All Mod Cons

All around us we have technology. It has always been so, since we first napped flints and sharpened sticks. Technology is nothing new. You would have to be a fool and a Communist to think otherwise: There was a day when a cutting edge was Cutting Edge.

 Technology is of it's time and your well being depends upon it whether it's pasteurisation or a dialasis machine. Some of us even have technology within us to prolong our lives so we can pay more tax, consume more stuff and last out just long enough before we are allocated a free motability scooter. Technology is expensive though and if you can't afford it, you are a 'has been' and a burden on Society. Ergo, less titanium hips are being implanted in the last few years. Why employ some expensive surgeons and theatre staff, plus ongoing aftercare when the NHS can give you a commode and show you how to shop online at Tesco? Old and new solutions. This negates any mobility issues the 'Patient' may have and saves the technology for an ill person with more spending power. This person is known as a 'Valuable Customer'. In Private Health circles - where you are guaranteed resuscitation - you are a 'Client'. Paying for technology up front has already elevated your status and human value in  the eyes of Society.

 



Computerisation and networking are 'embedded' in our lives. Everything we do is logged. Even what we buy, like, look at... where we are and who we talk to and when. Technology also tries to predict what we are thinking...Search Engines are particularly sharp at this... 'Did you mean, 'Bio Naturals?' Even Amazon and similar sites try it on... 'Hey Rob, customers who bought what you just bought also bought the complete box set of Gok Wan's, 'How To Look Good Naked.' What bullshit! Anyway, as soon as that fucking wok shows up it's going back.

'Bad Earth'. Acrylic on aluminium.

It would be a mistake to employ new technology for everything though. It has always puzzled me why toasters have an incrementally numbered knob. Toast is more of a visual thing. A colour incremented knob would be better so I always got dark brown - number 5. And why bother with numbers when only 4 and 5 work anyway? Anything below 4 is warm bread and anything over 5 is coal.

Largely though, we embrace technology and have come to rely on it as a diverse form of entertainment and it makes our lives easier. A great example is the Internet Refrigerator. I was looking at one recently. As well as ordering your food shopping online you can map the contents of your fridge on screen. The screen is on the fridge door. LG and other Internet Fridge manufacturers now have an application so you can see in your fridge without opening the door. My oven has the same functionality but with an older technology system...It's called Glass.  The sales spiel for the LG model also claims you can hold a video phone call from your fridge and it has a hard disk to download to. A phonecall on a fridge? A fridge full of pornographic videos? If you'd have told me that in the 70's I would have spat out my Space Dust. So, that's a fridge for entertainment. It has nothing designed into it to offer any refrigeration benefits over a regular fridge.

'Cataclysm'. Acrylic on aluminium.

Personally, I feel that an internet fridge is daft and superfluous. It just tells you a lot about the kind of person that owns it. That person will also passionately covet some cutting edge 70's technology... an old motorised peppermill, a corkscrew that looks like some gym equipment and most likely a lettuce centrifuge. A lettuce centrifuge is the dumbest fucking food tool ever... You burn off 30 calories, drying some lettuce that rewards you with 3 calories in return. If we prepared all food in that way we would be better off eating dandruff.

Another piece of technology that irks me is the Bluetooth Earpiece. OK...in the car, they have a function. But I don't see people using them in cars. I see them being worn in supermarkets. Why does everyone I see wearing one look over 60 with 8" of forehead and look like they evolved in the same gene pool as Jimmy Saville? They don't buy anything either because they shop online. They just go to lurk about letching... Maybe it's a secret sign senior citizens use to make it clear they are on the look out for some back door action or something. I don't know but it's just an observation I made. If you look closely, on further inspection, some of these earpieces are merely cigarette lighters superglued to the ear.

Jimmy Saville... Arsehole.

When I was a kid, all the boys read 2000AD. Well, all apart from the kid who turned up at A&E with some technology in him (motorised peppermill). He read Blue Jeans - 'Because the puzzles were better'. Anyway, 2000AD was (and still is) a visionary comic book fiction aimed at boys. The year 2000 was going to be THE year. 'Everything will have been invented by then!' It was the year it would all happen. As my mate said, 'We'll be 35, have video watches, jet packs and pubic hair.' He was more interested in the watch and the jet pack once I pointed out he was ginger but it was a vision well characterised on his part.



 As it turned out, fuck all happened of any great importance in 2000 and we had to reflect on what had been achieved in the days of 2000AD, the comic. What had been invented then, that was affordable, obtainable, ubiquitous and

enduring? St Ivel Five Pints and Odour Eaters. Well it was a start. The first trickling down of technology from the Space Age.

Sadly the jet pack never really caught on. It was never going to appeal as it randomly lauched you 60 metres in the air in two seconds with no control whatsoever, like an ejector seat without a seat or parachute. Then the fuel ran out. The most reliable way to ensure some degree of Health And Safety was to forget the air bit, lean forward 90 degrees and blast yourself through the side of a fucking ambulance.

Lastly, technology can be a dangerous thing as science isn't an exact science. A good case in point is the Large Hadron Collider...a 27 kilometre circumference particle collider at CERN in Switzerland. The particles were going to be in collision at an energy of 7 teraelectronvolts per particle (that's faster than split shit). I recall a BBC science editor interviewing the big Swiss cheese at CERN and he asked him what would happen when the collider was turned on.....

The guy replied, 'We don't know.'  Excellent. Let's not fucking turn it on then! Four years down the line the Swiss use it to make grilled cheese on toast - with the knob set to 4.75.

'Apocalypso'. Acrylic on canvas.

In the private collection of Helen and Keith Davison.

All painted images copyright Rob Kirbyson.