Route 66

A nonet

Automobiles — American Dreams.
Open roads to national parks.
Driver's License unlocks goals —
teenage freedom on wheels.
Family and friends
find freeway fuel.
Where to go?
Now it's
phones.

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Garden of the Gods, Colorado, USA. 35mm, ISO 400. You can drive this entire park without leaving your car. Shot by the author, who was out of his car at the time — taking pictures of domesticated American animal — the automobile.

I used to believe that technology was neutral. A hammer could be a weapon or a tool depending on the user. Then I read Marshall McLuhan. I no longer believe this. Around the same time, I started to fall out of love with technology.

As a prior hacker, I think I had a love-hate with technology anyway. Many people think their technological devices are like hammers and they do one thing. This is not true.

Most devices have inside them a computer. And computers, by design and theory, which I still find fascinating but no longer wish to discuss — I kinda do want to discuss but I will restrain myself — Computers by design and theory can do anything any other computer can do. I will not elaborate at this time.

So I would tell people that a life saving medical device can in fact, be used to infect the hospital. What I learned though is you can’t tell someone this. The clients abstractly know that it’s possible — I had to show them. And show them I did to many pale faces in board rooms.

One of Marshall McLuhan’s more famous sayings is that “environments are invisible.” David Foster Wallace, who wrote a large novel called Infinite Jest which is applied, uncredited-McLuhan, gave a famous speech in which he told a joke. The same joke that McLuhan used:

Two fish are swimming and they come up to this other fish who says, “Hey Boys, how the water?” The two fish swim on a bit and then say, “what the hell is water?”

Phones are so ubiquitous now they are the environment. Complaining abstractly does not change the needle. We are swimming in phones.

The automobile, a technological device, enabled a kind of freedom for American teenagers. There’s lots of examples but the movie American Graffiti comes to mind. It was the device that made you an adult. Once obtained, you can go anywhere.

The device that ends your childhood now is the phone. Once obtained, you don’t move. What I am unsure of today is what exactly marks the beginning of adulthood.

I asked my kids if they would rather have a phone or a car. My older one thought about and said, a phone because Mommy’s car doesn’t have GPS. This made me sad a bit — I have some work to do, but I respect the logic in her answer. My younger one said that she wanted a cupcake.

A cupcake is not neutral. When shared with your Dad it is pure joy, topped with sprinkles. After eating a cupcake, you are happy. Unlike using your phone.

Children love to emulate their parents — this is the key phrase of a famous anti-smoking ad. We can complain about children using phones, but there are so many adults using them. And children look to adults to figure out the world and can we blame them for thinking that there-must-be-something-to-these-phones-because-all-these-adults-have-them. If Taylor Swift announced she was leaving her phone — yes, we now have relationships with devices — it might cause some reflection.

You don’t have to speak to set an example. How you decide to live can be as poetic (or not) as a nonet. And people, especially younger people than you, notice.

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*For the record I do have the phone, I’m not holier-than-thou. I do try to not have it on me in the home and keep it away when I’m in front of my kids as best I can. I’ve told them I don’t want to do this and they call me out when they see me, which, is more often than I’d like.