cyberbarf

EXAMINE THE NET WAY OF LIFE

Vol. 5 No. 2 September, 2005

THE TECHNO GARDEN OF EDEN

A FABLE FOR OUR TIMES

In the Techno Garden of Eden, God named his chosen alpha son, Adam,

after the first letter in the alphabet. He named Eve after the next vowel.

He reserved the rest of the vowels for Input/Output and Utilities.

The Garden was a magical place, where field mice played under fiberoptic grass and chip plants; where the RJ45 reeds grow from rock faces; where a digital flamingo stands guard near the monitor lizards; where iPod vines grow uncontrolled; where laptop lillies open to the sun; where CD palms sway in the breeze; where computers merge from the ground like summer mushrooms; where the Sunpower trees fill the Garden with electricity; there is a Snake named Bill in the trees, waiting for his chance to get Adam under the sacred Apple tree. Adam had all the technology his imagination could ever ask for; he spent his days finding and using all the bounty that the Garden would give him.

So much technology; so little time.

Eve was bored because she could only pattern her life after the three Brooke Burke shows that the Garden could receive on basic cable. She felt jealous of Adam's affection for the bounty of electronics that littered the countryside which consumed his days and her lonely nights.

So one day, Bill the Snake approached Eve. He told her that he had a way to make Adam see her Window to the Real World. All she had to do was to get Adam to consume all the sacred Apple (products) until he got sick, vomited and tired of the cool gadgets that the Snake could never produce. Then in the Snake's plain vanilla Windows world, Eve would be Adam's sole Apple in his eye. She quickly agreed to the Snake's plan.

The plan worked like the Snake thought it would. An angry Tech God banished Adam from the Garden of Techno Eden because Adam destroyed the inventive Apple tree. Eve thought her life would change. But she did not realize that not all change is for the better. She was not rewarded by siding with the evil Snake. Instead of Adam lavishing attention on her, he began lose his hair, drink too many Megacolas, curse his slow modem connection speeds, cuss the constant computer system crashes, and spend too much time surfing the internet for chat rooms, video game mods, vaporware rumors and softcore. Eve did the last thing she could to get his attention and affection: she went down to his progressively lowest common tech denominator in the hope that he would at least notice her. Did he?

No one got what they wanted. He lost the free and easy technology that he was used to when the world was perfect. He was at the whim of decreasing bandwidth, more computer crashes, virus attacks, bad customer service and pink slip consulting deals which could not meet the bills. She never got the attention she needed to feel important. She felt more angst, anxiety, and depression than the average female blogger.

They lived unhappily ever after.

The moral to the story is not simple.

Technology changes society faster than society can see the change.

cyberbarf

EXAMINE THE NET WAY OF LIFE

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