The End

Hey,
Guess my last post is a good chance to reflect on these past 3 months. A few years back I was quite the technophobe, it seemed that everyone was abandoning the past and their old-fashioned tech and sprinting towards the new millennium/post-millennium promise of futuristic, far-out technology. In the past, my view of hi-tech and technology enthusiasts was kind of coloured by "nerd-o" silicon valley (remember Revenge of the Nerds!) and early-mid 1990s hacker pop culture mythology a la Weird Al Yankovic's "White & Nerdy". With 203 I've acquainted myself with Wikipedia 3 times for the terms "neo-luddite" & "retroist", and that's after vowing never to touch the site. I'll admit that it's good for terms not yet in the "official" vernacular, but it's still coloured by way too many opinions. One idea that's been reinforced is the (not without its flaws) hi-tech-corporate equation: big idea + big money = big tech = en masse tech consumption (population of corporate, literally branded, mobilised media cyborgs/flesh-tech personal identity) = producer (corp) surveillance = ? of freedom and if tech constructing or deconstructing us = keep some healthy distance from tech, jump out of that 'loop' for a lil while. Back in July I was pretty scared about posting as I'm not exactly a techie but I've learnt that retro values and hi-tech can co-exist, and that a more low-tech view is just as valid and can keep the techies in check (maybe). Thanks for the cybermemories.
Stella