Todd, a very popular musician, may be a good prospect (see below). My apologies, if this is old news.
-Pete
March 9, 1999
I saw the Light
By Todd Rundgren
Technology has not changed my life. The
chill that many feel when they hear that
word is unknown to me. I grew up in a
house filled with my father's tools. I
don't remember a time without a refrigerator,
toaster, electric range, radio, record
player...or the TV where Walt Disney showed
us Tomorrowland. The family magazine pile
was substantially stacked with issues of
Popular Science and Popular
Mechanics--technology was already
"popular."
In high school, while others gravitated
toward the gymnasium and athletic fields, I
found myself showing up at the local Bell
Telephone office to watch what is now a
primitive form of data processing. After I
graduated I joined a band and spent hours
honing my "technique"--a style of blues
guitar playing called "bottleneck" or "slide" to
which I applied a pulley from a computer
punched-card sorter.
I later discovered the wonders of altered
consciousness through substances that were
created in a "lab"--complex molecules only
recently isolated and synthesized, but around
in some form since before man crawled from
the ooze. I wondered about other ways of
life and cultures, and airliners allowed me to
follow the pathways I had only read about
and imagined, carried along substantially by
the electrified commerce of my American
Express card.
It is only in those
moments, when
consciousness is
disconnected from
mankind and its artifacts,
that technology is not a
contributing factor to the
quality of life.
Economics--the inexorable dynamic of the
marketplace--has changed my life. There
came a time when all the computing power of
that roomful of Bell Telephone mainframes
was available to me at the cost of a
good-quality guitar, which is still a lot less
than a grand piano. How could I refuse the
latest technologies? It was a perfectly
natural buying decision that millions of people
have since made.
The first automobile was a technology. The
millionth automobile is a commodity. Would
life be different without a particular
technology? Yes, but not for long. Someone
would soon recognize the need and discover
a way to satisfy it, economics allowing. And
we will all experience and benefit from those
discoveries. We are not a technologically
advanced culture as opposed to, say, a
village of Mongolian jute farmers. We are
within an economic milieu that makes certain
things affordable to us and not to them.
Technology allows me to leave quibbles about
technology and economics aside. Because of
the increasing ubiquity of a relatively
primitive technology called the Internet, I
can deliver my product to a global audience
in the morning, walk the trails of the Na Pali
coast in the afternoon and gaze upon the
Milky Way at night--from my vantage point,
out here in the middle of the ocean, the
celestial bodies are vivid and detailed
because of the lack of city lights. It is only in
those moments, when consciousness is
disconnected from mankind and its artifacts,
that technology is not a contributing factor
to the quality of life. Yet, before long, I start
to wonder what it would take to travel to
those stars....
Todd Rundgren is a producer and musician
who is currently creating and selling his
music through his web site TR-i.com. When
not touring or producing, he lives in Hawaii,
where he communicates only by E-mail. He
does not have a telephone.
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