Technology. It's a puzzlement

I’ve been watching the reports about the Consumer Electronics Show on
Eyewitless News. The reporters say the show has flooded (maybe overflowed,
uhhh…overflown?) the largest convention center in the world. I’m amazed
at the things they’re showing. Smart jewelry, smart appliances and whole
smart houses, cars that drive themselves, drones for all seasons and purposes.

Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I’m a technological nincompoop.
An extraordinarily kind Ph.D. candidate named Xochitl Aviso posts my blogs
(including the pictures) on
FeminismandReligion.com for me. I am able to post my blogs, new Found
Goddesses, and pages from
Pagan Every Day here only because I was very well taught. One of
my jokes about myself is that even though I hold an advanced degree (well,
the “terminal degree,” which means I’m terminally educated) I am still
educable. Of course, sometimes I have to explain what that means: “capable
of being educated” or “fit to be educated.” (It usually refers to people
with learning disabilities.) The “duc” syllable comes from the Latin
educo, “I lead forth,” which also gave us “duke.” (And, alas, I just
found a website about “it’s [
sic.] etymology.” Oy. The world needs more competent editors.)

There’s a whole universe of stuff I don’t even know I don’t know. Oh,
sure, I can more or less use my iPad. I look up the actors in movies on
IMDb. I do email on it. I swipe around Google Maps to find out how to get
from here to there. (Note: I didn’t purchase the iPad; I won it in a drawing.)
But have I added any new apps? Not on your life. Nor do I add new apps
to my phone. I do the occasional text message on it, but I don’t use it
for email. It’s a telephone. I keep having this weird feeling that apps
are dangerous. They’ll get me so confused I’ll walk into walls. They’ll
invite hackers into my minuscule part of the universe.




Of course, you need to remember that I’m the one who thinks that when
my carbon monoxide detector flashes in the middle of the night when I’m
headed for the bathroom, it’s a tiny flashbulb in a tiny camera, and there’s
a teenager in Kiev who is taking pictures of me in my jammies. When I proposed
this absurdity in a blog last year, I got replies from smart people who
told me I was out of my mind. Granted.




But why shouldn’t there be a camera in my CO2 detector? They did cleverer
things than that on
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (NBC, 1964-68) and
Mission Impossible (CBS, 1966-73, ABC, 1988-90). And—oh, yeah!--on

Get Smart (CBS, 1966-70). If you’re not old enough to have watched these shows,
BTW, look ’em up. Netflix has ’em all, so you can watch ’em  right
now. They may be cold war adventure/spy series, but they were not only
great fun but they also had a lot of influence on the “real world.” (There’s
an U.N.C.L.E. exhibition in the Reagan Library.) Today’s
smart phones and other
smart devices are of course named in honor of Agent 86’s shoe phone.




We’ve got all those reports on the news and in the media about drones,
too. Not just the live video games that drop bombs on people in foreign
lands, but people flying them around for sport. Ideas that include Amazon
starting (sometime) to use drones to deliver our goodies. I’m beginning
to think maybe I should write a fairy tale about drones. Maybe they’re
really brownies. Or
Wee Free Men (see Terry Pratchett’s oeuvre). In armor. Stay tuned……….