Category Archives: technology

Some photography stuff

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I’m now going to write about something I usually don’t write much about, but which makes possible all the stuff that I publish online. Hardware.

Why I don’t write about it, well, because I just assume it implicitly. Computers, cameras, lenses, they are tools. If they work well, I don’t give much fuck about them. When they fail or become a pain in the ass, I have to think about them and do something. Such as now.

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This is my main camera, Canon EOS 5d dSLR which I bought in 2006. I used it to record a huge number of photos, including majority of stuff used on a photo exhibition and in my commercial work (corporate and private websites).

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This is the second time the mirror fell off. The first time I glued it back with superglue. The second time I did the same, but I no longer have that much faith in the process. There’s a factory recall for it, and of course I could have it professionally serviced, but the problem is, it’s 10 years old. Technology did manage to advance significantly in the meantime and while worth fixing, it’s not worth keeping as my main camera. As in, I need a new camera body to put my Canon lenses on.

This is my secondary camera:

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It’s the Olympus E-PL1, a micro four-thirds body that I use to mount legacy Minolta lenses and macro extenders. It creates excellent images, almost on-par with the Canon 5D.

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The problem is, everything on the camera except the sensor is a pile of shit. It’s the most awkward, uncomfortable, unergonomic camera imaginable and despite great image quality it made photography a huge pain in the ass for me, especially since it’s usually my walkaround camera of choice, being small and light. It also doesn’t have a viewfinder so I can only take pictures holding it at arm’s length, like a phone. This doesn’t help with image stability. Also, you can’t see shit on the screen during strong sunlight, which happens to be when there’s best light for translucent motives. Essentially, I put it on the floor, guesstimate the focus and pray. That’s not how you’re supposed to do things. On a tripod, of course, it’s great, but having the smallest possible camera and then taking a tripod along that’s several times the weight and bulk of your proper camera, that doesn’t make much sense.

The Olympus has one absolutely great quality: it shows you exactly what the sensor sees, including 100% magnification, which is great for manually focusing with precision that’s completely beyond any autofocus system that I’ve tried. This means you can really nail the sharpness, if you work slowly of course. Which I do. Also, you can overlay the live histogram on the display, very accurately nailing exposure without retrying. Also, it has in-body image stabilization, which is incredibly helpful for hand-held work in low light, which is about 50% of everything I do. Those things are so helpful that I’ve found myself neglecting the Canon for the Olympus, with the result of not being able to use all the Canon lenses that I have.

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What can Canon do, that Olympus can not? This.

As a result, I figured out that my ideal camera would be something that has live view with the articulated screen (so that I can put it in the grass, and tilt the screen upwards to see what I’m doing), a quick high-resolution viewfinder, 35mm sensor with the same image quality as I have on the Canon, to be small enough not to be bothersome when I take it with me for a long walk, it needs to have sensor-based image stabilization (because none of my lenses have IS) and it has to be able to work with lenses adapted from both Canon EF and Minolta MC/MD mounts, so that I could use everything I already have because it’s good and I don’t feel like wasting money on duplicating optics.

As it turns out, such a camera exists: all three Sony A7 second-generation models fit all my requirements. Since A7S II is specialized for video (which I don’t shoot) and too expensive, and A7R II is too expensive, I decided to get the A7 II. Advantages: not too expensive, and has the same goodies as the other two, minus the super-fancy viewfinder and the super-fancy backside-illuminated ultra high-res sensor from the R model. I decided I can live without those for the benefit of costing half the money and being identical in all other regards. As for the resolution, I shoot at 12-13 MP and from that I routinely make B2 sized prints. 24MP will be just fine. Yes, I’m competent enough to actually utilize the R-model’s 42MP sensor, but for the difference in price I can get all the lenses I would want, and those are worth more to me.

I recently bought a used Sony R1 for my kid, and I tried taking pictures with it myself. The image quality, when used properly, is so similar to Canon 5D that it looks like two shots taken with the same camera and different lenses. It has gorgeous image quality on low ISO, paired with a lens that is excellent when stopped down properly.

