The Daily Grist: “[Flaubert] didn’t just hate the railway as such; he hated the way it flattered people with the illusion of progress. What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid together.”…Julian Barnes
Drones, Phones and Self-driving Automobiles
Today’s column from Bert Daniel
Sunday November 8, 2015
We live in a very different world today than the one I grew up in. A few weeks ago I went for my regular bike ride and I heard a humming noise as I passed a local winery. I glanced over my right shoulder and was astonished to see a flying object hovering about fifty feet off the ground. I didn’t stop so I have no idea what the drone was doing there. It may well have been illegal because it was flying well within five miles of our local airport. I haven’t seen the object since and I’m sure it did no harm but it still disturbed me that a little flying robot had been observing my space so stealthily.
When you hear the word “drone” these days, you don’t think of what you might have thought of thirty years ago, do you? If you’re a beekeeper, a drone is a stud that fertilizes the queen bee. If you’re a bluegrass fan, a drone is that extra steady note a fiddle player plays near the melody note string, or that pinky Bill Monroe held down when he played Sally Goodin. Words seem to mean different things most of the time these days. Gay never means happy except in old songs. And when you read about a drone it’s likely to be a news story about a terrorist who got taken down or about a retailer who wants to bypass UPS in getting your consumer items to you faster and cheaper.
Our phones are so useful these days that they are turning us into willing androids. A cheap smart phone today has more memory than the huge computers I used in college and the camera takes better pictures than the best camera of those days. Your car is well on its way to driving itself and it seems like a matter of time when a computer robot will not only manufacture your self driving car to perfection, it can remove your infected gallbladder too. What will then be left for us humans to do?
The world of my great-grandparents moved at walking speed. The world of my grandparents moved at the speed of a horse. The world of my parents moved at the speed of a train and my world has until now moved at the speed of an automobile. But today’s world moves at the speed of an electron. We are very different people in each generation. With so much change, what holds us together as a culture?
Music is one of those things. A hundred years from now we may not singing as much about planes, trains and automobiles. But we’ll be singing about drones and phones or whatever. OK trains.
Back to the future happened and yet it didn’t. The Cubs did well but didn’t win the World Series. Flying cars aren’t the norm as, back in the 60’s, I had assumed they would be by now. But technology has changed our world in a few generations in ways we could have never imagined. Change is good (as long as there’s someone around to help me figure out my smart phone). But let’s keep making music. That always seems to survive technology.
