every moment it is changing
Abdul Muneem Patel’s date of birth is given as 17th April 1989, according to the BBC. Which makes him just seventeen years old. Whether he was one of the supposed death-wishers, scheduled to ignite the US sky next Wednesday, or whether he’s just someone caught up in a mess not of his own making I don’t know, and I don’t suppose many of us will ever know.
At what point does a culture begin to go into a tail spin. Wherein the sophistication of its achievements signals the inevitability of its demise. A hubris, if you like. Forget about nuclear weapons. The latest attacks, if we believe what we read, were to take place using iPods, mobile phones, laptops or even digital watches. The James Bond technology that audiences from the sixties, seventies and eightees paid to gasp at is commonplace now. Like a genie released from the bottle. Any gadget is a potential weapon of mass destruction. This is part of a trend that cannot be reversed. Like the splitting of the atom.
Abdul Muneem Patel has grown up in this techno-world. In his head, it might be a world which has already crossed the tipping point. This decade’s flavour of the month may be Islamic fundamentalism, but come the day when, if, that movement becomes dormant, others will arrive to take it’s place. There will never a shortage of marginal aspirants willing to take a pot-shot at the mainstream. The trouble is that now, these would-be James Bond villains have the capacity to be bona fide James Bond villains. The tools are at our disposal.
We will forget this scare, like we forgot the last one and the one before that. We’ll be allowed to take Coca-Cola up into the blue again, sun-tan lotion, even mobile phones and iPods. Until the assailant gets through. Perhaps a kid of ten now, in another time, at another place. Geeking around on the internet, hanging with the wrong crowd, working out how easy it is to become the baddie on the screen or a hero in a book that will one day be written.
The time will come when flying seems as dangerous as it did to the early pioneers. The technological circle will have coiled in on itself. People will choose to keep their feet grounded. Public transport will be next. One cunning plan later people will inadvertently flick their TV remote to the exploding channel. Keyboards will become infected. Everything will go. They’ll dig up the airports and plant cabbages in their place.
At what point does a culture begin to go into a tail spin. Wherein the sophistication of its achievements signals the inevitability of its demise. A hubris, if you like. Forget about nuclear weapons. The latest attacks, if we believe what we read, were to take place using iPods, mobile phones, laptops or even digital watches. The James Bond technology that audiences from the sixties, seventies and eightees paid to gasp at is commonplace now. Like a genie released from the bottle. Any gadget is a potential weapon of mass destruction. This is part of a trend that cannot be reversed. Like the splitting of the atom.
Abdul Muneem Patel has grown up in this techno-world. In his head, it might be a world which has already crossed the tipping point. This decade’s flavour of the month may be Islamic fundamentalism, but come the day when, if, that movement becomes dormant, others will arrive to take it’s place. There will never a shortage of marginal aspirants willing to take a pot-shot at the mainstream. The trouble is that now, these would-be James Bond villains have the capacity to be bona fide James Bond villains. The tools are at our disposal.
We will forget this scare, like we forgot the last one and the one before that. We’ll be allowed to take Coca-Cola up into the blue again, sun-tan lotion, even mobile phones and iPods. Until the assailant gets through. Perhaps a kid of ten now, in another time, at another place. Geeking around on the internet, hanging with the wrong crowd, working out how easy it is to become the baddie on the screen or a hero in a book that will one day be written.
The time will come when flying seems as dangerous as it did to the early pioneers. The technological circle will have coiled in on itself. People will choose to keep their feet grounded. Public transport will be next. One cunning plan later people will inadvertently flick their TV remote to the exploding channel. Keyboards will become infected. Everything will go. They’ll dig up the airports and plant cabbages in their place.
posted by maldoror at 13:09
1 Comments:
or peas.
i love fresh peas.
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