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The problem is, it’s a perfect camera for slow tripod work and shitty camera for hand-held work, especially in low light. No image stabilization of any kind, very noisy above base ISO, and very difficult to focus accurately due to shitty AF and very low resolution viewfinder and display without any indication of in-focus areas. Also, the lens is not sharp on close focus, especially wide open, which is how I use it for more than half of my photography. Also, it only has that one lens, so no macro extenders, and no extreme wide angle. Not good for me. Great for my kid to learn photography, though, so it’s still a big win.

Regarding lenses, I have a love-hate relationship with the “mid-range zooms”. I had several excellent ones – Minolta MD 35-70mm f/3.5 and Zuiko Digital 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5, for instance, and also Canon EF 35-70mm f/3.5-4.5. The last one isn’t really appreciated but I made most of my closeup and landscape shots with it.

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EF 35-70mm f/3.5-4.5 “shit lens” with macro extension tubes

It’s a pathetic-looking creaky plasticky thingy that makes jaw-dropping pictures if you know how to use it. So it’s obvious why I like this type of lenses. The reason why I hate them is that when I have one, I tend not to take it off my camera because it’s convenient, and so I end up using it in places where it sucks and it degrades the quality of my work. Especially when I use the 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 on the E-PL1, which is optically my worst lens and is just fucking terrible in all ways but one: it’s small and light, and so I end up using it instead of proper, albeit heavy pieces of glass.

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So, of course, I got a mid-range kit zoom for the Sony, the 28-70mm thing that everybody says is soft and has low contrast. The problem is, the alternative is the Zeiss 24-70mm which has better contrast and it looks nicer, but most copies seem to be soft and can be actually worse than the cheaper kit zoom. So I said, OK, let’s get the plasticky cheap one because it was almost free (the kit with the lens was barely more expensive than the body alone), and I can use it on a tripod stopped down to f/13-16 which is where I take most of my tripod photography on 35mm, and it better be tack sharp there. But if it’s any good, I’ll have one light walkaround autofocus lens if I just want to have something better than my phone with me and not carry several kilos of gear, and if I want sharp, I have lenses that do just that. The 24-70mm Zeiss, it’s simply too expensive for me to buy without testing the specific copy extensively prior to purchase; it’s a thousand-euro lens, for fuck’s sake. For that kind of money, it better give blowjobs and make great coffee. But according to all reports, it’s optically sub-par, and if I want a really sharp one in that range, I’ll probably try something from the Sigma’s Art series, like the 24-105mm. If I want light, I’ll have the plasticky cheap one, and if I want something that’s both light and good, I’ll get the 35mm f/2.8 Zeiss. That one is almost pocketable, it’s really sharp, and it can still cut the depth of field well enough for my uses. Also, 35mm is probably my favorite focal length for landscapes, because anything wider usually grabs telephone poles and similar stuff that I want to omit in normal situations, and is still wide enough to make sense. I also love how the other Sony-Zeiss prime, the 55mm f/1.8, draws, but that one is more of a specialist tool. It does portraits and closeups excellently, but for those I would actually prefer the 90mm f/2.8 macro. For walkaround photography, the 55mm is too long; my walkaround lenses are usually the 17-40mm or the 15mm fisheye, and it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if I end up using the fisheye as the mainstay on the Sony.

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Someone will say, what about the lack of autofocus on the adapted lenses? Honestly, I usually work slowly and turn the damn thing off anyway in most cases. The only thing for which I really prefer autofocus are the portraits, because with manual focusing it’s really difficult to get the eyes critically sharp on as shallow depth of field as I prefer it to be, because the model’s breathing motions are usually all it takes to bring the iris out of focus. Accurate focus confirmation, however, might be enough for me to get accurate focus with MF lenses.

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Olympus E-PL1 with Minolta MD 50mm f/1.7, manual focus

I anticipate the question: why do you whine so fucking much when it’s obvious that you manage to make similarly good pictures with any kind of equipment you get your hands on? Because the process of making the pictures is supposed to be fun. If something is painful to use, I will stop using it. Some pieces of equipment had the result of making me turn away from photography almost completely. Equipment is important in the sense that it can either feel nice and wonderful to work with, or it can feel like having your nails pulled with rusty pilers. I tried both, I don’t have to tell you what kind I prefer.

