16 March 2007

Technology is sexy

Do we have an obsession with technology?

From faster cars and computers to mobilephones with more features to Internet connectivity at lightning speeds to washing machines with fuzzy logic to HDTV, space exploration, nuclear weapons, genetic engineering and artificial intelligence… man’s endeavour to create a technologically-superior life is an endless enterprise.

What for? Why do we engineer fancier and faster machines? What motivates us to design a life of speed? Why has technology become an all-powerful culture in our lives?

While reviewing Hans van de Braak’s seminal work, ‘The Prometheus Complex: Man’s Obsession with Superior Technology’, in a 1997 issue of Technology and Culture journal, David Rothenberg offers a point of view: “We don’t just do it to get ahead in the material world, we are obsessed, we are seduced, and we use technology to impress and seduce ourselves. Technology is sexy. We always want more.”

Well, what do you think?

2 comments:

Shefali K. said...

Honestly, I never thought in that fashion. Technology is sexy?

My mobile is sleeky, for sure!

Biswajit said...

@ Shefali

I guess technology, too, can be personified and seen as an object of desire.