Technology - the two-faced monster

THE GOOD

The Book and the Nook
     William Caxton is rotating in his grave at 500 r.p.m. as I type, for a couple of reasons.  One, I'm typing using technology he couldn't begin to imagine, to produce instantly-readable print in seconds, whereas he'd have to go at it with a printing press and blocks of type and ink and shizzle*.  Two, I now have a Nook, a variety of electronic book that holds hundreds of books in it's memory, so Bill's kidskin-bound vellum pages are in danger of marching off the same cliff that the Dodo and cassette tapes ran off.
     Sorry Bill.


"Observe, madame, Mister Caxton's Mark Four Printing Press.  Also good for drying clothes, making potato pancakes or torturing domestic servants"

The 21st Century's Best Gadget Ever
     The I-Pod.
     There is no argument here.
     Truly, I would need a wheelbarrow to carry around the CD collection I have, except thanks to the miracle of digital technology, a device no bigger than a mobile phone allows me to have the music minus the wheelbarrow**.

Stop Press:  I-Pod delivers an end to strife worldwide.
(It might happen!)

     
THE BAD

The Mobile Phone
     This wretched little horror allows everyone you don't want any contact with to pester you endlessly or until the battery dies.  If I had my way - and there is still a possibility of Conrad As World Leader - they would be thrown into the maws of concrete mixers filled with jagged steel ballast and the resultant metallic slag poured into the foundations of prisons reserved for those who mourn their passing.

 Hamster-Powered I.T.
     Yes, when equipment hangs, crashes, freezes, goes slow, goes stop, runs backwards, runs away, runs down, runs you down, gets you down, goes to town or has a breakdown - that's the point you realise you would have done better and faster with a King George IV Typewriter, two cans connected by a piece of string and a loudhailer.

As used in "Misery", unrealistically.  Anyone hit by one of these cast-iron monsters ain't getting back up again.

  
So - Tanks?
     Hmmm.  Well, you've been good.

There's a toaster in there somewhere

   No, not an Apollo LEM cockpit.  The interior of an M1 Abrams tank.  Wonder where they fit the people in? 

* Yes.  "Shizzle".  BOOJUM! - street literate, innit.

**Unknown in Petrine Russia of the 18th Century.  Peter the Great had a wonderful time being wheeled around stately gardens in one.  Yes honestly.