Anyway, it’s just me thinking out loud about it. You’ll see the pictures when the actual camera arrives. If the Americans don’t cause a nuclear war first.

The common core of sectarianism everywhere

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I recently commented on the similarities between the Open Source community and New Age. Since then I thought more about that and it seems to me that the similarities are far from being superficial. In fact, I think I’m on to something here. But let me explain.

They both think they are saving the world

In the Open Source community, “the enemy” used to be Microsoft, but now Apple seems to be taking over that role. Essentially, what makes them evil is that they make things everybody can use and find useful, and they make a shitload of money doing it. Of course, that’s not what the Open Source advocates will tell you. They will rant about closed source and proprietary code and what not, but there seem to be two main objections that weave through the arguments. First is “I don’t feel important and special if I’m using it because everybody can do it”, and “I can’t see the source so it must be spying on me in secret and I can’t trust it”. There’s a striking parallel between that and the opinions about the Catholic Church in the smaller religious communities. It doesn’t make you feel special because there’s a billion members, and there are all sorts of conspiracy theories about Vatican and all sorts of its supposed nefarious activities. Essentially, the big bad evil Sith Lord Emperor is in power and the valiant rebels must take him down, with the help of the Force, of course, because they are the good guys. When they take down the Evil Empire, suddenly everything will be right in the world. There will be no need for money because everybody will share things equally with others and respect each other. How they imagine they will remove conflict and disagreements in the world when they can’t agree on the color of shit even in the smallest of things they are in charge of today, I have no idea.

The things that actually work in the real world are the enemy

Let’s put it this way. If you want a computer that just works – all the hardware drivers work, all the software you need works, it’s fast, doesn’t get in the way, it’s difficult to break and will reliably allow you to do other work and completely ignore the underlying bells and whistles, what will you choose, assuming that you are technically proficient enough to be able to use just anything? Will you use a Mac, a Windows machine or a Linux machine? I’m in that exact position so I know. I used everything at some point, from Commodore 64 through a DOS 3.20 PC, Windows 3.11, 95, NT 4, 98, 2000, XP, Ubuntu Linux from Gutsy to Trusty, and a Mac Air laptop. You know what I use when I want things to work reliably, without interruptions, for years? I use Windows. It’s the most stable, the least problematic OS I know – with exception of Windows 10, which is only slightly better than Linux, in that every now and then some small thing breaks and I need to restart it. On a Mac, every OS upgrade breaks something important and I have to reinstall few programs I rely on, because they stop working properly and a new version needs to come out that is adapted to new crazy and pointless shit that Apple introduced just to fuck with it.

But when you listen to people, you’d get the impression that a Mac just works, never breaks, and Windows machines always have problems with this or that, and if you have problems with Windows and you don’t want the proprietary prison that is Mac, get Linux, that will solve all your problems. My experience, however, is that you need to have Linux on your desktop if you want to keep your skills sharp because shit is always breaking down and you need to keep fixing it, and all of it’s done from the command line, and keeping current with that helps you from getting lazy; essentially, you’re constantly in the role of a system administrator, not a user. With a Mac, things just work until you install an OS update. Then everything goes to hell, then you fix it and it keeps working for another year, when there’s a new OS update. With Windows, you install it and it just works for 10 years. When there’s a service pack, you install it and it still just works. Things break as an exception, not as a rule. You need a major OS upgrade so infrequently, you will often be having two major hardware upgrade cycles in between. With 2000, XP and 7, I kept suspending and waking up the machine for so long, I’d usually shut it down only when I went away for a vacation, and rebooted only to install some major software upgrade. Essentially, the machine with Windows behaves like a toaster, only I had toasters break more frequently than Windows machines. It’s incredibly reliable. If a Windows machine is unstable, in 100% of the cases you have a hardware failure, 80% of which is a bad RAM stick. Unfortunately they broke this polished reliability somewhat in 8 and 10, and 10 GUI is now on the reliability level close to that of Mate desktop, which is the most reliable and usable Linux window manager that I know of, which means that it usually just works, with occasional stupid shit happening without any apparent reason, like quarter of every icon missing where the shortcut sign is supposed to be, because [reasons]. Fixes with reboot. Other than that, the machine behaves like a toaster, which means, it just does what it’s supposed to, quickly, reliably, every day, so that I can do whatever else I do when not fixing the computer.

