#102 Techno-escalation

Life is a series of unintended consequences. At least that’s the law of technological advance. All the great discoveries; penicillin, electric lights, artificial sweeteners, came about by accident when someone was working on something else. And people are always putting something designed for one thing into off-brand uses. And I’m not just talking about filling up Evian bottles with tap water, I mean real stuff, like drifting a chopped Honda down a mountain road cause ski season was too short this year.
That brings up another point: It is our young folks who often push the envelope of our technology. That and the internet porno industry, which, by the way, gave us streaming video, jpeg, and always-on web cams. Okay, maybe not jpeg, but some kind of upload digital thing.
Young folks see the cool new uses long before us befuddled oldsters do. Digital camera cellphones were sending unflattering, low-angle pictures of teachers to buddies across the room long before the teacher caught on there was even a picture-taking-thingy on the phone. Snapping a weird picture of an adult as you hand him the cellphone to answer a supposedly important call is more fun than we ever had with a dorm payphone, shaving cream in the earpiece and oblivious dorm monitors.
So it’s no wonder kids caught on to text messaging and alternative three-letter alphabet spelling and parsing, digital picturing, mastering the whole emoticon language, and downloading ringtones before their mentally ungainly parents even figured out how to get through the blister pack on their unit in the family phone package.
Don’t even get me started on blister packs....
Our youngin’s go blithely through life figuring out ways to tweak technology to cut even more corners. Gotta hand to ‘em though. They’ve taken the battle to the mega-exploiters. I don’t know if you’ve been to a amusement park lately. But it’s become the norm to emerge from a thrill ride and be greeted by a bevy of pictures on video screens arrayed across the top of a booth. The pictures are of you and your fellow riders, snapped while you weren’t aware, during a particularly exciting and usually unflattering segment of the ride in question. Confronted by this monstrosity, it’s then up to you to shell out 12 bucks for a permanent reminder of your indiscretion. Okay a souvenir picture of your fun-fun happytime. A triumph of modern technology. Snap a digital picture and if the mark doesn’t want to pay for a printout then send its electrons back to magnetic limbo. No cost to be recovered until the sale is already made. Well, the kids have one -upped the shills in the escalating techno-war. They go by and take a picture on their cellphone of the picture on the display screen. Lasting memory, no cost. Dude.
The law of unintended consequences prevails. But then again, that’s kind of what having a kid in the first place is all about.
America, ya gotta love it.