There is this element about any form of world-creation that basically aims at “radically changing things,” and the creation of computers has perhaps been the greatest of them in the whole history. I must confess, however, that the way tech has emerged into our lives has been quite disappointing to me in ways that are hard to describe. But after many years of living them, I believe I have a clue.

For so many years now, there has been this thing with me about the way computer jobs have been. I resent the idea of backend, frontend, web applications, software as a service, and pretty much everything else in the same fashion. To me, computers are the ultimate technology, and to waste them on creating software to take a taxi or register a ticket is committing a crime.

This crime is pretty much in the same sense that print is. Imagine: if one had gone into print, what would have been made? Or printed? Great books could have been made—like the work of DK Publishing—or perhaps things could have been written that pushed us forward, like the Principia or On the Origin of Species. But then one can be in the business of printing newsletter ads, or sheets for a restaurant to put prices on. All of them are print, but one is of great excitement; the other is to trash the planet.

And that goes on to have multiple effects and actual facts (forgot why I wrote that); but then imagine being in the computation world. Things like Photoshop, Procreate, Logic, Reason Studios, Figma, Sketch, and so much more can be created. And that will be to enable others to make; but then there are uses like making Instagram and other bad things to destroy humanity—and in the middle, boring things for consumption. In all of these the art of computing is used, but somewhat wasted. I do not fancy this way of life. But then, I have gone to unrelated territories.

What perhaps is the most disturbing to me is that there are things in which technology makes no sense. The best example that comes to mind is vape. This is a technologically advanced system that still pretty much hurts the body. And this is perhaps one of the most disturbing applications of tech. Because I was raised with the idea that science births technology, and since science has this notion of sacredness, one assumes that the same is to be applied to its children. So the mental assumption is that technology is used to make the human condition better—to advance what we are and make our lives better; but then we get into the problem of seeing things like vape that are essentially a blunt insult to everything that it has been built upon. And I am certain that people who make these things have no respect for anything. And then this applies to the rest of the world and the rest of the things because we live in a form in which things go where they can, not where they were intended. This is exactly what Maestro McLuhan ✦ was talking about: that within each medium is another that is hidden to the makers of the medium. And it also is exactly what Postman was aware of and did not know what to do with. And that is another dimension of what makes me hate being a software developer and making things that are quite boring. Most of what we have as software is automating existing things, while the job of software and tech is to be something far more radically advanced. And that is where this article starts:

What tech should have been and what it is

So, to me, technology should have changed the world and opened new futures to it. But the truth of the matter is that tech got integrated into the day-to-day lives we have. Instead of changing, it became another tool for the current.

And this is something far too bad: when the Moog synthesizer was first revealed to the world, those who understood it used it; but then Leonard Bernstein took it to the audience and played Bach with it. Little did he know that, with such power as a Moog brings, there is no longer a place for the classical form of music, and “Moog” means much more—different and radical means of music. And not only were there many different forms of music, but different cultures and therefore radically different people.

So what did it mean for the world to take computers and still apply them to the everyday forms of things? That still is the Moog for classical music. I do not take any interest in that. Amazon was radical thinking; Wikipedia was radical thinking; and perhaps they have been good. I don’t know. But what about things like vape? They show two things: pop-culture tech and a form of sadness about why tech has not been advancing. The actual revision is the adoption, I get that; but I believe that when you go and make vape, there is no other interesting thing to do—and you are evil.