The similarity with the New Age is apparent. If you say something positive about the main-stream spirituality to someone in the New Age circles, it’s like praising Hitler in a synagogue. You can say all you want about the main-stream being spiritually sterile, obsolete, corrupt, power hungry and godless, though, and just watch the audience’s eyes glow and hearts warm with happiness as you do, but if you say something positive about the main-stream religions or something negative about some New Age nonsense, they’ll turn into harpies and try to scratch your eyes out. But the smartest people usually come from the main-stream, from the exact organizations that are supposedly devoid of all spirituality, corrupt and dark, and all those supposedly creative people in the New Age communities usually just rehash other people’s ideas, write bad poetry and literature and are intellectual midgets who think they are giants.

There is a huge number of “contributors”…

…but they mostly simply copy things from the few actual major contributors, who all originate from outside the movement. Just think about it: in the Open Source community, the greatest number of “contributors” either duplicate each other’s efforts, or contribute very simple, trivial things of little use, like ten different text editors that are all either the same or they are shit. The greatest contributions come from great companies, like Sun Microsystems, IBM, Google or Apple.

Again, the similarity with New Age is striking. When I was on the Kundalini mailing list, there were exactly two people there with original techniques that were not simple rewrites or rehashes of previously available stuff: Angelique and myself. There were practitioners of Vipasana and Dzogchen who did their stuff according to tradition with little or no innovation, there were practitioners of all sorts of pre-existing techniques and systems, and those who were the most innovative, in the sense that they did their own thing, were usually the craziest one with most problems, which would be easy to correct by simply switching to some traditional approach. So basically you had a group of people that appeared to be extremely fragmented and individualistic, but when you had to summarize and see who was it that did something useful that actually worked, you got several old traditions and two original contributors who were actually proficient enough to invent techniques and approaches through their own personal practice. Out of what, six hundred people or whatever the number was? However, whenever people spoke about traditional systems, you would get the impression that traditional systems are restricting, limiting, and inferior to the freedom and individuality of New Age.

Infighting and sectarianism are rampant

Let me quote something from Wikipedia. It’s not a list of Linux distributions, it’s a tree of distribution-types:

Basically, everyone in this tree hates every other branch, and they all hate Apple and Microsoft. But when you ask them what they are all about, they’ll talk about unity, love, freedom and creativity. I don’t even need to mention similarity with the New Age communities, do I? You just can’t believe this shit.

The moment something has a chance of actually succeeding, it is denounced as the enemy

If it doesn’t work reliably, it’s a creative small independent community or an individual who is boldly experimenting with advancing [x]. When it actually works to the point of other people wanting to use it and it becoming the main stream, it’s the evil cult of money and power whose only purpose and agenda is to limit and enslave others. Replace x with [software, spirituality, food, soap, toilet paper].

