Bluetooth Man

I started to post an old piece I had written, but I just finished the Walker Percy novel, and it has me thinking about philosophers and novelists and what a hard job it is to write a modern/post-modern/post-post-modern book that people will actually read. The various genres of literature – fantasy, science fiction, westerns, historic, etc., take us out of our mundane world in a fairly straightforward way. We move into the writer’s world or into their time, learn the rules and the boundaries, and the story then unfolds before us.

Sometimes things throw us off. I remember several years ago reading a Max Brand western called, I think, The Seventh Man. The hero is not a bad man, but he is a wild throwback of sorts who lives outside civilization. He helps a man sought by the law by taking the fugitive’s mare, Gray Molly, and leading the sheriff and his men away from their quarry. One of the pursuers deliberately shoots the mare in an attempt to end the chase. The hero escapes but vows revenge on all the members of the posse for the mare’s unnecessary death. He is able to carry out his revenge, in part because of his companions -- a magnificent stallion and a highly intelligent wolf or wolf-hybrid. The climax of the story is a long chase across country, and the hero is nearly undone by something he doesn’t understand: technology. Though those who are after the hero have no horses that can match his steed, the telephone has made its appearance, and it is used by a clever official to run down the avenger.

I was ambivalent. I understand the use of new technology as a plot point, whether it is the telephone, the telegraph, railroads, barbwire or whatever – man versus machine, the end of the frontier – all of those things are part of the historical reality. Technology changes and forces the culture to change. Dealing with it can make an interesting story, just generally not one I prefer. I like worlds where there is no GPS, no computers, no cell phones, telephones, or telegraphs, where there’s open space and room to get lost.

The more gadgets you hang on anything, the less it becomes a human endeavor. Sure, humans still build the gadgets – at least I think humans were involved in creating Vista – but many of these devices create limits as much as they create opportunities. I’m obviously not against technology, but I think we have to be careful and choose wisely to find things that make us stronger and more independent rather than weaker and more dependent.

It seems to me that as we have less and less privacy, it becomes increasingly difficult to describe or diagnose the human condition. The more our lives are open and viewable, the less we actually see. Consider the celebrity phenomenon. You can know everything about a sports figure or a movie star or a politician, but their actions, thoughts and beliefs can become contaminated by their own image. We see too much of them, and, they, in effect, see too much of themselves. That is, they see too much of what they are trying to make themselves appear to be. I am afraid we will soon learn this is precisely the case with Obama. He is like a man caught in a hall of mirrors unable to distinguish where he actually stands.

Any literary work that attempts to depict man in the late 20th and early 21st centuries is forced to work with and around rapid technological advances. It is difficult not to get trapped by gadgetry. Take, for example, that classic movie The Thing, made, I believe, about 1982. The computers and some of the other equipment look archaic, but it works for the story. Try to remake that movie and set it in 2010 and the plot would have to change in several points to make sense. I wonder how many recent movies or action/adventure novels set in the current time frame have a conveniently inconvenient loss of cell phone service or loss of the cell phone at some point. Stories often turn on isolation and the lack of communication between various parties. It is going to look more and more contrived for people not to think of Google or not having security videos or not taking pictures with their camera phones.

Look there -- it's a David Gemmell heroic fantasy novel and a guaranteed bluetooth-free zone. I know where I'm headed.

Driving Buicks to the Moon

Oh when the stars have all been counted
And I stop lovin' you
Honey they'll be drivin'
Buicks to the moon -- Alan Jackson's "Buicks to the Moon"

I haven’t seen the Dark Knight yet, and I probably won’t. Nevertheless, the Batman is possibly my favorite superhero, certainly my favorite in the DC universe. My Marvel favorites were Thor and Hawkeye. Spiderman just had too much angst for me – even when I didn’t know what angst was. The reason I like Batman is that he’s basically one of us. Give me the all the bat gear and roll thirty years off my odometer and I could do more or less what the Batman does. I mainly just want the Batmobile.

And Catwoman.

I didn’t get my personal jet pack that Popular Mechanics or Popular Science promised me. I can understand about the flying cars – I mean, do you really want some of those drivers out there to be able to go 3-D? Thank God for gravity.

Still, this is the 21st Century and I am a little disappointed. There’s a lot to like with cell phones and video conferencing, net meetings and mp3 players, and Tasers – which, I suppose, are kind of like phasers on stun. I really thought I have a raygun by now, though, or some sort of plasma weapon.

What about you? What technological improvements would you like to see? What kind of science fiction stuff do you think could be translated into real world devices that would add quality to your life?

This is prompted by two things. One is that my very cheap new American car shows the tire pressure in all four tires on the information read-out. The second is that the governor of my state gave Amtrak $5 million to keep running its route between our two largest cities twice a day.

I think we could find a better way to spend $5 million.

While I have resigned myself to living without a flying car, I would happily embrace a car that drives itself. With GPS and Google Earth and sensor technology, we could have that. I should be able to program a route into my car’s computer, get in and go with the assurance that, even if I doze at the wheel, I will arrive safely at my destination. Of course, I would want to be able to switch to all manual and become invisible to the satellites. You might want to rendezvous with a mistress like John Edwards, or, if the Obamessiah takes over, slip off to the catacombs for a church service.

If I were setting up a system like that, I would have the car fire off an alarm if the traffic got too heavy to make sure I was awake. I’m sure it wouldn’t be too much trouble to get sensors that would keep me a safe distance from other vehicles and keep me in my lane.

How about an “economy cruise” setting on your car’s cruise control? Instead of maintaining a set speed, the computer figures how to get your best mileage for an average speed? That’s not as useful in Kansas as it is in Arkansas, but it would be handy. For example, my brother can get 35 mpg from his Lumina, which is several years old. On long trips, he can get close to 40 mpg. I guarantee he doesn’t have it on cruise. He’s so tight he squeaks when he walks, and will gladly trade speed for improved mileage.

Me -- not so much, most of the time. Still, having the option to let the car figure out my optimum mileage would be handy now and then.

We can fly drone aircraft from half a world away, why can’t trucks be controlled remotely, with the drivers going along mostly for the ride? I would think trucking companies would be interested in having a way to use less fuel and improve safety while keeping trucks on course and on schedule. I know some of this is already being done with RFID’s and other tracking devices in the industry.

Instead of the government wasting money on dead-ends like Amtrak and the ever-expanding list of entitlements, use some of my tax dollars to make the infrastructure a little more high-tech.