Category Archives: Technology and Society

Sneering Anti-Technologists

Lileks is unimpressed:

Honestly: would you rather they hadn’t invented clothes-washing machines? Radio? Would you rather that one member of a household spend their entire day over a washtub with nothing but the sound from the street through the screen window for company?

It’s comforting for some, apparently, to think that people in the past just stared slack-jawed at flickering images and rose like zombies when the Consumption Instructions were finished, and spent their life in agitated dissatisfaction until the useless, needless object was acquired and installed. I’d like to know if these people have microwave ovens.

I’m thinking they write their ignorant snark on computers that they don’t really need.

The American Energy Boom

booms on:

As Daniel Yergin puts it, “the shale-energy revolution [provides] a new source of resilience for the US and enhances America’s position in the world.”

It’s the one bright spot in the American economy, and it’s happening despite, not because of, “progressive” policies. Of course, they’ll take credit for it, though.

And the Left just hates it. I’d like to see to what degree the anti-frackers and anti-Keystone people are being funded by the Saudis.

Hollywood’s Fault

No, this isn’t about the culture wars. It really is a Hollywood Fault, that may prevent Garcetti’s gang of cronies from blotting out the sun of Hollywood and West Hollywood residents.

It’s interesting to note that the Red Line subway runs along it, down Hollywood Boulevard. That line was built a couple decades ago, and it’s not clear that they knew they were building it along a rupture fault. From the map, though, it appears to run a block or two south of it, so even if it did go, it wouldn’t necessarily break the tunnel. But it could leave a crack so deep that you could see all the way down to where the people who run Hollywood live.