Technology as We'd Like It to Be

Desk Set 

Desk Set (1957, Dir. Walter Lang) is a delightful romantic comedy starring Tracy and Hepburn (but it gives a strong supporting role to the IBM computer above). Tracy plays an efficiency expert who is tight-lipped about the work he is doing at the research department headed by Hepburn. The film leads us to expect that the ladies in the reference section will be made obsolete by the EMMARAC computer and its matronesque technician played by Neva Patterson but that does not happen. 

Neva Patterson sporting an outfit that is the envy of concentration camp matrons world-wide

Despite the lively libations and hi-jinks at the office (above), the reference section is efficient and in the end the computer does not displace the team but exists to allow them more time to do research.

A bit utopian perhaps but still a delightful little film.

Killing Capacity

My shooting buddies and I have gotten a kick out listening to the "gunaphobes" debate the merits of differing magazine capacities. The ignorance of what is actually decisive in terms of lethality overwhelms. The number one factor is training and skill, not equipment. In other words, the person behind the gun.

In the First World War, Sergeant Alvin York dropped 28 well-armed Germans and captured 132. He used a bolt action rifle with a five shot magazine. Lyudmila Pavlichenko (see above) killed 309 Germans on the Eastern Front during the World War II. Again, a simple five shot rifle, but with the addition of a scope. Closer to home, who can forget Lee Harvey Oswald's murder of JFK? Another bolt action rifle with a five shot magazine. This time in the hands of a former U.S. Marine.

People with ill intent will use whatever they can get their hands to commit dastardly deeds. Instead of focusing on tools and gadgets, the citizens of Colorado would we better served if the politicians found ways to deprive felons and loons of guns. But this requires hard work, not mere bluster. Perhaps that's too much to ask from politicians.

Sometimes soundbites speak volumes...

I caught this on the radio (AM 710, KNUS), but I'll have to paraphrase it because I didn't write it down (nor could I find it on the station's website).

In an interview about a sexually explicit texting case at an area school, the principal said in response to a suggestion that students be barred from bringing cell phones to school, "We can't do that, cell phones are so much of their culture."

Ah, yes. The schools don't have a culture of their own to propose; rather, they are in perpetual retreat against the forces of barbarism. Yet another example of how schools simply react instead of acting.

A simple question: What is the purpose of education? If it is just to keep kids busy, well, then yes, the principal is correct: short of killing each other, let them do what they want. If, on the other hand, school is a place where cultural presuppositions can be challenged, then perhaps the cell phones can and should go. Placate or educate? The choice is ours.

Distracted from distraction by distraction

T.S. Eliot called it a place of disaffection, but young people generally call it "boredom." Somewhere Walker Percy traces the origin of the word to 14th century France. Apparently it's related to the word "to stuff." Thus one who is bored is over-stuffed with something. I witnessed a sample of that "something" recently at a local public library.

A high school student arrived at a vacant desk popped open her binder and began to study (or so I thought). Three or four minutes must have elapsed. She pulled out a cellphone and chattered thus: "What are you doing? Do you want to come to the library? I'm so bored."

There is a wonderful but disturbing scene in Fight Club in which Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) kisses and then sprinkles "Rupert's" hand with lye. The pain is, of course, unimaginable. Tyler tells Jack: This is the greatest moment of your life and you're off somewhere in La-La Land, missing it.

That is the scene that popped into my head at the library. The ubiquity of technology strips us of patience, which is always a kind of suffering.