Yes, it's my birthday, but I'm want to keep this as narcissism-free as possible.
As anybody with opposable thumbs living in the twenty-first century will know birthdays bring congratulatory messages generated by dates saved into Facebook and the like from friends and corporate behemoths wanting your business alike. What could possibly be wrong with that?
Actually, my point isn't about the corporate behemoths; I know I'm not really in the thoughts of Pizza Express. It's the rarely-seen friends and acquaintances who ping off a message based on an automated prod from their digital manservant. It feels so... contractual obligation.
But wasn't it ever thus? When a card arrived through the post (if you're under twenty-five ask a grown-up) from anybody other than immediate family I never thought that that was all their own work. No, of course the date was written down in a diary and without that the card would never have arrived. So what's changed? Other than the fact that we no longer have to remember to look at the diary, it reminds us...
But is that what I'm objecting to? The fact that the burden of having to remember to check is taken off our shoulders? That you'll no longer be able to tell those who remembered to check from those that didn't (maybe because I'd always be in the latter camp). Is this one reason more why life feels ever-more diluted, downgraded, made greyer and blander?
But shouldn't it sound like progress, never having to remember to check? Where else could we apply this principle? I could really do with bins that put themselves out. And (being male) I'm hugely reluctant to go to the doctor - could my body decide for me? From where I'm sitting I can see shelves of books, a pile of DVDs, and a PVR that always has about 30 hours for me to catch up with. There must be a better way than going through them line by line, frame by frame? Can technology distill them, give me the impression of having read and watched them?
But isn't that it? Am I not wishing somebody to live my life for me? Given life's inherent pointlessness (feel free to argue teleology if you like, but I've never bought it) it's absurd to try to create a short-cut to a non-event. I may as well be a Cartesian brain in a vat...
Which, on your birthday, sounds like not a bad idea...
As anybody with opposable thumbs living in the twenty-first century will know birthdays bring congratulatory messages generated by dates saved into Facebook and the like from friends and corporate behemoths wanting your business alike. What could possibly be wrong with that?
Actually, my point isn't about the corporate behemoths; I know I'm not really in the thoughts of Pizza Express. It's the rarely-seen friends and acquaintances who ping off a message based on an automated prod from their digital manservant. It feels so... contractual obligation.
But wasn't it ever thus? When a card arrived through the post (if you're under twenty-five ask a grown-up) from anybody other than immediate family I never thought that that was all their own work. No, of course the date was written down in a diary and without that the card would never have arrived. So what's changed? Other than the fact that we no longer have to remember to look at the diary, it reminds us...
But is that what I'm objecting to? The fact that the burden of having to remember to check is taken off our shoulders? That you'll no longer be able to tell those who remembered to check from those that didn't (maybe because I'd always be in the latter camp). Is this one reason more why life feels ever-more diluted, downgraded, made greyer and blander?
But shouldn't it sound like progress, never having to remember to check? Where else could we apply this principle? I could really do with bins that put themselves out. And (being male) I'm hugely reluctant to go to the doctor - could my body decide for me? From where I'm sitting I can see shelves of books, a pile of DVDs, and a PVR that always has about 30 hours for me to catch up with. There must be a better way than going through them line by line, frame by frame? Can technology distill them, give me the impression of having read and watched them?
But isn't that it? Am I not wishing somebody to live my life for me? Given life's inherent pointlessness (feel free to argue teleology if you like, but I've never bought it) it's absurd to try to create a short-cut to a non-event. I may as well be a Cartesian brain in a vat...
Which, on your birthday, sounds like not a bad idea...
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