The Price of progress

I am emailing in flight for the first time

I remember when the fax machine became affordable and readily available. I would sit up all night faxing. I was so amazed by the technology. I'm sure my friends and co-workers were not so pleased with my using up their ink and paper to share every new idea that pooped into my head.

Now I'm just as giddy with inflight email. I should be sleeping since I only had 4 hours but I cant help emailing people to say "I'm emailing inflight"

How...ridiculous

and addictive

Technology fascinates and frightens me. That's the addictive combination pleasure plus danger equal adrenalin rush!!!!!

I remember reading FOUR ARGUMENTS FOR THE ELIMINATION OF TELEVISION and it was either that or IN THE ABSENCE OF THE SACRED that puts forth the proposition that every new technology is sold to us for the good qualities even though the marketeers are fully aware of all of the BAD qualities.

And we buy into the good with a tacit and implicit acceptance of whatever negative consequence it carries

Like, I was listening to two guys in the gym. They happened to be a White guy and a Black Guy. The white guy was talking about how he sold insurance. And that there used to be a time when people would call and the standard answer was "I'll get back to you.' And we folks expected to wait a few weeks for a response. He said now folks call and they have 10 quotes from the internet infront of them and they want your answer immediately or they are moving on to whomever can get it to them quicker and cheaper.

On the one hand the guys were saying it has made most companies have to produce, better, cheaper and faster but...

But, they extrapolated, this ready availability of transporting information and purchasing and selling has a direct correlation to the global financial collapse.

The Black guy said, "Yeah people used to have to hand write quotes for stock sales and there was a delivery process and time. Now suddenly with internet transactions, there were millions of transactions a second. And there is just no way it is humanly possible to moniter or oversee the truth or validity with that kind of volume.

Yeah, so we've got our speed and convenience but so have the criminals. they can now get paid quicker and disappear quicker and not only never get caught because they have anonymity online but because there are just too many of them to catch

So while I'm loving my inflight email today...
I might not feel the same once the first inflight hackers start pulling my paswords and private information because now we are locked in a box together for several hours and their devices have the time to work things out and I will never know what hit me