Salon Des Geeks

Remember our salon discussions at Donna’s house about the Enneagram? Today I discovered this online Enneagram quiz. This is me (my, I’m looking a bit plump in this picture!):

free enneagram test

http://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/bin/bldbill.php?bill=H0224.0.html&session=ls85

I like the touch of self-deprecation, as well as the general degree of wit required to do this.

Driving back from the Bridge Club, I had the pleasure of hearing the end of Selected Shorts. The theme was Pretentious Wine Drinking. Excellent! Any short story by Roald Dahl is not to be missed. I thought that some of you might not be familiar with this excellent program. The performances do justice to the high quality of the material.

Program 19: Week of February 10 – February 16, 2007
(NYC area airtimes Sunday, February 11 and Saturday, February 17, 2007)
Roald Dahl, “Taste,” read by John Lithgow (Buy this story now on CD!)
From: Roald Dahl: Collected Stories (Everyman’s Library)
James Thurber, “How to Tell a Fine Old Wine,” read by Raphael Sbarge (Other stories by Thurber on CD and cassette!)
From: The New Yorker (February 24, 1934 / www.newyorker.com)

Speaking of technology, check out this new site I found, Pin In The Map. I was thinking that because I travel so much, it might be neat to have an electronic map I could use to stick pins in with notes. This could help me to remember useful things (Do not under any circumstances stay at the Holiday Inn in Columbia, SC!), useless things that amuse me (I saw my first tumbleweed in Bakersfield, CA!), or anecdotes (if you go to W.C. Handy’s birthplace in Florence, Alabama on a Tuesday afternoon, no one else will be there and the delightful tour-guide lady will give you a private tour!) about the towns I visit. This is so neat, I might just buy a subscription so I can play with it more.

Sometime around 1811, some English stocking manufacturers started getting letters signed by one “General Ned Ludd and his Army of Redressers.” Aside from being a great name for a rock band, this is also the origin of the modern word “luddite.” It isn’t clear whether Ned Ludd was a real person, although some historians believe the name came from a Midlands workman who destroyed some stocking-making machines in 1782. Faced with the imminent prospect of losing their jobs to the industrial revolution, these first Luddites (or “machine-breakers”) did what any sensible person would do: They took a sledgehammer to the opposition, a method also common in politics and Olympic figure skating.

As most of you know, I frequently jokingly refer to myself as a luddite, but learning about our friend Ned set me to thinking about it. Sure, I have had to be dragged kicking and screaming towards most of the technologies of my generation, but in the final analysis, I embrace technologies in certain instances. An example would be my laptop computer, on which I am now typing this entry. This begs the question: What Makes a Technology Good?

The obvious answer is that a good technology would improve the quality of life of the user. Less obvious is what makes this so, and I expect the answer differs based on the individual. For me, what makes a technology good is its propensity to help me do the things I already like or need to do more efficiently. Great examples are my laptop (allows me to work and stay in touch while traveling, not to mention writing up salon posts in the airport), my cell phone (allows me to meet up with friends efficiently and to call Jesse when I get lost), my GPS (allows me to get lost less often), and my iPod (makes my gym time much more fun, hence encouraging me to do it more). On the other hand, I tend to be uniformly put off by technologies that simply give me new stuff to do (television, video games, etc.). Another theme I noticed is that I tend to like technologies that help me to reach out to other people, rather than to be cut off from them. Some technologies naturally shunt us away from interaction with others, like TV or video games. Others can reduce the quality of those interactions by making them quicker (and therefore, often, less thoughtfully-crafted), such as e-mail. On the other hand, so many technolgies (including e-mail) make it easy to reach out in ways that were never possible before.

This brings me to the most important factor that makes any technology good or bad: The user. I find that it is not the cell phone I object to, but the person who yammers on it loudly in a restaurant or drifts about in traffic while distracted by it. The internet is a fantastic learning tool, but not if you’re not a discerning consumer of information. My challenge to myself is not the shut out technology, but to be thoughtful about which technologies I invite into my life, and when, and how.

So, darlings, what makes it good for you?

I was reading this article about this article which tries to imply the notion of repressed memory is a product of fiction. All I could think about were all the memories I wish I could repress. For all the cool facts I try to learn, its those nasty memories of embarassment and pain that I can’t seem to lose. Maybe that is why the notion of repressed memories are so appealing as a plot device?

I wish there were a Proust question on the subject: “What would you most like to forget?” Very difficult to answer :)