TODAY’S TOPIC IS: Technology A Bad Thing? Or What?

The other day I walked into an airport men’s room, which was empty except for one man, who appeared to be having a loud, animated conversation with a urinal.

Ten years ago, I would have turned right around and walked briskly back out of there. One rule my parents stressed when I was a child was: “Never stay in a restroom with a man who talks to the plumbing.”

But of course as a modern human, I knew that this man was talking on his cell phone, using one of those earpiece thingies, with the little microphone on the wire, the kind that people feel they must shout at, to make sure their vital messages are getting through. (“HI. IT’S ME. NOT MUCH. I’M AT THE AIRPORT.”)

It’s not clear to me why so many people in airports use the earpiece thingies. Why do they need to keep their hands free? Do they expect some emergency to suddenly arise that will require them to have both hands free while talking? (“HI. IT’S ME. I’M ENGAGING IN HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT WITH TERRORISTS.”)

Or maybe they’re afraid that if they hold the phone next to their head, the radiation will give them brain cancer. If so, an option they might consider is wrapping their heads in aluminum foil. Granted, this would make them look stupid. But not nearly as stupid as they look shouting into their earpiece wires.

So anyway, there I was, in this restroom, standing maybe six feet from this guy, both of us facing the wall, him shouting at his urinal about some business thing involving specifications, and at some point he said I swear this is a direct quote “I am handling it.” This caused me to emit an involuntary snorting sound (not loud; certainly nowhere near as loud as this guy was talking; just a little snortlet) which caused the guy to stop talking and violating the Number One Guy Rule Of Restroom Etiquette turn his head and look directly at me, so I could see (using peripheral vision) that he was irritated by my rude interruption of his conversation. Then he went back to shouting at the urinal.

The point is that every key element of this scenario the cell phone, the airplane, the zipper is made possible by technology. We know that technology is a wonderful thing. But at what point does technology go too far? Is it fair to say that cell phones, if used thoughtfully and politely, are OK, but that if a person attaches an earpiece thingy and walks around shouting in public, bystanders should be allowed to snatch the wire and sprint off down the airport concourse, with the shouter’s earphone, and possibly even the shouter’s detached ear, bouncing gaily behind on the floor?

I think we all agree that the answer is: Yes. When technology goes too far, ordinary citizens must take action. But the question is: How do we define “too far?” I will tell you. We define “too far” as “when scientists start putting weapons on cockroaches.”

This is actually happening, according to an article in the Sept. 6 issue of Science magazine, brought to my attention by alert reader Richard Sweetman. This article states that researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have been “mounting tiny cannons on the backs of cockroaches.” That is correct: These researchers have been outfitting live cockroaches with backpacks containing “plastic tubes filled with explosives.”

Of course the researchers have a scientific reason for doing this: They are on LSD.

No, really, it has something to do with figuring out how cockroaches have such good balance. (You almost never see a cockroach fall off a bicycle.) The researchers have used their findings to construct a working robot roach that is, according to Science, the size of a breadbox. Swell! If there’s anything this world needs more than armed cockroaches, it’s giant mechanized cockroaches!

NEWSPAPER STORY FROM THE YEAR 2004: “A homeowner in Santa Rosa, Calif., was found shot to death in his kitchen Friday. Police said the man apparently was felled by 500 rounds of small-bore cannon fire, mostly in his ankles, indicating that this was the work of the gang of armed research cockroaches that escaped from a Berkeley lab. Police said the motive in the slaying was apparently a Ring Ding. In a related development, an escaped robot cockroach broke into an Oakland Wal-Mart and made off with an estimated 17,000 AA batteries.”

Ask yourself: Is that the kind of story you want to read in your newspaper? Me too, as long as it’s California.

No, seriously, this is bad. We need somebody in authority to look into this right away. Maybe Dick Cheney could handle it.