The Urban Dictionary defines “wrecknology” as, “A piece of technology designed to prevent another piece of technology from working or to reduce its usefullness significantly.”
Yes, they misspelled “usefulness.” But the misspelling fits the definition like my cell phone fits into dead zones. That is wrecknology in action.
I have a friend who managed a body shop in Texas. He told people he was a wrecknologist.
A guy I worked with in New York used Wrecknology to describe any oddball, weird electronic device created with no logical purpose. Define logical purpose. What may be illogical to you is a life-altering gadget to me. One man’s pain is another man’s technology – or wrecknology.
This discussion brings me to some recent additions to electronic consumer culture that may fit this type of Edisonism (the proclivity to invent things – I made that up).
Jeff Johnson (our digital guru here at the River) said something a while back that puts the conversation into context.
“Think of the most outrageous thing you can imagine humans ever inventing,” he said. “Then go see who’s already invented it on Gizmodo.com.”
JJ is usually right. So let’s surf.
Been waiting for that 3,803 piece Lego Deathstar? Charge up the Visa and set it to $400. Gizmonodo will lead the way.
Want a pistol grip on your Novint 3D Haptick Joystick? Need to shave your back? Want to fuel your airplane with coal? Wondering when you’ll be able to cook images from the Internet onto your slices of bread in the morning? Your toaster has come in. Gizmodo piles up the tech devices faster than Gemalto merged DVD tracks to SIM cards. The ones mentioned above are old news now because it changes radically every day. As Mick sang, “wrecknology waits for no one,” or something like that.
Perhaps laser guided toenail clippers and holographic country music videos don’t get your electronic juices flowing. Keep clicking. There are every-day-practical-business advancements hitchhiking through the marketplace looking for a ride.
Toss that bulky business projector. Toshiba and 3M have both launched LED pocket pico projectors no bigger than a cell phone. Connect your iPhone to the Pico, link up to your website and spray that new biz presentation on their office wall without ever checking a bag for the airline to lose. “One less thing,” to quote Forrest Gump.
If your business is storm chasing, you’ll want a ‘Smurf” (stepped-frequency microwave radiometer) strapped under your wing to increase, say, your hurricane accuracy rate by 30%. Every percent counts.
Remember those recent panicky news stories about CERN’s Large Hadron Collider? Some people were freaking out because they feared the massive super collider (under Switzerland and France) would whip up a black hole on earth.
Before we could wrecknologize such a black hole, however, a hacker group calling themselves the Greek Security Team wormed deep enough into CERN computers to nearly turn off the entire shebigbang. No problem. CERN scientist responded with a YouTube rap song.
I feel much knowing those guys are on top of the antimatter.
Speaking of physics, on March 19th, NASA picked up a huge gamma ray burst from a collapsing star. The light from the explosion took about 7.5 billion years (or 3 years before John McCain was born) to reach earth and was so big it was visible for 40 seconds with the naked eye. That’s long enough, as Jon Stewart said, to realize Fred Thompson looks and sounds exactly like Foghorn Leghorn.
On an aside, does the term “naked eye” bother you? Everyone’s eye is naked unless your asleep.
Anyway, this gamma burst – known officially as GRB 080319B to those with huge telescopes or naked eyes, alike – was the most powerful ever recorded by humans and, if it had happened in our galaxy, would have (according to Penn State astronomer David Burrows) dropped the earth into “nuclear winter” (a feat our current energy policy will take at least four more years to accomplish).
So while flight attendants at American Airlines are filing complaints about passengers using the new in-flight wireless network to surf porn, you can party anywhere, anytime with Porta Party or Toilet Tunes (look them up if you don’t believe me).
Not sure why anyone would invent those or things like the Peekaboo Pole Dancing Kit (portable, instant pole dancing kit (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDxiTBFJ0wg), but 7.5 billion years from now, humans won’t care anymore because hurricanes will be the size of South America and the North Pole will look like Hawaii.
Surf’s up Iditarodders!