Filed under: Uncategorized
It can do anything, I suppose. It checks your email, surfs the web, plays music, directs you with built in GPS, plays YouTube videos, takes pictures, updates you on stocks and weather, and it houses applications (”apps” in Mac-speak) to do nearly everything else, such as run eBay, post Tweets, play piano, and play “Super Monkey Ball“. It also makes phone calls. It’s the new iPhone 3G and it delivers everything Americans want in their pocket, and it does it faster and cheaper than ever. A question best left unanswered: Is the 21st century American Dream now fully realized in the iPhone?
iPhone madness has hit, and with one million sold in three days it doesn’t look to be letting up anytime soon. Opening day was a zoo, with people camping out for days to ensure their acquisition of the “culture changing” gadget. Here’s why people do it:
“This device has changed my life,” declares Ilan Fehler, a 21-year-old student at the University of Arizona, who considers himself lucky to be third in line.
Dale Larson is customer No.1 at this store. The 39-year old consultant on mobile products said says he’s not particularly tied to Apple gear but he acknowledges he started camping out on Wednesday evening.
“I would get excited over any product that works as well,” Larson said. “But nothing does. This device opens everything up. Developers can develop and consumers can take advantage of their innovation.”
Am I the only one that thinks this does not bode well for civilization? In the Victorian era, people lined up for long periods of time to hear Dickens read the latest chapter in one of his novels. In the sixties, Beatlemania hit our shores and parents endured sleepless nights filled with worry over what bowl-cutted Brits were doing to their children. Now we wait for days for a piece of machinery, seemingly leading us to a paradoxical time where we do everything and nothing for ourselves. Where does our cultural trajectory point to next?
I’m no surly old man, but even at my ripe-young age I can see the iPhone for what it is: scary. It mainstreams a world previously left only to 80 hour a week workaholics, a world where every moment is dictated by a new email, a new text message, new stock quotes, new twitter feeds, GPS direction, and, when it all slows down a little, new “Monkey Ball” games, all the while those little white ear buds blast Coldplay and The Pussycat Dolls. The iPhone is a utopian fantasy, where we manage each nook and cranny of our lives in every waking second, leaving no stone unturned and not a minute unoccupied.
In the world of the iPhone, everything revolves around “me”. Everything that I want, I need, and everything that I need, I need right now. Desires become rights. And impossibly enough, while the iPhone gives me everything I want, it leaves me with no time for myself. Who has time to sit and read when you’re forwarding emails, answering text messages, bidding on iPhone accessories, and watching Miss Teen South Carolina on YouTube? What was once mere distraction has now become your life.
Look at all the lonely people. Where do they all belong? On their iPhones.
Note: This was originally posted on @TAC.
Filed under: Introductions
Southern Agrarians, the most accurate doom-sayers in recent intellectual history, are the lovable losers of the Old Right. Whereas Old Right libertarians have found a voice in modern paleolibertarian outlets like LRC, laissez-faire liberals have found a voice in the modern push for globalism and “free trade,” and pro-business, anti-union deregulators have significant influence in the highest levels of government, the Southern Agrarians have been left behind. Indeed, the decline of the southern agrarian, anti-modernity mindset can be tracked in near-direct proportion to the rise of “progress,” a term that has now come to embody modern political and societal degradation. Any previously standing in the way of this tidal wave of innovation were swept aside easily, long since forgotten.
My name is Patrick J. Ford, and I am launching this blog for a few reasons. For one, I currently blog at The GW Patriot (where I am Editor in Chief) as well as at @TAC, The American Conservative’s blog, but neither is an appropriate forum for me to freely discuss and comment on issues of interest to me. I also believe it to be worthwhile to comment on current issues from an Old Right, America-First, anti-modernity agrarian point of view. Alas, I was born in Philadelphia and grew up in the northeast, so a southerner I am not. But despite its name, southern agrarianism is certainly not limited by geography.
I will start by reposting old @TAC posts about “Wall-E” and the iPhone. Feel free to comment, send me an email, or ask to be added to me soon-to-be-growing blogroll.
