Technology

Somehow the lady's message reminds me of this little scene from Johnny Mnemonic.

Johnny Mnemonic: Yeah, the Black Shakes. What causes it?
Spider: What causes it?
[points to various pieces of equipment throughout the room]
Spider: This causes it! This causes it! This causes it! Information overload! All the electronics around you poisoning the airwaves. Technological fucking civilization. But we still have all this shit, because we can't live without it. Let me do my work.

One of the interesting thing here is the overlap of two different ways to bring more power to the iPhone than it really deserves. The lady is blaming the iPhone as the harbinger of mind numbing technology, and the juveniles off camera are ensnared by the promises of new gadgets to make their lives better. Neither group understands each other's culture, the lady can't understand her own arbitrary cutoff point between good technology and bad technology , and the juveniles can't understand how far seduced they are by consumerism.

This brings up two interesting parts of the argument. The lady is pleading for a return to a natural state of humanness. However, is shown to be hypocritical through her patronage of sprint cellphones. (why is that open in her hands anyway?) The fact is our human bodies are far past any return to a "natural" state. We live far beyond the time of maturation of our offsprings surviving through a cocktail of vaccines and antibiotics. There is no "natural" state for humans, and even if there was such a person at this state, civilized society rejects them instantly with no remorse.

However, the juveniles are arguing that technology is at the aid of human potential. Through access to the internet, this serves as a collective unconscious of all information that one would desire. This is part of the salvation story of technology and science, that there will be some "thing" if perfected that will save us all from ignorance. (see OLPC) Marketing agencies play into this desire and use elaborate ads that promise us salvation but really are merely asking for our money.

As the hierarchy of class/age/sex/race/nation divisions stay solid while information sharing continues to lure us into being numb to these divisions, we will see more and more of these conflicts between people and cultures.