It’s only seen as positive and creative as long as it’s useless or actively harmful. When it actually starts being useful, it becomes boring and is denounced by the community of thrill-seeking ego-motivated misfits. For instance, when Ubuntu started being actually useful as an end-user-oriented distribution that could actually be installed on normal people’s computers and used to do actual work, it was immediately and universally denounced by the Open Source advocates as a commercial sellout. Prior to that, the professed goal of the community was to increase Linux adoption in the general user base. However, as that started to happen, the Linux advocates no longer felt special just for using Linux, and now had to use some “pure” shit that’s not contaminated by the plebeian main stream adoption. Similarly, when each New Age person is doing their own thing and stumbling in the dark, they praise each other as great examples. However, when someone is actually successful, and others come to him in order to learn, it’s seen as a negative example of a cult following and falling to the Dark Side. I’d say it’s the same thing: jealousy of someone else’s success, and frustration because of the possibility of a realization that originality is not necessarily a good thing if it actually stands in the way of accomplishing goals. Also, different approaches that can’t make the basics work are hardly originality; more likely, they are abortive attempts. For instance, if you can’t manage to concentrate, it’s a better idea to learn some reliable preexisting method than to experiment. Experiment only when no preexisting method is available or satisfactory. However, neither Open Source nor New Age, for the most part, are actually doing things on the bleeding edge of human endeavor. Open Source is mostly reproducing shit for free that someone else had already done for money, and New Age is no better; its stated goals are mostly re-hashed Vedanta with some Buddhism and Christianity. If something is actually new and original, it stands alone outside the New Age community, rejected because it went outside the dogmatic boundaries of a group that’s supposed be free from dogmatic boundaries.

Why walk when you can teleport?

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I’ve been watching Youtube videos with people restoring old computers to full functionality and using outdated equipment to perform tasks, and it’s been bothering me for non-obvious reasons, and I was thinking why that is.

Why use a i7-6700K when a Q8200 will do? Why use a modern smartphone when a 5 year old device will do?

It will do exactly what? Just now, I took an old netbook from my “outdated shit bin”, installed a modern version of Linux on it together with all essential apps in order to test whether it will “do”. The touchpad is shit, the display is shit, it is slow and although it does perform basic functions, like writing documents, answering mail, watching videos and playing music, it does everything poorly and with delays. So yes, it will “do” if you can’t afford a modern well made device, but if you can, by all means do because it’s worth it. Elimination of all those delays and nagging flaws has a very liberating psychological effect akin to removing painfully tight clothes or shoes; you don’t know how much it was bothering you until it stops. So one thing that was bothering me with the concept of reusing outdated equipment was the concept of deliberately putting up with bad things that can be avoided simple because you rationalized the good thing as “too expensive to be worth it”. It’s too expensive to be worth it if it gives you no actual benefit (like a gold-plated phone), but this excuse seems to be overused in order to rationalize not being able to afford things that are quantifiably better. I’m often not able to afford things, but I try not to resort to a “sour grapes” excuse. Instead I usually say something like “yes, x would be better but I can’t afford it so I use y, which is cheaper, not so good but I can get the basic functionality out of it”.

The other concept that’s bothering me is that I can recognize some urge to use minimalistic tools, the worst possible stuff that still gets the job done, in order to avoid the trap of the law of diminished returns that always rears its ugly head when you try to use the best possible tools to do the job. That makes sense when you just need a good hammer, not the best hammer in the world, because you occasionally need to hammer some nails, not do it all day, every day, for a whole year. But the problem with this is that when you try to buy the least expensive tools, they occasionally fail, and they always fail when you need them. Even if they don’t fail, they usually do a shitty job. I have a pair of cheap water pump pliers that keep slipping and performing poorly, and I never get to actually replace them because the good ones are more expensive and I’m not sure they will perform better. But I use those twice a year on average so it’s not a big deal, it’s just evidence that there indeed are bad tools and that being cheap can bite you.

There’s more, of course. There’s also a question of “why try to be rich when you can do everything with less money”, as a rationalization for staying poor. There is a limit, of course, where additional money doesn’t really get you any additional real quality of life, because you simply run out of useful things to buy. This amount of money, however, is huge; it’s probably in a billion-dollar range, and even in the open-ended range you can use the money to influence the entire civilization, by financing things that would otherwise make no economical sense, like spaceflight or pure science.

It comes down to “why would you need a car when you have your feet”, or “why would you need a forklift when you have your arms”, and, essentially, to “why do you need power”.

You need power because being limitless is better than being limited, because being powerful is better than being powerless, being great is better than being small, and a wonderful thing is better than a shitty thing, although a shitty thing is often better than nothing at all.

