Landrew’s Take on Technology

Nature stuff and technology stuff are opposites of each other because nature stuff just happens while technology is put together using screws.  But this doesn’t mean that there are no similarities between them.  For example, an orange is from nature and a cell phone is from technology, but they are both things that my roommate, Greg, puts in his pockets before catching the bus to work (people probably think he has some weird growth on his leg because the orange kind of bulges out).  More interesting than oranges and cell phones, though, are cats and computers!

Some of the things that are the same about cats and computers are simple.  First off, they both start with c, which is important because, if you’re talking to someone you start to say computer when you mean to say cat, you’ve got a one letter buffer time before they notice you made a mistake in your brain.  Another thing is that cats and computers are two things that can sit in people’s laps making a humming noise without that person feeling uncomfortable.  Also, if you a glass of water on either your cat or your computer, it’s going to act kind of weird.

Nowadays, though, cats aren’t just like computers – they’re in computers.  Whenever a guy with a cat has to make up a new password on the Internet, he uses his cat’s name.  This means two things:

1.    Because of security stuff, we might need to start giving our cats names that are at least six characters long, with one capital letter, one number and one symbol.
2.    If some aliens came and stole all of our cats (maybe to eat them or maybe to love them – it doesn’t matter for this situation) and erased all of our memories of cats, the entire internet would crash because we would have no way to log into anything.

But computers are getting into cats too.  A lot cats have microchips in them now, so that, if you find some random cat outside your house, you can bring it to the vet and scan it and see who owns it.  This sounds normal and helpful, but it makes me really nervous.  First it’s, “we just want to help you keep track of your cat,” but then later it becomes, “we just want to help you keep track of your cat and control your cat and give your cat laser eyes and send your cat to fight in a war.”

But if these microchips are used for cool stuff rather than making cats into weapons, cats might replace computers in the future. What if scientists make a microchip so you can play mp3s and surf the internet on your cat?  How would computers compete?  A computer isn’t furry and cool to pet and it can’t meow unless you download a sound clip of a cat meowing, and even then, it’s just not the same (unless you’re totally blind and you have no nerves in your hands so furry stuff and not-furry stuff feels the same and also you have really good speakers that make the meow clip sound real – then it’s probably the same).