So this will be the first post I do on here that isn't explicitly related to a particular game or games in general. And it's about something that as I get older drives me crazy.
Back in college, I did some scriptwriting courses, because A, they were more interesting than generic "creative writing", and B, I liked the professor who taught the course, because I had had him previously.
That professor was clearly a very intelegent man. He sorta reminded me of Toby Ziegler from The West Wing. He was slightly essentric and very few people actually understood him most of the time, and even I didn't even always understand. But I stuck around because I'd know that I would. I occationally even got into heated arguments with him, that ended in me hours later realizing that he was totally right and I was just being pigheaded and it would end up making my work significantly better.
Anyway, one day, someone was giving a script pitch in class one day, about some generic sci-fi whatever, and they used the word technology. He stopped them right away and told them to avoid using the word "technology". The student asked him why, and he responded "Because 'technology' is a word that I consider meaningless. There are many words like this, and 'technology' is one I really hate."
At first, being someone getting a game design degree which is made of heavily of computer science and media production course, both of which heavily dependent on "technology", I objected to the idea that the word was meaningless.
But as I thought about it, I realized that, once again, he was totally right I tried to define the word in my own mind, and I could think of nothing that wasn't so vague that it was entirely meaningless. This was really driven home later as I would listen to people use the word on the news or in TV shows, movies, and even games. I'd realize that the word was basically just filler and served just to fill time more than anything else.
In the news in particular, it feels almost exclusively like a scare tactic anymore, which just annoys me to no end. When I read headlines like "Are Teenagers addicted to Technology!?" and know that these stories can just be filed under the"remember old people, be scared of everything" portion of the 5:00 news, it drives me crazy. Are young people addicted technology? Only in the same way young people were in the 50s when all these new fangled gadgets like automobiles and refridgerators and washing machines and big scary televisions were. Or the way the british were during the industrial revolution, or the way cave men where when they figured out how to make fire and clothes and how to put a sharp rock on the end of a stick to stab things with were.
All of these things are technology. The only difference is....well....nothing. Basically nothing. They are all technology. Just different and new and therefore scary, even though they make work easier and people more efficient.
What these people are actually afraid of is new things. Did the advent of the power drill make carpenters lazy? No, it made them more efficient. And this is the same with all of this "technology" that people are so afraid of. They see a thing, and throw a word at it. And now the word "Technology" has all this baggage, and has an entirely different meaning depending on who you say it to. So therefore, it has so many meanings that it has looped all the way back around to being completely meaningless. It terrifies some people and excites others, but to me, it just like when you say a word so many times that it does even feel like a word anymore. Annoying.