People love fast cars not because they couldn’t do everything with a slower and cheaper vehicle, but because a fast car gives you the feeling of unrestrained freedom that reminds you of the state in which you existed before you were born in this limiting existence. People love power because it reminds them of freedom and the joy of not being restrained in everything you attempt. That’s why settling for the inferior things disturbs me – because it looks like giving up on ever being able to see God again, and be free and unrestrained and powerful. It looks like the final acceptance of defeat. Of course, things will not give you that which you lost, but once you start giving up on greatness, you might actually mindscrew yourself into ultimate spiritual failure.

Social networking as an orgasm button

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In my last article I come off as a technophobe of a sort, or at least a techno-skeptic, and weird as that might sound, I think this perception might actually be accurate. I think of technology as a tool for solving problems and doing things that you want to do. If it creates more problems than it solves, does it really fulfill its purpose?

I’m a techno-skeptic (with a dozen working computers of all kinds in the household) because I see how people use technology. If someone was spending his life hanging out in a bar and wasting time in superficial, shallow conversations, we would recognize this as socially unacceptable, something worthy individuals don’t do. However, this is exactly what social media is: shallow people wasting time in superficial quasi-dialogue, and it’s all worthless and going nowhere. The only one actually profiting from it all is the bar owner.

Technology gives every kid an opportunity to become the smartest person who ever lived. You can buy a Raspberry Pi for a few dollars, plug it into a TV, keyboard and mouse, and install a free Linux OS on it that allows you to access the vast tomes of knowledge on the web, play multimedia and write code in multiple programming languages. And how many use it for that? How many of you did sudo apt-get install gcc?

For 200 EUR you can buy a smartphone that’s actually a 8-core pocket supercomputer with Geekbench 3 score of over 4000. You can load it with a library of books and music, you can use it to access Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha, you can use it as a multiple-language dictionary, interactive road map with satellite navigation, you can use it to SSH-connect into a remote server, to write and execute Python code, essentially you can do everything a personal computer can do, that doesn’t require a keyboard and a big screen. Its price makes it accessible to almost anyone, and even for 50 EUR you can get a device that gives you most of those capabilities. Based on that, you would expect the people who own such devices, and the even more powerful ones, to be the smartest and most capable of all people who ever lived. Instead, they are barely literate, with poor mental focus, disastrous social skills, horribly limited general knowledge, are ignorant of history, philosophy, politics, art and science, they have very poor understanding of technology in general, and people in the 19th century would see them as retarded scum that lacks both education and proper upbringing.

Does it mean that I think that children should not own smartphones and computers? Of course not. My kids use whatever technology they need. They both have laptop computers and mobile phones. They both play videogames. However, they play Minecraft and Universe Sandbox, not Call of duty, and to them computers and mobile phones are not a life-substitute, but a tool. The older one can write code in Logo, Python and some c, and the younger one can tell you everything about masses and composition of planets in the solar system. Guess why? They read, they talk to adults, they use their brains.

The worst thing that can happen to children is to spend too much time talking to other children, because with other children there’s no positive intellectual and emotional differential, there’s just ignorance, prejudice, and a very violent and abusive pecking order. One of the main reasons why elderly people were so respected in the traditional communities is that they used to talk to children, to teach them true and useful knowledge, and do it in a calm and peaceful way that would unplug the children from the frenzy the other children caused. Children are actually the worst thing that can happen to children, because the only thing children usually learn in the company of other children is how to establish an abusive comparative ranking based on usually completely arbitrary criteria, because kids are too stupid and immature to know what’s really important.

And that’s exactly what people use modern technology for: they use it to entertain themselves and to participate in some social network with arbitrary and worthless comparative ranking. They thirst for attention and approval, and dread ridicule and criticism, and in they fears they primarily dole out ridicule and criticism. Essentially, the entire social network is a cesspool of ignorance, prejudice, ridicule and criticism of others and never satiated desire for approval. In order to earn others’ approval, people adopt one of the few memes and quasi-philosophies, and there’s no place for real diversity of opinion, because if you want approval of others there’s only one thing you want: you want a choice, an opinion and a philosophy that will earn you most approval, and everything else is secondary. That’s why you want the best phone, the best computer, the best camera, the best philosophy: you want others to recognize you as worthy and to approve of you.

