Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Here's another clue for you all...
For my birthday I received a subscription to The Walrus in which I learned that Microsoft has spent $2 billion developing X-Box video game technology! [This little factoid was buried in an even more disturbing article about how the Pentagon uses Hollywood to manufacture war consent.]
The X-Box tidbit reminded me of a recent conversation I had with my friend Jug:
Jug: They have this great new ice cream flavour that tastes just like apple pie.
The Bopper: That's dumb.
Jug: Dumb? What are you talking about?! It's BRILL-iant! You don't need the pie anymore.
The Bopper: Think of all the energy and money that went into developing this apple pie cream, that could have been spent on something useful. Say, alleviating poverty.
Jug: Ahhh, come ON!
Jug's unspoken thought bubble: Fuckin' Commie.
I was half-joking with my comment about alleviating poverty. But considering the amount of dollars, human time and energy, and brain-power that go into manufacturing products - products that entertain, products that kill, products that give fizzy taste-bud pleasure - I'm left thinking, yes, it is a Brave New World.
While the poorer 2/3 of humanity suffers from not enough, the rest of us work on such conundrums as how to make ice cream taste like apple pie, or how to graphically simulate the legalized murder of towel-headed assassins for our home computers. Impressive accomplishments sure, but so is bowling a perfect game. The results just aren't worth much when the alien anthropologists come for our post-mortem.
-Bopper
ps. Check out my kittens:
The X-Box tidbit reminded me of a recent conversation I had with my friend Jug:
Jug: They have this great new ice cream flavour that tastes just like apple pie.
The Bopper: That's dumb.
Jug: Dumb? What are you talking about?! It's BRILL-iant! You don't need the pie anymore.
The Bopper: Think of all the energy and money that went into developing this apple pie cream, that could have been spent on something useful. Say, alleviating poverty.
Jug: Ahhh, come ON!
Jug's unspoken thought bubble: Fuckin' Commie.
I was half-joking with my comment about alleviating poverty. But considering the amount of dollars, human time and energy, and brain-power that go into manufacturing products - products that entertain, products that kill, products that give fizzy taste-bud pleasure - I'm left thinking, yes, it is a Brave New World.
While the poorer 2/3 of humanity suffers from not enough, the rest of us work on such conundrums as how to make ice cream taste like apple pie, or how to graphically simulate the legalized murder of towel-headed assassins for our home computers. Impressive accomplishments sure, but so is bowling a perfect game. The results just aren't worth much when the alien anthropologists come for our post-mortem.
-Bopper
ps. Check out my kittens:
Labels: 2005, non-fiction, photography, politics
