For some reason, Bob Dylan has been on my mind. It’s probably because “The times, they are a-changing” keeps showing up in my Spotify feed. My fault for liking it. At any rate, it’s been an intermittent earworm ever since, and not least because it’s true. The times are a-changing and rapidly. It’s hard for our little part-lizard brains to keep up.

It reminds me of Moore’s law. Gordon Moore, a businessman and engineer in the early days of modern computing, perceived that the rate of technological change increased over time. He observed that computing speed doubled every two years and was likely to continue doing so, leading to a concurrent drop in price related to computing ability. The projection turned out to be slightly under-optimistic: doubling takes somewhat less than two years, and it’s increasing in speed

As the rate of change increases, the rate of change increases. Eventually, the slope of the line will appear nearly vertical. How odd. We’ll be left behind, of course. Our brains can barely keep up as it is.

Technological change doesn’t exist in isolation: other bits and pieces of the world change in concert. Or don’t – resistance rises as evolution pushes forward, clinging Luddite-like to a past that never was while investing in angry and close-minded fundamentalism that is always and ever an own goal.

Oddly and hypocritically, those that bemoan the changes do so using the tools of the change. They want smartphones, but not the consequences of open access to information. They want all the stuff, but without paying a decent hourly wage. Luckily those they victimize are easily distracted.

As are we all. Things need to change but distract us with an upgraded emoji suite, and we’re happy as pigs in slop. We’re easily distracted and purchased cheap. Which is not to say that I’m not a fan of the emoji. I find them quite handy. It was so clever of us to have invented them.

And we did invent them. It wasn’t Apple or Samsung. People created them when they discovered the horrible truth about texting – the lack of tone makes miscommunication rife. What seems benign to the sender feels like a declaration of war to the recipient. But recipients tend to be idiots 😉

Which reads harsh until you add a semicolon-hyphen-close bracket. Feelings were hurt, and wars started until we realized that we could improve things with the creative application of punctuation. You could even send a panda bear, though, in the early days, that took dedication. And, while I dislike the lack of acknowledgement by tech companies as to the source of the emoji invasion, I appreciate them picking up the banner and making the library so robust. I was never good at remembering how to make which creation beyond basic faces anyway.

I especially appreciate the sparkling heart: I drop that emoji on everything. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to mean – the page I copy and paste from defines most of the symbols incorrectly. I’m pretty sure this isn’t “open mouth with cold sweat.” Still, the confusions amuse me 😅 According to them, my sparkling heart is definitional free. I read it as friendship-love-support-props-and a hug.

With sparkles.

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