Diatribe on Cybernetics 
By Foy Valentine, Founding Editor

The hottest places in the Hereafter, it has occurred to me, may be reserved for the purveyors and promulgators of the cybernetic revolution.

I condemn it, of course, because I don’t dig it.
Its mechanical mysteries frustrate me.
Its electrical complexities confound me.
Its charm eludes me.
Its devotees antagonize me.
Its evangelists drive me away before the invitation.

And its vocabulary paralyzes me: hard drive, floppy disks, bytes, megabytes, gigabytes, dot com, dot org, web page, download, software, on line, chat room. All this and more—much, much more, ad infinitum.

Like the Roman Catholic Inquisitors of Florence who put Galileo on trial, and then under house arrest for the rest of his life, for advocating a view the Pope held to be “absurd and false philosophically, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture;” like English Luddites who wrecked all the newfangled weaving machines they could swing a sledge hammer at; like the Amish with their horses and buggies; like a smart but appropriately credulous old relative who never to his dying day for one minute believed that we ever put any man on the moon, I choose to withdraw as discreetly as possible from this cyberspace business.

It is a bad dream.
Maybe it will all just go away.
Computerites are from Mars.

Even typewriters were a misbegotten step in the wrong direction, starting us down a slippery slope from which we have found no way of turning back.

If a body is under some compunction to write, he needs a legal sized pad and a fountain pen.

If God had wanted us to peck out email messages on a computer, why would he ever have given us stationery, postage, and mail boxes?

Now tell me the honest truth.

Could you ever again have any respect for a grown man who would look in a tiny window of a miniaturized machine that flashed up orders which he would then, like a robot, mindlessly obey? Of course not! To take orders from such a glorified adding machine is altogether unseemly, not totally unlike bowing down before a wooden god which we might whittle out of a piece of lumber cut from of our own woodpile and then place reverently between two candles on the mantel in the living room.

Dumb city.

Like happy-clappy church services, SUVs, broccoli, rap music, boom boxes, television sets left on all the time, cold houses, barking dogs, indoor cats, line crashers, call waiting, and telephone marketing, the computer is just going to have to get along as best it can without me or my blessing. I have made up my mind.

Oh, if I were fifty years younger, it likely would be a different story. But that is a condition contrary to fact. So I plan to continue to trudge along in my familiar rut, not at all perturbed that a dreadful virus has just been reported to scare the living daylights out of my with-it friends who have all likewise with one accord bowed their knees to this baneful Baal. I wish them no ill. In fact, if the word had not been so pitifully and painfully politicized in recent times, I would say that I feel some authentic compassion for them.

Why this diatribe about cybernetics?

There are those who might say, “He has gotten crotchety in his old age.” But the truth is that I have always been crotchety.

Others might think, “The complexities of this transistor-driven revolution have simply pushed him over the edge.” But actually my mind seems to be about as clear as it ever was, which of course is not a very compelling observation.

Still others could analyze my mind-set on this matter thus, “Surely he has assumed this know-nothing stance out of some deep-seated inferiority complex.” But if this is so, I don’t feel it in my bones.

Yet another explanation might be put forward, “He is a Baptist.” But my quintessentially Baptist disposition, while arguably predisposing me to certain contrarian leanings can hardly be blamed for my profound abhorrence of cybernetics for, after all, there are lots of my fellow-Baptists, just as principled as I am, or more so, who do not share my mind-set about this genre.

What then makes this tic tick?
In a word, I’m 77.

And besides, just because I’m not paranoid is no sign they’re not really after me.

Of course, to show you that I am not totally intransigent and hopelessly out of touch but in fact am a congenial and quite sweetly reasonable chap, I have written this little squib about transistors:

Ode to a Transistor

Little devil, little god,
Miniscule and passing odd--
Key to mankind’s gnawing needs,
Tool of earth’s outreaching creeds--
Hope of hungry, light for poor,
Upthrown window, open door--
Tiny instrument of hate,
Love’s wide-open, brand-new gate--
Machination for man’s greed,
Shining prospect for his need--
Countdown for the human race,
Hotline to the world’s last place--
Through your compressed little pad
Runs man’s fate for good or bad.

And you must know that I did actually buy a cell phone some three months ago. I’ve already learned to turn it on and off. The dialing bit, however, is coming along very slowly and with great anguish.

Who knows? If I can’t beat 'em, I might some day just join 'em.

No less an eminence than Ralph Waldo Emerson has noted that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

     So, please stay tuned. I’m putting all of this under advisement

Updated Thursday, July 08, 2004