Fernando Cassia wrote: > do whatever you want but do NOT take my netbook, wi-fi, and cell phone from > me.
Fernando, was your life so bad before you had these? Maybe you're young and don't remember the era before such devices and technologies were invented, but it's unclear that their introduction have improved the quality of our lives significantly. A classic case is the introduction of word processing. Subjectively, I love it (among other things, it improved my typing ability, because I don't have to worry as much about typos). But objectively, its introduction corresponded to a cut-back in secretarial services (so that professors such as myself have to do all of the typing ourselves) and increased quality standards (as academic journals now required that an author do almost all of the editing). Of course, there's a micro-macro problem here: because of the cut-back in secretarial services and the increase in standards, if an individual gives up word processing, it's is a disaster, even though its introduction was no big improvement in the larger scheme of things. Along with increased consumption of word-processing technology, we also have seen a rise in necessary consumption standards (needs). -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
