On Gadgets

January 12, 2010
Stacey Mason

Uday Gajendar criticizes today’s gadget-lust, recalling “the truly historically revolutionary game-changers of yore” that included the Memex , Xanadu, Hypercard, and Storyspace .

Gajendar asks why modern technology doesn’t seem to aspire to the cultural and literary significance of its predecessors:

In the end it would be nice if more attention were spent by today’s digerati and nascent auteurs on the groundbreaking things that demonstrate history (writ large, against the canvas of Vannevar, Nelson, HyperCard, SmallTalk, Newton, etc.) and contained the seeds of cultural prominence, lending themselves to worthy criticism, and thus raise the bar for intellectual discourse about modern technological creations.

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