L O V eee

Well,  I've been saving up for weeks, it seems. But today I've reaped my sow. 

I finally purchased an eee pc, a 'netbook' designed to be just enough to surf the net or jam out a paper in between classes. It's my new blogging machine.

This bad boy is light, just a sliver over two pounds. And it's due to the wondrous Moore's Law, that the world's computers will double in speed and complexity every 18-24 months.

So, the beautiful product I behold is less that I thought. It was $329 for a device that starts up super-quick. It technically runs on 'old' proccessors, but it's more than satisfactory for 90% of needs. (There was an even cheaper one but I opted for a larger screen/more memory.)

This philosophy of "last year's isn't so bad" is a corrolary of Moore's ways. America, like the rest of the world, does not need to consume. We, as a society, do not need more. We could thrive on what we have.

Fat, as the body sees it, is nothing but saved energy. Your gut is last week's glutton, it is your manifest of stockpiling. America is too obese to say "Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, I need some more."

Post-modernism addresses the past. We've already been to the moon, we've been to Everest and we've found cures to cancer. We need to use the tools we have; people with fewer resources discovered more than we have without a single computer processor, mind you, without electricity. 

In an age that we praise technology as holy in its sole existence we neglect the advances of the old. The Enlightenment took older ideals and said "we don't like our practices" but we today aren't allowed. The netbook trend reminds me of my Macintosh Classic II, which, like many vintage technologies, are proving to be simply faster than new ones.

This may sound like a conservative rant, but I truly wonder about us as a society. Can't we use computing technologies to solve complex problems? Not to find the golden ticket in candy bars or to blow shit up. I want to see us be post-modern and post-consumer.

I hate to sound alarmist and on a slippery slope, but if we proceed at our consuption rate, what will happen? We'll be in quite a mess.