets let us decide what the best applications are ) we have no
free market in what to do with the gizmos, tools, gadgets and junk
when we are done with them. The flow of tools and / or toys ends in
a cesspool of consumer wallowing. It fails to evaporate in to the
rain clouds of future production in any meaningful way. The total
cost of consumer goods is not accounted for in our economy. The
landfill costs, the healthcare costs from toxic chemicals, the
transport costs for moving the semi reuseable electronic junk to bulk
shipping ports for disassembly in Dickensian labor conditions in
third world countries - none of these are covered in the bargain
price of a $300 computer at Circuit City or a $500 mega screen TV at
Walmart - nor even in a top priced Apple laptop. Those are covered
in our income taxes, our childrens income taxes, perhaps even our
grand childrens very lives.
Lets carp about the things that really hurt.
At 8:31 AM -0500 12/8/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I enjoyed Harvey Reid's rants, all valid points in my view. He
remarks on the money and time we all invest when we are coerced into
abandoning a perfectly function machine and technology for the
latest and greatest.
http://www.woodpecker.com/news/news08/newsletter_08p2.html
-scroll down to Techo-prisoners-
--
E. Riley Casey
Silver Spring MD
301-608-2180 ph
301-608-0789 fx
301-440-2923 shoe phone
Entertainment Sound Production ( http://www.ESPsound.com )
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