Not So Smart | James Howard Kunstler
James Howard Kunstler -- World News Trust
Feb. 26, 2013
"The Fed can afford to lose money because it can simply print more."
--The New York Times
One striking but little discussed element about the new Netflix Washington political drama series, House of Cards, is that every time a character picks up a cell phone, something bad happens. The character's phones shadow them at every turn like evil twins, giving the impression that the U.S. government, and everything in its orbit, is run not by human beings but by cell phones. The people attached are merely puppets of the phones.
I don't think this is a sign of the rumored "singularity," the point at which human and machine intelligence supposedly meld into a shimmering synthesis of silicon masturbation fantasies. Rather it's just another demonstration of the diminishing returns of technology -- or how thinking you're so smart actually makes you stupider. Surely we are a stupider nation politically than we were before the age of texting, drones, and high frequency trading.
I have no predictions about what exact effects the so-called Sequester might bring about when its dreaded hammer rings down on Friday. But something that works as a bitch-slap upside this nation's tattooed head is apt to be salutary, if only to demonstrate to the apathetic masses and its grifter leaders that anything which can't go on forever, eventually won't.
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