Let’s talk about tech, baby. Isn’t that how the song goes? Let’s Google “misheard lyrics.”
Is it possible that the proliferation of electronic gadgets, with their instantaneous everything, has shortened our attention spans? Is it possible all those high speeds, and all our mighty multitasking, has caused us to be a little more prone to distraction? That if there isn’t something new every few seconds, we’re bored and anxious?
(The real lyric, in a song by Salt N Pepa, is of course “Let’s talk about sex, baby.” A subject that Bristol Palin will be paid handsomely to not talk about. The unwed teenage mother has signed with a speaker’s bureau to give speeches about abstinence, faith and life. She will be paid between $15,000 to $30,000 per speech.
Well, for free, we found her original message here in our electronic archive and it goes like this: In February 2009, Bristol Palin told CNN that telling young people to be abstinent is “not realistic at all.” Let’s talk about tech after all.)
A CNN blogger wonders, “Has the iPhone lost its cool?” Which makes us wonder, what’s the shelf-life of cool these days? Thirty seconds? People are still paying those things off, and AT&T wants the firstborn of everyone who terminates their contracts early. They dang well better still be cool.
A New York Times blogger was taking it to another level. He wonders if Apple itself has lost its cool. There’s nothing cooler than being the first to declare something uncool that was once cool.
Those ads for iPads, however, lend credence to the grasping-for-coolness idea. Why is the first thing they boast about iPad is that it’s “thin and beautiful”? It’s suddenly a supermodel? The saying, “You can never be too rich, or thin, or own too many Apple products” comes to mind.
Last week, Google Inc. unveiled its technology to unite Web surfing with channel surfing on televisions. Because it’s not enough to sit in front of the TV with your laptop or phone. You need to be able to search the Web on the same screen on which you are “watching” TV. Which is very confusing when it comes to the coolness factor, because smaller is better. You can’t put that flat screen in your pocket, or use it to text when you drive.
But just when so much of the tech “advances” seem silly, we get another example of its potential power.
Reading “Dalai Lama uses Twitter to circumvent Chinese government” to speak to Chinese citizens is so cool it gives us chills.
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