Word: toadding
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...Wind in the Willows, Mr. Toad romances his gypsy cart until he is transformed by the sight of that splendid innovation, the motorcar. The gypsy cart is forgotten--is junk. We are all Toad. We need the sobering voice of Mr. Badger to talk us down from our manias...
Overstimulation, hypergreed and a kind of idiocy--those three stooges--have a way of tumbling into the room along with technological progress, which gives them respectability and theological cover. Mr. Badger, Toad's killjoy twin, makes these points: 1) each transformative moment will be superseded by another one, tomorrow or the next day--all marvels are disposable; 2) innovations are not always wonderful; 3) the world is round and time is circular; human nature is constant, but 4) may be damaged--or what is worse, humiliated--by novelties, which (like '70s neckties or television in any decade) may have about...
...that Mr. Badger is a Luddite. He merely points out that technology has a mixed record. CB radio was a Toad mania long ago. Technology is sometimes, in the end, a little stupid--as anything must be that was brilliant yesterday but was surpassed overnight--a monster that lives on a hungry, dynamic need for its own obsolescence. The universe of Gutenberg should no more be an abandoned graveyard than, say, the American city, which, a generation after World War II, seemed to be in decline and headed toward extinction. Why did we need the cities when...
...though: Don't put your absolute favorite band in there. At least, not at first. I love Dire Straits. It was a little unnerving to be told what musicians share Dire Straits' musical characteristics. I can handle Robert Cray and Nils Lofgren, but Billy Joel and Toad the Wet Sprocket? Skip...
FORGET THE "HAPLESS TOAD...