Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.comDeath of a Visionary
The death of a visionary is often an occasion for labeling the man an ikon, as if he were a religious image painted on a board. One longs for accuracy in eulogies. But how can one speak of such a visionary ikon (or is that an ikonic visionary?) without resorting to florid language. Let us gush veritable gallons of effusion in celebrating how he touched our lives and changed our world forever.
With hagiographic hyperbole and muddled metaphors let us remember a truly visionary man, a man on the cutting edge of technology, a man ahead of his time, a man who transformed communications forever, a man whose invention made a cosmic leap (“cosmic leap” combines hyperbole and a tired metaphor in a two-fer) in how people saw the world around them, and how they wrote about it.
This man’s invention spawned new industries, and not only made easier the transmission of traditional cultures from one generation to the next, but in a sense created its own cultures.
This man, before he was thirty years old, created a technology that launched a reformation in the economy and even in literature and art. His new way of manipulating language and culture through the production of useful objects became in itself its own object of near-adoration, making technology and its physical manifestations as aesthetically pleasing as they are utilitarian.
Generations of tinkerers will surely display the great man’s image as a sort of technology ikon in their garage laboratories, and classroom posters of him will inspire generations of children to work hard so they can be just like him.
Before this man, all was darkness and superstition; after him, a new enlightenment.
Yes, gentlepersons all, let us hold in our hearts forever the memory of Henry Mill, who patented the typewriter in 1714.
No comments:
Post a Comment