Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Axcelis

"Brilliant minds. Bold science. A powerhouse portfolio of tools: ion implantation, rapid thermal processing, curing, cleaning. Axcelis Technologies. We make semiconductor manufacturing more productive every day."

Most of my projects are ordered by Axcelis so one way to look at my job is that I'm manufacturing cutting edge components. The world is powered by semiconductors and that's where these cables are going. Why don't I feel proud? It's because the dirty secret behind this technology is that it's impossible to do cleanly. They're implanting ions! Does that sound safe? Or to put it another way, we're sacrificing today's environment on the premise that one day machines will run so efficiently that people won't do manual labor. What planet are these brilliant minds living on? You think we're gonna lay around like the Jetsons and watch reality tv? No. We'll be the future Pakistani trash pickers who dig through land fills for precious metals we moronically used to power toy Star Trek replica phasers!
Oh, wait, it won't be us. It'll be someone else. So that makes it alright. That's how a brilliant mind works.

Do questionable labor saving gadgets justify widespread pollution?No chance does this recklessness pay off in some high tech utopia. That's as insane as believing my living in the van will inspire people to live more simply. I don't believe my van life will change anything but then I won't give up either. Join the resistance! Defend Humanity!

5 comments:

hardworker said...

preach it brutha!

Lyle said...

Why defend humanity? What % of humanity isn't part of the problem? Maybe we should just let it go and suffer the mass correction to follow.

Oggy Bleacher said...

I meant that we should defend the humane element within mankind...opposed to humanity/mankind itself, which is obviously doomed.

My thinking here is that if our purpose in life is to assemble electronics or to enjoy the benefits of those who assemble electronics then our priorities are leaning toward the Steve Jobs/anti-human element. Humans must become robots to supply other humans with robots. This is purely a manipulative campaign by Apple to benefit stockholders. All they are doing is providing a product that allows people to track their product electronically. They're only mission is to create an Apple-dependent population and that's what we have to resist. We are funding our own feverish addiction and losing time, family and the spiritual definition of humanity in the process. This is the real war of our time and neutrality isn't an option.

Lyle said...

I'm getting an iPad on Friday. Maybe I should start a journal and document the rotting of my soul from the inside.

Seriously, I agree with you. Technology has saved us so much time. What people haven't realized is that they didn't need the extra time. Now they spend it doing inane shit on their Apple mobile devices.

Oggy Bleacher said...

Maybe this will all pay off in a Jetson's world. I don't think anyone saves any time in the literal sense because industry has sped up to match the amount of time that you would've saved...so you just spend the time working more. Maybe if you brought an iPad back to 1845 then you would save time in bookeeping. When you look at it like that it's confusing why we choose to live our lives using iPads. Like, if we had a chance to go back in time we would just find a way to work more?

The issue is contentment. Find a way to be content.

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Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.