Free Thesis
Of course, you'd have to be in some specialized area of sociology and technology. But if you want it, I won't even claim intellectual proprietariansismism. Whatever.
I was looking at a Sky Mall catalog today, and they were selling one of those wristwatch cell phones that I posted a link to about a year ago. They're about $300 and are still the size of the Hindenburg with a wristband, but they're available. I would still LOVE to get one once they shrink down to a manageable size. Doesn't need a million functions, just a basic "contacts" program, Bluetooth (for the headset, I'm not Dick Tracy, sir), the phone itself, and maybe a stopwatch/alarm. Don't need camera/mp3/video/whatever, just the tiniest phone ever easily located on my wrist.
Then I looked over at MY current phone, a T-Mobile Wing (aka HTC Herald) that I picked up for about $30. A bit bulky for a phone, but it's got all the features (and probably twice the computing power) of that tiny Fujitsu laptop that I fixed up and sold four years back. I now carry around my favorite Gameboy games on my phone. There's pokeymans in it. I swear.
(ADD moment because I don't know where else to fit it: The movie Idiocracy is a good stupid-funny-thinking movie. It proposed that natural selection and "survival of the fittest" pretty much doesn't apply to humans anymore. I agree with this, I think that humans are no longer evolving as an organism. I think our technology is evolving for us. We'll probably never naturally develop a resistance to cancer, since cancer-prone humans are still producing - we will evolve technology to battle and cure cancer. This idea will be relevant in a second.)
That's when it hit me - these two cell phones are diverging technologies. Cellular capability is becoming a component technology, like calculators were in the 80s and MP3 players sort-of-are-already. Down one line, we've got the Cellphone organism adopting and absorbing other technologies, becoming a sort of data-processing/digital-assistant organism of its own (reminds me of Glitch from ReBoot). Down the other line, we've got a Cellphone organism that's trying to reduce its profile, become unnoticeable and in some ways get absorbed by other technologies.
This sort of thing is constantly happening with all sorts of tech. Think about the last time you saw a fax machine. JUST a fax machine. I haven't seen one since I was...really young. I've seen computers and e-mail programs that can emulate a fax machine, I've seen copiers with a faxing function, but even our fax machine at work that we have simply because people don't REALIZE where the fax tech went has other capabilities like light-duty copying and I think it can be a printer if we hook it up correctly.
Anyway, my idea for you, Fictional Technosociologist, is that you write a thesis outlining the evolutionary path of technology in a way that isolates example techno-organisms to show where tech has been coming from and where it went. I want a gigantic family-tree-looking chart on my wall that shows how the abacus turned into a calculator which was devoured by both the simple wristwatch in the 80s and the massive PC in the 90s. That sort of thing.
I haven't written a note in nearly two months. Hmm. Well, there's my sporadic disconnected idea for the month.
I was looking at a Sky Mall catalog today, and they were selling one of those wristwatch cell phones that I posted a link to about a year ago. They're about $300 and are still the size of the Hindenburg with a wristband, but they're available. I would still LOVE to get one once they shrink down to a manageable size. Doesn't need a million functions, just a basic "contacts" program, Bluetooth (for the headset, I'm not Dick Tracy, sir), the phone itself, and maybe a stopwatch/alarm. Don't need camera/mp3/video/whatever, just the tiniest phone ever easily located on my wrist.
Then I looked over at MY current phone, a T-Mobile Wing (aka HTC Herald) that I picked up for about $30. A bit bulky for a phone, but it's got all the features (and probably twice the computing power) of that tiny Fujitsu laptop that I fixed up and sold four years back. I now carry around my favorite Gameboy games on my phone. There's pokeymans in it. I swear.
(ADD moment because I don't know where else to fit it: The movie Idiocracy is a good stupid-funny-thinking movie. It proposed that natural selection and "survival of the fittest" pretty much doesn't apply to humans anymore. I agree with this, I think that humans are no longer evolving as an organism. I think our technology is evolving for us. We'll probably never naturally develop a resistance to cancer, since cancer-prone humans are still producing - we will evolve technology to battle and cure cancer. This idea will be relevant in a second.)
That's when it hit me - these two cell phones are diverging technologies. Cellular capability is becoming a component technology, like calculators were in the 80s and MP3 players sort-of-are-already. Down one line, we've got the Cellphone organism adopting and absorbing other technologies, becoming a sort of data-processing/digital-assistant organism of its own (reminds me of Glitch from ReBoot). Down the other line, we've got a Cellphone organism that's trying to reduce its profile, become unnoticeable and in some ways get absorbed by other technologies.
This sort of thing is constantly happening with all sorts of tech. Think about the last time you saw a fax machine. JUST a fax machine. I haven't seen one since I was...really young. I've seen computers and e-mail programs that can emulate a fax machine, I've seen copiers with a faxing function, but even our fax machine at work that we have simply because people don't REALIZE where the fax tech went has other capabilities like light-duty copying and I think it can be a printer if we hook it up correctly.
Anyway, my idea for you, Fictional Technosociologist, is that you write a thesis outlining the evolutionary path of technology in a way that isolates example techno-organisms to show where tech has been coming from and where it went. I want a gigantic family-tree-looking chart on my wall that shows how the abacus turned into a calculator which was devoured by both the simple wristwatch in the 80s and the massive PC in the 90s. That sort of thing.
I haven't written a note in nearly two months. Hmm. Well, there's my sporadic disconnected idea for the month.