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ExamForce :: Article Archive :: Newsletter Article
 The Cert Times: IT Edition Article Archive
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| Deck the Halls with Balls of Snarky (B1N@RY N@T10N (A.J. Axline)) |
This month, I would like to share some of the technology items that made me enthusiastic this year. I would like to do that... except, I'm having trouble remembering anything relevant or noteworthy. I mean, what the hell happened in science this year? Did we cure any major diseases? Did we send anything to another planet that wasn't an overdeveloped RC Tonka truck? Wasn't the top scientific achievement this year the creation of toothpaste that makes your teeth so white, they become transluscent?
Let's face it, technology struck out in 2008. Chances are if you saw a news story about a scientific breakthrough this year, it read something like this:
"Scientists at the Whoosy Whatsit Research Institute have discovered something that may end up helping people in another decade or two, providing that scientists can figure out a way to help people with this amazing discovery in the next twenty years."
'Lame Ass' doesn't begin to cover the year in science. Hell, even the Hadron Collider, the invention that some experts predicted would tear open our dimension like the seat of a cheap pair of pants on Oprah Winfrey, turned out to be the world's biggest, most expensive Daisy air rifle. Sales of "No Hardon for Hadron" t-shirts were brisk on the MIT campus, I hear.
As far as consumer products go, 2008 was pretty anemic. Cell phones got more feature-rich. MP3 players got more storage. Laptops got less expensive. Someone invented a cell phone-MP3 playing laptop. And, the batteries powering these mobile devices pretty much sat in place and refused to budge an inch in performance. Lithium ion isn't going anywhere, folks. Remember all of that talk about fuel cells? You know, back in 2000? Yeah. Enjoy your two hours and forty minutes of laptop use... that is, without WLAN, Bluetooth, or running any software more graphically intensive than Asteroids.
The year in home computers was completely lethargic. For yet another year, you could be a Windows XP Luddite, a Windows Vista masochist, a Mac elitist, or a Linux... person who spends too much time posting snide comments about how great Linux is in response to any OS-related news story on any tech forum of choice.
2008 was the nadir of the new millennium when it came to science and technology. We have nothing to show for this year. We don't have an inexpensive, mass-produced electric car in North America. We don't have a viable energy source that isn't based on some form of dead dinosaurs. Cancer? Still there, still fatal, still being treated by injecting people with poison. Dentists are still drilling holes in teeth and filling them with goop. If humanity were having an end-of-year Science Fair, the best we could do is glue a 3G iPhone to a cardboard backing and wait for our blue ribbon. BTW, it's quite revealing that several pundits referred to the 3G iPhone as the "Jesus Phone"... because, it seems that the new definition of a technological saviour for mankind is a cell phone that can surf the Net and play Spore.
Folks, I like gadgets. I really do. But, I recognize that gadgets aren't going to create a future for our ever-growing population in a world of ever-shrinking energy resources. We need more than iPods, and boner pills, and white teeth. We need to stop throwing money at diseases, and start curing them. We need to start thinking about how to live on other worlds, because this planet isn't going to be enough to keep all of us alive... and the planet will start letting us know that in increasingly more violent and bloody ways than we're seeing now.
Vector and I offer you our best wishes for this holiday season, and all the best in 2009.
Cheers,
A.J. Axline
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Posted by
nam on 19/12/2008 10:16 |
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