Appropriate for Tablet-eve, Joel Johnson writes:
The reason I bought the van is that even when I am in the process of wanting to drop out of society, "get back to nature," etc., I can't do it without spending $5K on a fuel-snorting machine. It's what tech dorks do when we look at the world: try to find a thing to purchase through which to realize our fantasies.
With that in mind, consider what it's like to be a technology writer, especially on the consumer side of the business. It's not like we sit around trying to get people to buy things that they don't need, but we're sort of fundamentally part of the problem. I mean, we take some comfort in the fact that we ostensibly are steering people toward the best items for purchase, but, isn't the world shaking itself apart? Aren't we running out of oil and rare earth metals and kids in Liberia are smoking heroin and raping their neighbors and the entire civilization is ready to collapse?