I guess this officially means technology has killed photography as an art. Chalk up another art form lost to the advances in technology. Is it good? Is it bad? Does it matter? I’m not sure. But I do know there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and technology seems to be committed come hell or high water to stamp out whatever vestiges of the human heart and sprit that made us, well, human in a variety of ways.

Look, I make my living in technology, but does everything have to be computerized? We have instruments that replace human musicians. I loved the Moog synthesizer as much as anyone in the late ’60s and ’70s, but now any idiot with or without talent can make music and sound like Beethoven or Lady Gaga. We now have cars that tell us how to park and when to brake and when you’re falling asleep and when you’re too drunk to drive. And I won’t even begin to discuss sexual satisfaction!

But it seems to me the classic struggle of man vs. machine is destined to wipe out every aspect of humanity that there might be left in us. I’m no prude who longs for the ’50s and ’60s (well, maybe a little!); I do think modernation is a good thing in some ways – especially when it comes to advances in medicine and healthcare technology. And just think of all the public service employees that Barack Obama and his corrupt cronies can’t hire and indoctrinate into their socialist mindset because of all the efficiencies of technology.

But excuse me if I say I’m just glad to be the age I am. I don’t want to live to be 100, and I defintely have no desire to be some young kid who’ll grow up in a world where his or her own humanity is virtually replaced in every way by technology. There ought to be room for the human spirit, creativity, imagination, and art and music that comes from the heart, not from some computer motherboard. Which is why I find myself gravitating to those things that I have no doubt technology could do for me but I prefer to do myself, like cooking and sitting out on the patio watching the palm trees and the stars, or feeling the warmth of the sun on my skin, or meditating or praying or reading (real books, not from a Kindle), or playing bartender. The simple pleasures of life.

Once technology takes over those we’re all screwed.