Why Olympus represents a threat to society

Technology is wonderful. In some respects it has, admittedly, failed to live up to the promises of my youth (I’m still waiting for the personal hovercraft that Eagle assured me we’d all be commuting in by the year 2000 – further proof that the automotive industry is mired in inertia). Then again, even Dan Dare never envisaged that 21st century advances would allow the Nigerian Minister of Finance to offer thousands of people worldwide the latest sure-fire money-making opportunity at the touch of a button, or that the same advances give me the ability to block the Nigerian Minister of Finance’s emails equally easily. Well done the technocrats.

One downside to all this seductive electronic wizardry is the popularity of some extremely pointless devices. Take Blackberries, the latest manifestation of the strange myth of ‘electronic personal organizers’. They don’t do anything that a decent diary and a pen can do (except, of course, lose all your personal information at inopportune moments), but still executives find it impossible to be taken seriously without one. They are the tribal feathered headdresses of 2005, and just about as utile. Presumably, the reassuring presence of a Blackberry in the pocket allows middle managers to fool themselves that their lives really are busy and important enough to warrant the storage of 50,000 phone numbers and 10,000 diary dates.

The affordability of digital cameras is an advance that treads the line between media revolution and miserable travesty. On the one hand, they have the great potential that almost anybody can visually record the space around them and instantly upload those images to the web, making them available to an entire planet. On the other hand, they have the dismal drawback that almost anybody can visually record the space around them and instantly upload those images to the web, making them available to an entire planet. The sad fact is that most of us are stupid and unimaginative, and this is no more in evidence than in what and how people choose to photograph. Allowing every untalented individual publishing access to the entire planet is in no way an advance – William Caxton has a lot to answer for in instigating this trend.

In the past, the cost of film and processing carried with it a consequence. Every crap, blurry and unoriginal snapshot was a wasted opportunity, carrying a financial penalty. More importantly, the general public was unable to unleash these dire portfolios to an audience wider than friends and family (who should have known enough to have had an excuse ready anyway). Not so in these times. The Internet is chock full of blurry pictures of people’s wives at the zoo, and the streets are full of Ansel Adams wannabes brandishing the latest Canon tool for photojournalistic greatness. The only way of thinning this insipid herd is to hope that they take one too many steps in the wrong direction whilst lining up the perfect shot of the Grand Canyon/Mont Blanc/feeding time at the lion enclosure etc.

It’s true what Bill Gates says, technology really does empower people, in the same way that democracy empowers people. Which is the strongest argument I have yet to hear in favour of limiting its access to an ignorant, steaming proletariat.