I just returned from the fourteenth annual Coolidge Pierce College conference on "Big Data." For some damned reason, the New York steampunk art zine Wavy Thread thought it would be a good idea to send me there. They even lent me the money for my train fare to Yonkers.
For two days I attended panels, cocktail mixers, professional development seminars, hackathons, robotic puppet shows, gaming marathons, cybersecurity debriefings, virtual reality mixed martial arts matches, drone races and even a wacky version of the surrealist game Exquisite Corpse using face recognition software.
If I hear the word disruption one more time I believe my head will explode.
When geeks get together to slap each other on the back the atmosphere becomes redolent with the smell of freshly slaughtered goat. The goat in question this year was that quaint relic we used to refer to as "privacy."
It seems that these techno-nerds are so in love with themselves that the idea that they have wrought a world of ubiquitous surveillance barely raises a giggle. "It's not our fault that Facebook users are so stupid," one particularly smug programmer from Baltimore told me while sipping a craft beer at the Snowden Lounge.
And in fact, among all these millennial encryptors I never once saw anyone pose for a selfie. These dudes (& they're almost always dudes) never drink their own poison.
I left the conference feeling both despondent and relieved. I was sad because the future seems like one flat intellectual strip mall but I was soothed by the melancholy reality that I won't live forever.
I hope ...
For two days I attended panels, cocktail mixers, professional development seminars, hackathons, robotic puppet shows, gaming marathons, cybersecurity debriefings, virtual reality mixed martial arts matches, drone races and even a wacky version of the surrealist game Exquisite Corpse using face recognition software.
If I hear the word disruption one more time I believe my head will explode.
When geeks get together to slap each other on the back the atmosphere becomes redolent with the smell of freshly slaughtered goat. The goat in question this year was that quaint relic we used to refer to as "privacy."
And in fact, among all these millennial encryptors I never once saw anyone pose for a selfie. These dudes (& they're almost always dudes) never drink their own poison.
I left the conference feeling both despondent and relieved. I was sad because the future seems like one flat intellectual strip mall but I was soothed by the melancholy reality that I won't live forever.
I hope ...
No comments:
Post a Comment