#29 - You Call this Progress?

You Call this Progress?

5/28/04 (#29)

Humans. Always bragging about being the most advanced species on the planet, though it's notably obvious that no other species has ever come out to agree with this assertion. (As the adage goes, a preacher who praises himself has a congregation of one.) Think of the word "hubris", defined as "exaggerated pride or self-confidence": Not only did we invent this unattractive concept, but coined a term for it as it were an achievement worthy of merit. It is a testament to the genus that we would choose to acknowledge and accept that loathsome characteristic rather than recognize its ugliness and collectively say, "Um, let's all just avoid this one, it's a suit that hangs poorly on each of us." Hubris is the emotional equivalent of fetid food left on your desk---when you clean the area, you shouldn't set up a special file drawer for the rot; you should toss the stuff.

But more importantly, the word should be discarded because we have not done the one thing that should make us worthy of exaggerated self-pride. We brag about our opposable thumbs, we boast about walking on the moon, we crow about the almighty automobile that fewer and fewer can afford to keep running. We have a medical solution to every mood swing yet we can't cure the common cold; we have micrometers that can measure the thickness of an atom yet we can't invent a cell phone that charges by seconds rather than minutes; we have jets that travel across the oceans at record speeds, yet the nourishment for the journey tastes like it came from a vending machine. If a species were rated on consistency, we would be listed in the "Pans" column of the Global Picks and Pans Newsletter.

Blah blah blah, that's all I hear from humans. So much blah blah blah that our leaders need an array of teleprompters because there's just too much blah blah blah to remember. Then they pat themselves on the back for creating teleprompters. Humans puff their chests about space travel (yeah, that's really helping out the average blue-collar worker. Where would their life be without a blurry picture of Saturn?) Humans prattle on about advancement in hearing aids (Hey grandpa, thought you were going to be free of the white noise of mindless chatter? Think again, old man!) Frankly, I am not going to be impressed with our race until someone shuts off Survivor long enough to invent the one thing that we all really need:

The video thought recorder.

Have you ever heard of such a thing? No. Because humans are losers. Resting on the laurels of our previous "successes"---the gravy boat; the electric tie rack; the "working vacation"---we steer clear of the one invention that would be completely useful to every one of us.

Think about it. In the 16th century, if you had an idea that you were trying to transcribe, you had to go to the mind-numbingly tedious process of drawing it out on paper with a pen, struggling to accurately depict an image on paper which is perfectly clear in your head. 500 years later, look how far we've come---you no longer need the pencil and paper, instead you can use a $1200.00 computer to draft your idea, which you do by moving the mouse with the exact same motions you would do with a pencil. Now the rage is the handheld, on which you write with a stylus---a friggin' pencil without lead! That's right folks, 500 years and all we've managed to do is save a little graphite.

This glaring failure of mankind was brought to light again in a recent email exchange between this writer and local impresario Roland Couture. My email to Roland is transcribed here:

Thanks R-Webster. (As in Noah, not the Gary Coleman knock-off.) (There's a scene in "O Brother Where Art Thou" where the Governor's campaign team lament their opponent's gimmick of having a midget on the stump with the candidate. One suggests, "We could get us our own midget, but even smaller." I picture a conversation of that sort happening at the major networks---"Dammit, we made money on that little Coleman kid---get me one like him, but even littler, even cutsier." Except in the movie, it's dismissed as a stupid, Johnny-come-lately idea. That's where Hollywood differs from the stories that it tells.)

Roland's prompt reply:

I wonder what would happen if you followed the Gary Coleman / Emanuel Lewis sequence to its logical extent. You would have a black male actor of infinitesimal size, who says nothing, but only emanates a constant wavelength of pure "dumb/cute" radiation in all directions.

Now wouldn't you like to see a video of that? I can picture it in my head---not that that does you a lot of good. If you wanted to see it I'd have to go out and hire a tiny little actor, find a camera person who can pull some serious Lord of the Rings perspective distortions (remember, the actor has to appear be tiny, not just small. I mean sleeping-in-a-match-box, blanket-is-a-folded-Kleenex, dinner-is-a-kernel-of-corn tiny), then we'd have to write a script, so that there is a context in which his constant flow of dumb/cute radiation elicits the requisite "Awwww" from the studio audience---good grief, it would be like remaking Gone with the friggin' Wind. Who's got that kind of time to put into a dumb-ass idea like Gary Coleman's mini-me?

And then what about my thought of Christopher Walken doing karaoke to "Bust a Move"? ("SHE'S dressed...in yellow, she says...hel-LO...") Where am I going to get the money to hire Chris Walken to film the video? And what if he doesn't know the song and he keeps screwing up the lyrics? With a video thought recorder, I could have the whole thing wrapped in 2 minutes! (3 if I included his dance sequence while the girls sing, "You want it/you got it".) Am I supposed to take solace in the fact that I can draw a stick figure version of Walken on my Palm Pilot? Should I be satisfied to make a little flip book of his complex rhythmic shuffle and do my incredibly lame actual-voice Walken accent* along with it? Even that would take an incredible amount of time, and it would be crap compared to the thought video.

But the video doesn't exit. Instead, I'm revel in the existence of our oh-so-impressive advances like electro-encephalograph machines, pacemakers, and microwave ovens. Heck, those last two can't even co-exist in the same room---yeah, we've come a long way baby.

Opposable thumbs? Big friggin' deal. How about if humans pull them out of their collective asses and give me something I can use.

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* In my head, the accent is spot-on, so good that the Walken in my head even says, "Whoa! This...actually...IS ME, isn't it?" (Wait, or was that William Shatner?)

©2004 wpreagan