Stupid Technology
This is not about technology. This is about people. Two people that stood behind me and said of a fun idea “But it’s really stupid.”
I’m here to tell you, folks, the idea was useless, but it was not stupid. I suppose, to old men, which they were, and by old I mean they were perhaps 10 years older than me (any many pounds heavier… wait, is that prejudice? Yes? Damn. Ok, they were fat old men. How’s that?). What was this stupid thing? It was something called Hullabaloo. It was essentially interactive technological art. Useless it was. Interesting it was. Fun it was. Stupid? That wasn’t my first thought. The technology was simple, but the idea behind was quite sophisticated and without the explanation on hand for it, difficult to discern without knowledge and participation and thought. The idea tapped into a fundamental human desire: uniqueness.
You can read about what Hullabaloo does on the page, and see it there, but I will briefly describe it. It is a box with a receive inside it (a phone, I believe) with two plastic wiring conduits running out of it. One goes to an AC power outlet. The other stretches upward to a speaker. Inside the box the bluetooth receiver is connected to another device that generates a unique audio signature similar to a birdcall based on your bluetooth ID (you have to discover the device and join to it briefly). When you wander back by, it knows who you are and plays your unique call.
I am not sure why the gentlemen, sorry, the old fat white guys, thought it was stupid. It was thoughtful and new. It was a concept that someone thought would fun and then they did it. Indeed, much that one person finds fun others find boring, or even stupid. I could not help but think of another story.
There seems to be a tradition going on. The tradition is that technology provides us with amazing wonders and contemptible tragedies. The tradition of useful, clever, smart inventions that have great use… great practical use. And the tradition of technology that results in ruin, destitution, and nothing worthwhile. Those are the blacks and whites of technology. The two sides. The lustrous and wonderful blacks and the blinding and sterile whites.
Oh dear sir, the grays. The in between things. The… stupid technologies. Of what use are these technologies? Certainly they will remain as they are. They will remain stupid. It almost goes without saying that they are useless technologies. Useful technologies are NEVER stupid! Not the steam engine. Not the roller washing machine! These are practical, useful technologies that I am sure will never be surpassed or thought of as stupid. Certainly not thought of as stupid at the time they were invented. I for one am enjoying our era of steam engine airplanes and computer controller roller washing machines that I must stand next to and attend.
The Hullabaloo has no use beyond it’s novelty. Except to light up the minds of simple minded folks like myself. Smart, sophisticated fat white guys know better. They know it’s stupid. A useless contrivance. Like so, so many other technologies.