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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 1995)
Technology a two-edged sword She has dollar signs in her eyes. The passers-by gawk at every window, enamored by tattered remains wrapped in a colorful box. Millennium approaches; our blood is needed to grease the capitalist machine. A new gimmick is created to lure us in, proving once again that there’s nothing an American won’t buy. Fresh fruit for rotting veg etables. Cold War forfeiture at the first gulp of New Coke. 3-D glasses just ain’t cutting it anymore — now the Virtual age is being heralded as the latest rung on the panacea ladder. Assuming it ever arrives. Technology, O Divine Master, save us from ourselves. Sons of Celluloid, riddle me this: Isn’t it strange that Hollywood has been producing a seemingly infinite number of films carouseling around the latest technological wonder toys? Glorifying virtual reality, the Internet, and other bits of hardware that are either currently available or being frantically developed to be ramrodded down the gullet of the American consumer in exchange for a large percentage of their pocket book. Products that will make the computer industry wealthy beyond its wildest dreams and allow them a place at the right hand of the Father. Were we in this much of a heaving masturbatory frenzy over the telephone? Oh yeah, the dotted line: the companies want us to buy their crap. Cars, atomic weapons, a shred of concern for mankind — one of these things doesn’t belong here. Listen to the piggies rutting through my pockets. Did they step back and say “Oh sweet mother, bad dog fly on, I just advanced the human race." Hell no. They pegged us as breast-fed by materialistic envy, greyhounds chasing the mechanical Joneses. Sell us out for a dollar. Oh yeah, the fine print: the nasty by-products that come free with our gadgets. Atomic energy keeps rac warm at night and, as an added ; bonus, creates the means to liquify Aaron McKain “/ worked next to a woman who didn't know what a force field was. Someday I won't know what a force field is." the human race. Video games ' become war simulators teaching people how to kill. Give Uncle Sam some time, he’ll figure out a way to turn the precious Internet into a gigantic thumb to keep you squirm ing under. It’s lit to pop and nobody’s gonna stop. Appliance, gizmo, machine, convenience, tool. What else do we require? No, not what Tinsel Town told you we need, not what the advertisers want you to lust for. But, can our minds collectively generate an injustice being served on a silver platter that a piece of tech can eradicate? Probably not. I’ll bet our grandparents couldn’t fathom needing anything else; I’ll bet their grandparents thought they were being split in half on the cutting edge. Has the escalation of crap in the world brought us any more happiness? Will satisfaction come only when our throats are smother ing in mounds of electric hardware; penniless, drowning in technocratic quicksand? We need computers, they don’t need us. Why are we so quick to let the snarling beast out of its cage? Technology and human understand ing run a race at suicidal speeds; looking back will melt you into a pillar of silicon. The rings are counted, an age is reached when none of it makes sense anymore — you no longer comprehend what the devices are doing. You exist marginalized, held captive by our electronic servants. Imprisoned with jargon. I worked next to a woman who didn’t know what a force field was. Someday I won’t know what a force field is. And one day the water will run and the corporations will puke out some cheap, dime store, watered down, Virtual Something (the mighty asterisk muttering some soliloquy about actual sizes and uses), and we’ll obediently drool Pavlovian and lick the ballbearings of IBM, Apple, and Sony. Take it home, ladies and gentle men, and find out that it’s nothing like the Lawnmower Man and nothing like Disclosure and nothing like anything, really. No better than 5-year-olds — dumbfounded, gnashing our teeth because the G.I. Joe with Kung-Fu grip we saw celebrated on Saturday morning television triumphs for capitalism, not because of his deft hand-to-hand combat prowess, but because we’re a bunch of suckers. Merry Christmas. The “Toy Story” of today is the “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” of tomorrow. As the execrable consequences of the next big thing become more and more frightening, we have to dig in our heels and decide that claymation is just fine. Next time you exercise purchasing power, weigh merit against kicking our collective asses one more step - down the line. And next time you’re feeling pompous about the ability to walk upright, remember that you live amongst people who bought the McDLT. McKaln is an undeclared sophomore and a Daily Nebraskan columnist Divorce goes beyond religion a iriumpn occurred in ireiana last weekend. In a close recount, Irish citizens won the right to get a divorce. What amazes me is that they are the last Western country to grant the privilege. Religion aside, divorce is a reality of the modem world. No one should be forced to stay in a marriage which has gone beyond the point of repair. Although we should not hold other countries to the United States’ standards, I firmly believe the division of church and state man dated by our government to be a good idea. Had Ireland had a similar division, this bitter battle would have ended long ago. The Irish clergy and their many supporters have denounced the vote’s results, saying the amendment marks the end of the traditional family. Perhaps it means the end of families who have not been families for quite some time. Over 40,000 couples currently live “separated," already divorced in mind but not in the eyes of the law. The divorce issue has often been called a religious one, even in the United States. The rhetoric goes something like this — when two people commit to marriage in the church, they also agree to stay together “for better or worse," and work out all their problems. While annulment is a possibility, divorce is not. I will be getting married in May within the Catholic Church. One of the vows I will take will be “for better or worse,” and I will mean the words when I say them. I really don’t see myself ever wanting a divorce. But just because someone believes in a particular faith, I don’t think they should be prevented from obtaining something which is almost a modem necessity. Those who object to legalized divorce say it makes it too easy for people to simply give up on a Krista Schwarting “In a country as vehemently and historically Catholic as Ireland\ where more than 92 percent of its nationals have the same religion, it becomes too easy to use that faith as a weapon. ” marriage without putting in the effort to make it work. Perhaps this is the case with some couples. But what about the people who said “for better or worse” not knowing just how bad it could get? What bothers me the most is the overt campaigning along religious lines. Both Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II appealed to voters to think of the religion and morality and defeat the amendment. They almost succeeded. In a country as vehemently and historically Catholic as Ireland, where more than 92 percent of its nationals have the same religion, it becomes too easy to use that faith as a weapon. I’m surerfnany voters cast their ballots the way they did simply because they would have felt amoral conducting themselves in any other way. Religion was not on the ballot in this election, but many read it into being there. Divorce has become an extremely divisive issue in modem Ireland. What I think needs to be realized is that the country is not the same as it was in the early part of the century. To use a cliche, times have changed. Religious values may not have changed, but many Irish citizens have. I have a lot of questions about the 49.7 percent who voted to defeat the amendment. Are they holding on to an unrealistic view of the past, when husbands and wives stayed together no matter what? And even more importantly, what would they have the separated couples do about their situation? Under the former law, since divorce was illegal, remarriages also could not happen. It seems unfair in the extreme to not allow someone . who made a poor first marriage to stay in that relationship for the rest of their life. Catholics in America decry divorce as “the easy way out,” contending that the privilege gets abused. I believe that’s probably true in the United States. But to apply the same assertion to Ireland is ridicu lous. Pro-divorce citizens realize the difficulty in passing the amendment means it is a topic which must never be taken lightly. Already anti-divorce activists are at work, threatening to drag the issue of government interference into court to stop the amendment from - going into effect. I sincerely hope they don’t succeed. Irish nationals have been granted a reprieve from religious interfer ence in the government’s affairs. Hopefully, the dissenters will come to realize why the vote was so important before the issue tears the country apart. 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