American Fez

An e-Message From The Lower Depths

Digital technology, for me at least, has become a sort of Plato's cave. After all, here I am, still communicating by twentieth-century email and updating my antediluvian blog, staring at flickering shadows on my computer screen cast by protean technologies beyond my troglodyte powers of understanding. I might as well spend the day downloading primitive images of bison and aurochs traced with simple pigments on a wall of solid rock. Meanwhile, outside this dark grotto that is my Internet stone-age-man-cave, there is a bright, brave new world of NFTs, virtual reality, cryptocurrency, and TikTok video waiting to be discovered. So, I'm sorry venture-capitalized Plato, but the only sane course of action is to retreat further into the depths of my cave instead of dissolving my brain in Silicon Valley acid.

I don't want to sound like a Luddite. I'm not anti-progress by any means. I just prefer technology that makes life easier rather than technology that makes life not life. That is a 'divided line' that should not be crossed or even straddled. Take the so-called Singularity, for instance. Robotic vacuum cleaners will liberate us from the shackles of domestic drudgery, which is a great boon, but a robotic life partner is just going to whisper sweet digital nothings to your bluetooth-connected toaster every night while you're playing virtual golf on the moon in your VR goggles and touch-sensor gloves. Even worse, when everything in your home is connected to the cloud, your robotic life partner might also whisper those sweet digital nothings to somebody else's bluetooth toaster. Surely it is more fulfilling to languish amongst the stalagmites, reading some foolish blog on an obsolescent laptop? Not that most people will, of course, but I am grateful that you do. 

Domestic Superposition & Quantum Sloth

I didn't really want to do my laundry ... but was tempted by the alluring possibility of discovering a forgotten twenty dollar bill in a trouser pocket. Then again, all trouser pockets could be empty and I'd only discover myself to be the self-deluded victim of a sluggard's daydream. Was there a forgotten twenty dollar bill in a trouser pocket or not? It was like the household chore equivalent of Schrodinger's cat experiment, if the cat were made my Brooks Brothers and crumpled up in the bottom of a laundry basket. Best to remain lazing here on the couch, the pessimist in me decided, and just imagine I might be twenty dollars wealthier instead of doing all that sorting and folding for no profit. Was the cost of clean socks and underwear worth the price of losing my dinero dreams? Maybe for five potential bucks but not twenty. 

A few days later, however, when the need to do laundry had progressed from subject of financial reverie to absolute necessity, I did in fact find forgotten money while pretreating a pile of dirty clothes with detergent. It was in the form of a twenty dollar gift certificate to a local liquor store, stuck in the breast pocket of an old shirt I seldom wear. A nice reward for finally confronting the combined challenge of washer and dryer, except I was unsure whether I had already used it or not. Many weeks had passed since I'd last worn that shirt and, sad to say, I'd bought a lot of booze during that time. Surely I must have paid with the gift certificate at some point? But try as I might I could not recall what would've been a highly satisfying transaction. So I was back to Schrodinger's cat again, with two possible outcomes if I attempted to use the gift certificate for purchasing that expensive four-pack of fancy Belgian abbey ale I've been wanting to try: either it was still good and I'd obtain the expensive four-pack of fancy Belgian abbey ale for free, hooray, or it was not good and I'd be embarrassed into reluctantly paying more than I usually would for four bloody beers.

Fortunately, to my great relief, the gift certificate turned out to be still good and I, unwisely, celebrated by consuming the four very high alcoholic volume ales in a single sitting. And it was while draining the dregs of the fourth, I came to the conclusion that Schrodinger's cat is not merely certainly alive in its stupid box but actually immortal. Alas, I doubt mainstream theoretical physicists will bother to verify these findings any time soon. After all, the modern scientific establishment prefers new research to be peer-reviewed in respected journals rather than mumbled into the lip of an empty beer bottle by people who are going to be extremely hungover in the morning. Their loss. I mean, take a look at old Einstein, obviously a man who enjoyed a pint or two while deferring his domestic duties in favor of scrawling equations on a blackboard with an unsteady hand.