I believe in writing about technology as natural history; to observe and document changes in the world we live in, to better describe the forces that shape those changes. I suppose I see technology as inhuman – just as the natural world is inhuman, and oblivious to us all. But I also see technology as definitively human: a reflection of our emotions and our needs, and our attempts to be more humane than the chaotic world we have been dropped into.
I don’t understand why, as writers, we are so often forced to describe technology in the language of the market, as consumers, as cataloguers of a pile of unconnected, unemotional things. It’s as though the only descriptions we can read of the countryside were written by estate agents, eager to sell us a farm.
I haven’t always liked what Robert X. Cringely has written, but in his craziness, he’s often attempted to escape from those restrictions. His column this week does so, but at a terrible terrible cost.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that perhaps some people will view a tech column about his son’s death as a trivialisation of life, whereas I see life and death is what this <waves hands> is all about.