I am not a Luddite. But still.

I was looking back through "Economy" the other day, and re-read these lines:

As with our colleges, so with a hundred "modern improvements;" there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. (33-34)

And perhaps I'll give you these lines, with no introduction except to say that they're all from the first page or so of updates on Facebook that showed up in my news feed recently:

Hahahahaha! Figures.

Day off--[dog] to the doggy spa, grocery shopping, oh and the courthouse to pay a freaking speeding ticket!!

It makes me so happy to hear NEW DEFTONES on the radio here in [location]!!!! Now if we could only hear more new music worth listening to instead of old Metallica and Nickelback;)

just wrote a poem

I actually think the Blackberry 10 OS looks pretty sweet. Probably my next phone. Check out this video...

Thank you, global warming, for more catastrophic weather coming our way. And thank you, global warming deniers, for fighting every single effort to combat this destruction of our world. No, seriously.

People who don't drink coffee should not be in charge of making coffee

Well, Facebook since you asked, my cold is a tad better. But with the "wintry mix"--wet stuff freezing as it falls plus pockets of water from yesterday's flooding freezing over UNDER the predicted snow to come later this morning--I have a feeling I should leave early to get to my 9:25 class. Grumble...

I seriously have a chi chi chi chia pet growing on my head. I don't know how people who work a 9-5 get anything personal done. I have more freedom with my schedule and still can't seem to get my hair did.

Much of the time, when I look at Facebook (or Twitter, or Instagram, or whatever other social medium), I end up wondering what the point is. Did I learn anything? Did I add anything of value to my life? We live in a time when instant (or near-instant) communication is viewed as a great achievement, a time when almost everyone has the ability to say almost anything to almost anyone.

Is this a good thing?

Sometimes, of course, it's great to be able to get in touch with someone quickly and almost effortlessly. But the speed and ease with which we can do this lends itself to a great deal of digital noise, noise that creates what I think Neil Postman would call a sea of irrelevance, an overwhelming wave of unrelated facts that have little to no bearing on our lives. Your dog is at the groomer, and you got a speeding ticket? You like to listen to New Deftones instead of Metallica? You're interested in the new Blackberry? Upset about global warming? Had a bad cup of coffee? Wrote a poem? Still sick? Need a hair cut?

It's not that I don't agree, because sometimes, I do. And it's not that I don't care, because sometimes, I do. It's that I'm not convinced that much of this information has any bearing on the real material conditions of my life, on the actions or potential actions that I'll take today. And sometimes, I'm not convinced that any of it has any connection to my life--you know, the actual one that I live, aside from the digital comments and likes and plus-ones and re-Tweets and what-not.

And to be completely honest, I'm not convinced that much of this information has any bearing on the real material conditions of the life of the person who wrote it.

I should say: I'm not a Luddite. But I am worried about something that I think Thoreau points to here, to our inventions being "pretty toys" and "improved means to an unimproved end," and I think we'd all be better served by a serious consideration of the ends, than by a fascination with the newest means.