You know what I told my kids about peer pressure and desire for peer approval? “Just accept the fact that you’ll never be accepted by all people, or even the majority of people. The only way you can get approval of idiots is to be an even worse idiot than they are. The only way to get approval of average people is to be slightly below average. What you need to do is accept the fact that whatever you do and whatever you choose, someone will try to shit on you. Even if you’re Jesus they’ll crucify you. That’s how people are and that’s what they do, and the thing is, you can never know if they are sincere, if someone is shitting on you because he honestly dislikes what you do, or if he’s just jealous. You need to measure your success by how much you are succeeding at realizing your personal goals, not by what others say. If you want feedback from others, ask the adults, who actually have a developed brain and a reasonable set of criteria, not children who are stupid and immature.”

That’s how people are abusing the technology. They use it to try to get peer approval, and instead they get to participate in a giant hen-house as a part of the pecking order, where they don’t learn anything really useful, except how to efficiently insult others and make them feel worthless, because they know what worked on them.

If you only let go of people and their bullshit approval, you can find great stuff on the Internet, stuff that can make all that technology worth while. You can find an abundance of downloadable books and music, that you can store on your mobile device and read. You can find excellent articles about ancient Rome and topology on Wikipedia. You can find analytical tools that can interpret common language queries as mathematical equations. Or you can get caught in some meme in order to get group approval on some forum.

I always use the best technology I can afford, if I find it useful. You should, too. However, to use it in order to create a virtual pub in which you’ll waste time trying to “be popular” is an abuse of opportunity. So, it turns out that I’m not really skeptical of technology; I just think most people are idiots to whom technologically facilitated social networking is as harmful as an orgasm button to a rat: it feels good, but eventually the poor animal dies of hunger and thirst pressing the damn thing all day.

Idiots and their smartphones

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If you asked a person on the street whether he thinks he’s smarter than a stone age person, he’d probably say yes. If you asked him whether he thinks he’s smarter than someone from the Roman empire, or the “dark ages”, the answer would probably be the same. After all, he knows that Earth revolves around the Sun, and owns a smartphone and a computer.

The interesting thing about smartphones is that I asked my son what do the kids in his class have – he’s 6th grade. It tuned out that most have the top-tier devices like iPhone, Samsung Galaxy 6 edge and Sony Xperia Z5. It’s a jaw-dropping piece of information considering how those kids are not really geniuses; they get average grades, are of average intelligence and are not especially well brought up, to put it more kindly than they deserve. You would ask, what are they using their super-devices for? Games, of course, Facebook and some chat app that’s currently “in”.

Do they use those things to read up on Wikipedia? Not really. Do they use them to navigate Google Earth and see different parts of the world? Not really. Are they reading the news to find out what’s going on in the world? Not really. Are they using them for reading books? Not really. In fact, my son told me they laughed at him when he told them he reads books, because “we’re not in the 13th century to read books”. So basically, those children are idiots with very expensive toys. They are as stupid as a brick, and if you think they would come on top in a comparison with a person from ancient Rome, you are probably wrong.

So, if you strip a today’s person of his technology, how much does he really know, what can he really do, and how much is he really worth?

If you try to reduce social media to the actual message that is shared, it’s all mostly “look at me, I’m a vain, shallow, stupid idiot that’s exactly the same as everybody else; nothing worth seeing here, but do click me because I seek attention”.

The kids in my son’s class act as if there’s a difference between having this or that smartphone, but is there, really? If you waste 10 hours a day hanging out on Facebook, as some of them apparently do, does a better phone help you waste time more effectively, or do you just feel cooler and more important as you do it?

If you strip Augustine or Thomas Aquinas of technology and dress him in rags, does it change what he is? But do it with one of those modern fancy girls who are so full of themselves they can’t stop shooting selfies with their phone and posting them online. Strip her of technology, wash her of her make-up and dress her in rags, and tell me, does it change what she is? What is she, really, if everything she is can be stripped away by removing the superficial?