We might expect someone like Dylan, immersed as ever in folk songs, old standards, and American history, to bemoan the corrupting influence of new technology. He offers some quotes in this context. For example:
Everything became smooth and painless… The earth could vomit its dead, it could rain blood, and we ignore it cold as a cucumber. Everything is very easy. Just one stroke of the ring finger, one middle finger, one little tap, that’s all it takes, and we’re there.
Or again:
Technology is like magic, it is a magic show, it conjures spirits, it is an extension of our body, just like the wheel is an extension of our foot. But it may be the final nail in the coffin of civilization. We don’t know.
But Dylan’s point is more nuanced than these quotes might suggest. While technology may be eliminating our civilization, Dylan reminds us of that give We are our civilization – that is, “science and technology built the Parthenon, the Egyptian Pyramids, the Roman Coliseum, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, rockets, jets, airplanes, automobiles, atomic bombs, and weapons of mass destruction.”
Ultimately, technology is a tool that can either eliminate or stimulate human creativity.
Keyboards and joysticks can be like millstones around your neck, or they can support players; Either way, you’re the judge. Creativity is a mysterious thing. He visits whoever he wants to visit, when he wants to, and I think this, and this alone, gets to the heart of the matter…
[Technology] It can hinder creativity, or it can lend a hand and be helpful. Creative power can be hindered or thwarted by everyday life, ordinary life, and life in a squirrel cage. A data processing machine or software might help you get out of that, get over the hump, but you have to get up early.
Waking up early
I’ve been thinking about these quotes over the last Christmas and New Year’s holiday, which I largely spent coughing on the couch with some sort of respiratory nonsense. One positive aspect of this enforced isolation is that it has given me plenty of time to think about my own goals for 2025 and how technology can help or hinder them. (The other reason is that I had to rewatch the first four Die Hard movies on Hulu; the fourth was “dog ass” enough that I couldn’t watch the much-criticized final installment in the series.)