Rehman Rashid: Who I don’t want to be when I’m old, kereta kerbaus and Nat’s guide to differentiating asses from opinions

I’ll let others hantam him for the asinine “grumblestiltskins” comments, let’s look at the real point of the article (reproduced below). You can start by reading the article and my brief comments first, it’s a tad more entertaining, while the following is more boringly reasonable :)

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I cannot help but feel pity for how pathetically Mr. Rehman fears that which he cannot understand. Damn cliche wei.

Everyone has bad experiences trying to play catch-up with technology. The spirited roll with the punches and try their best to adapt. The wussies “take a sledgehammer to my computer or see how many pieces my cellphone would form when flung at a hard surface with all my might.” :|

That might have been fine in jest, but this man actually fears progress. Yes, technology has changed the way we communicate, but has that really had a uniform effect on quality? If the quality of Mr. Rehman’s writing and thinking is representative of those who reject technology, give me a techie any day.

If you think bloggers are liars who spew sensational falsehood, then the only reason to explain their popularity is that people are too stupid to know the difference. Can you profer other explanations?

What could possibly inspire someone to lash out at average Malaysians so vindictively? Truly, who is the disenfranchised, disgruntled party here?

Further, what exactly what are you trying to achieve by stemming the tide of technological progress? Cheers, adulations, and pats on the back from fellow stubborn dinosaurs?

If Mr. Rehman’s characterises bloggers as hacks whose rants are pointless and self-indulgent, what are we to say of a man who glorifies the typewriter as the pinnacle of human evolution and “dearly wish(es) to (destroy) the devices of information & communications technology”? :|

Dunno about you, but seems pretty pointless and self-indulgent to me. And I can’t stand people who make empty threats.

Sigh, luckily, just because Mr. Rehman exhausted all his learning powers training himself to change typewriter ribbons, doesn’t mean that individuals like Desi and Zorro can’t embrace technology and use it as a conduit, rather than a means in itself.

Truth be told, I’m none too bothered. What are guys like Mr. Rehman gonna achieve? Persuade Malaysians to abstain from computers and cell phones? Scare bloggers into believing that only NST journalists are credible? *stiffles a guffaw*

Perhaps all parties will be satisfied should Mr. Rehman take his own advice, stand up for his principles and limit his distribution to handcopied articles he can pass out on the street.

Okla, give chance, use typewriter oso can. I’m sure there are a few lying around somewhere, in need only of a new ribbon..

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I might not have bothered repasting the whole article, but since the NST’s tech team can’t even keep proper archives (The Star, boringmus tho it may be, has a better edge here), I guess it falls to us that Mr. Rehman’s inanities are perpetuated. And since it’s here, who can resist comments (in bold below) ! :D

Comment: Broken down in the barnyard of free expression
13 Mar 2007
Rehman Rashid

HE was named Ned Ludd, he lived in 18th-century England, and he is my hero.

Really? get better heroes wei.

This is because he did to sock-making machines what I would dearly wish to do to the devices of information & communications technology, that is, destroy them.

Nak cuba? Silakan.

Ned Ludd is said to have gone on a rampage in 1779, smashing a new invention that could knit stockings quickly and cheaply and thereby ruin the livelihoods of human knitters.

His berserking quickly caught on among the working populace of Britain in the throes of the Industrial Revolution, and soon there were mobs of “Luddites”, as they came to be known, who set themselves to wrecking all the newfangled gadgets and gizmos that were coming online and putting people out of work.

I hate unemployment too. But try to adapt. Protectionism is a crutch, you only sabotage yourselves and your children if you depend too much on it.

How I wish I could emulate them, no matter how futile it would be to take a sledgehammer to my computer or see how many pieces my cellphone would form when flung at a hard surface with all my might.

Who’s stopping you boss? Do it. DO IT!! You know you want to…. :)

I would only inconvenience myself while doing nothing to stem the ICT tide that is ruining my life and probably yours, too, whether or not you know it.

This is not to say I am anti-technology, any more than Ludd was.

Yes, of course. In no way should wanting to destroy technology make you anti-technology.

He was, in fact, pro-humanity, as I am.

Really? Won’t Amir Hafizi be disappointed.

Technology offers definite advantages. Indeed, I admit, my own life and career would have been impossible without technology.

Two inventions in particular have enabled life as I know it. The first occurred around 1450, when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. The second, and the last time technology intervened in my destiny in any meaningful way, took place around 1870, with the invention of the typewriter.

He that is not open to his true destiny, will never meet it.

More than a century later, the typewriter was still around to see me through into my chosen profession of journalism. No sooner had that redoubtable machine ushered me to my first editorial floor, however, when it was unceremoniously booted out by the computer, which, as we all know, has had to be re-booted innumerable times since then.

