{"id":88600,"date":"2024-04-22T04:00:55","date_gmt":"2024-04-22T08:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=88600"},"modified":"2024-04-21T20:20:39","modified_gmt":"2024-04-22T00:20:39","slug":"the-internal-stresses-of-the-modern-techno-optimist-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/04\/22\/the-internal-stresses-of-the-modern-techno-optimist-family\/","title":{"rendered":"The internal stresses of the modern techno-optimist family"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ted Gioia<\/a> on the joys of techno-optimism (as long as you don’t have to eat Meal 3.0, anyway):<\/p>\n

We were now the ideal Techno-Optimist couple. So imagine my shock when I heard crashing and thrashing sounds from the kitchen. I rushed in, and could hardly believe my eyes.<\/p>\n

Tara had taken my favorite coffee mugs, and was pulverizing them with a sledgehammer. I own four of these \u2014 and she had already destroyed three of them.<\/p>\n

This was alarming. Those coffee mugs are like my personal security blanket.<\/p>\n

“What are you doing?” I shouted.<\/p>\n

“We need to move fast and break things<\/em>“, she responded, a steely look in her eyes. “That’s what Mark Zuckerberg tells us to do<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

“But don’t destroy my coffee mugs!” I pleaded.<\/p>\n

“It’s NOT destruction,” she shouted. “It’s creative destruction<\/em>! You haven’t read your Schumpeter<\/a>, or you’d know the difference.” <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Mark Zuckerberg and Joseph Schumpeter<\/p><\/div>\n

She was right \u2014 it had been a long time since I’d read Schumpeter, and only had the vaguest recollection of those boring books. Didn’t he drink coffee? I had no idea. So I watched helplessly as Tara smashed the final mug to smithereens.<\/p>\n

I was at a loss for words. But when she turned to my prized 1925 Steinway XR-Grand piano, I let out an involuntary shriek.<\/p>\n

No, no, no, no \u2014 not the Steinway.<\/em><\/p>\n

She hesitated, and then spoke with eerie calmness: “I understand your feelings. But is this analog input system something a Techno-Optimist family should own?”<\/p>\n

I had to think fast. Fortunately I remembered that my XR-Grand was a strange Steinway, and it originally had incorporated a player piano mechanism<\/a> (later removed from my instrument). This gave me an idea:<\/p>\n

I started improvising (one of my specialties):<\/p>\n