Douglas Coupland has been drafted in to occupy Stephen Fry ’s shoes on his tech chromatography column Dork Talk , while the British polymath recovers from a wiped out arm . The Canadian author and artist has undertake the case of gadgets and obsolescence , taking as his start - point the fact that the box of techno - fallal he received from The Guardian in London were all infeasible in North America . And this start out him recall , about how meter is now measure in “ tech - waves . ” If that ’s the slip , then what earned run average are we presently in ?
I opine we are come to the ending of the other iPhone epoch . But Coupland , the author of Microserfs and Generation X , moves onto another , more distressful hypothesis : that gadgets make changeling of us all .
I remember in the 80s when cellphones first started to pop . I retrieve how , if you saw someone using a cellular phone on a street , you immediately thought they were an arsehole : gee , my phone call is so important I have to make it right here and properly now ! Twenty years after , we ’re all assholes . We ’re son of a bitch at the supermarket ’s meat heel counter at 5:30pm , ring base to inquire if we need prosciutto ; we ’re mother fucker driving in dealings ; and we ’re assholes wandering down the street . And with cellphones and handhelds , we collapse time and space and our perception of space and amour .
And he has a stop . I can see how gadgetry does strange , stupefied thing to people , but in a different way . My Motorola Razr Mk 1 is dying a pitiable death . Its current battery liveliness stands at approximately 15 minute , it does nothing but vociferation and SMS . Basically , I need a new phone . But am I going to get one ? When Steve announces the arrival of a 64 GB iPhone , ( calculate arrival Summer 2009 ? ) I will . But until then , I ’ll make do . You see ? Technology has change by reversal me into an a - hole . [ Guardian Unlimited ]
GadgetsStephen Fry
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