Okla, I’ll admit, good joke brudder.

How I miss the typewriter. It weighed about 3kg, which was less than most so-called portable computers today when you include the plugs, cables, chargers and fancy bags without which they do not work. And a typewriter didn’t need plugs or chargers, electricity or batteries. It worked just as well everywhere, even where there was no other technology to speak of or write with.

Yah. Remember kereta kerbau? Damn great things – produced fuel rather than consumed it, didn’t need any fancy spoilers or rims, and worked just as well everywhere, even where there was no other technology to speak of or drive with.

A typewriter could withstand total immersion in seawater, as long as you rinsed it, dried it and installed a fresh ribbon. It could be dropped from lofty heights onto hard surfaces. If it got bent, you could fix it with a hammer. And it cost about a 10th of today’s cheapest notebook PCs, those capricious, demanding, fickle things.

Okla, I dunno if kereta kerbaus cost a tenth of a Proton. But my laptop can withstand a total immersion in idoicy, as long as you keep it plugged in. I mengaku kalah for the lofty heights thing tho. I’m sure it’s an entirely useful trait.

Tell me, if you can’t operate a Swiss Army knife while others can, does it really reflect well on you to blame the Swiss Army knife?

We had no choice but to get with the “program”, so to speak. Information technology was here to stay, and we were officially ordered to love it.

Thus it came to pass that I have successively lost the bulk of my life’s work, rendered irretrievable when 5½-inch floppy disks were replaced by 3½-inch ones, and then by CD-ROMS, and then by optical disks, and then by flash drives, all while the software wars raged about my collapsing universe.

And then came cellular telephony. Since the dawn of humanity until scarcely a decade ago, it was impossible to conduct two separate and unrelated conversations without being in the physical company of the people with whom you were conversing. The cellphone, particularly with its ability to send text messages, has now made infidelity, treachery and deceit commonplace, if not inevitable.

Goodness. So take away cellphones, and we significantly reduce deceit? Tell Pak Lah! Tell Him Now!!!

Human intercourse has, therefore, changed utterly, and irrevocably. And continues to. A little while ago, carrying two or more handphones meant you had two or more Significant Others. Now it’s possible to have two or more phone numbers in the same handset.

Single? Or need a mistress? Get a cellphone!

What text messaging has done to literacy is well documented (or maybe not) but while the cellular masses have dumbed themselves down to lives devoid of vowels, the Internet revolution continues apace. There is now a place called the “blogosphere”, touted by its denizens as a Utopia of freedom of expression.

In my opinion, what they’ve really done is prove why freedom of expression was a really bad idea.

Wow. How conservative/old do you have to be to think that responsible freedom of expression is a bad idea?

In this country, a host of folk who never had a hope of getting published are now proving why not.

Really? I reckon if the NST refuses to publish you, you must be doing something right. Museums my friend, museums.

The local blogosphere is the domain of life-challenged grumblestiltskins and disenfranchised pundits whose asinine maunderings only show why they should never have had day jobs in the first place.

Rumour, innuendo, half-truths and damned lies are their stock- in-trade, and previously sacrosanct standards, principles and ethics are now laughable.

Sacrosanct. Standards. Principles. Ethics. Want to laugh oso tired already. How’s that plagiarism suit going over there eh?

Are they not entitled to their opinion? Of course they are, as much as everyone else is entitled to ignore them. I would venture, however, that everyone has an opinion and a rectum, and not that many seem capable of telling one from the other.

Ok ok, to indulge Mr. Rehman, this is a rectum (_*_) . Everything else on this page is an opinion. Got it? Good.

But no, it’s all good. Let a hundred thousand million flowers bloom; let all voices be heard, in however fractured language, whether or not they have anything pertinent to communicate or any information worth more than spittle to offer.

Ok. Better fractured language than NST hegemony, I reckon.

There’s no stemming the ICTide. Those of us whose love of technology began with Gutenberg and ended with E. Remington & Co. can only carry on as best we can, our antediluvian sensibilities drowned in the great braying barnyard of modern communications.

Boys and girls, if you don’t know the meanings of any big words in the NST, you can use something called the internet. Antediluvian means before the Biblical flood. Errr….

My house was struck by lightning last weekend. My computer was fried. To write this article, therefore, I have had to resort to two other inventions; technology not a century old, not five centuries old, but 2,000 and 5,000 years old respectively: Pencil and paper.

Mmhmm. So some poor underling sap had to type all this out? Poor fler.

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Learning is a lifelong process. Learn to love your computer Mr. Rehman, it loves you.