1442 i-Derivative

Our technology is stunting our experience of the new. And worse, it’s making life dull.
Now new is relative, to be sure. When Apple comes out with a new iPad it’s a big i-deal. But when the future of technology is in predicting your needs, based on what your preferences are as exhibited in the past, your whole life becomes derivative, and ever more i-solated.
The new technology featured in “future forums” predicts your new “i-devices” will assist you in wonderful ways. Say you get a hole in your pants. Your device will tell where you can find a brand like your old pants, compare the price, send you to the best GPS-located purveyor, reserve your size for you, and have it ready for you to come in and point your phone at the cash register to pay for it.
Incredibly convenient, right? Wrong. It’s the search for a replacement that takes you to new places, allows you to expose yourself to new stores, new merchandise, and who knows what else.
Like going through the dictionary to find a word and finding six others in the process, or looking up the exact word online and seeing only it. The one widens and enriches your experience. The other answers a narrow old dead-ended question.
If technolgoy makes sure all you do is predicted based on a constricted reading of what you did before, doesn’t your life just become an ever-tightening spiral of its own derivatives?
Old folks in nursing homes die quicker when they don’t get new stimulation. I suppose they could spend their whole time looking at pictures of their past. But they live longer if they reach out and strike up a conversation with a new person.
The familiar can be comforting, but don’t you think there’s a reason you don’t marry your sister?
I do.
America, ya gotta love it.