Cornered
The Sunday Age
Sunday November 19, 2006
CSIRO has devised a T-shirt that allows people "without significant musical or computing skills" to play guitar without having to use an instrument. Though this development is bad news for hard-pressed luthiers, it provides welcome exercise for the idle and obviates the need for such hard-earned antediluvian skills as learning three chords, overcoming fret rattle and developing the strength and co-ordination to dispatch a 26-inch colour television set from a great height into a swimming pool.
This innovation complements a long line of tried and trusted cyber-accessories, such as Virtual Writing, which simply requires a vigorous up-and-down movement of the right hand to produce an instantly remaindered rite-of-passage novel, and Virtual Personality, the technology of choice in the thriving financial services and entertainment sectors. The new virtual technologies also possess a demonstrated ability to create new jobs. We need only cite that established modern phenomenon the Virtual Tradesman, who after being briefed at length on the misbehaviour of the rodents in your roof cavity, magically fails to turn up. New sociological phenomena spawned by this technology include Virtual Drivers, who can miraculously control a vehicle while conducting a phone conversation, Virtual Food Restaurants where everything is offered save nourishment, and Virtual Sex, an aseptic and dispiriting activity that culminates in virtual smoking of a virtual cigarette. Virtual consumer confidence is maintained by the elaborate machinations of modern Virtual Economics, a logic-defying framework in which wealthy people make even more money by doing nothing at all. Its counterpart, Virtual Politics, that tepid melange of sound bites and snake oil, is too well documented to examine here. Some people, not all of them middle-aged, are sickened by modern virtuality, yet consider none of its petty aggravations worthy of a full-throated Technicolour yawn. Fortunately, we now have the technology to aid this small if fractious minority. Virtual Vomiting allows otherwise hale people to dry-retch immoderately at the slightest virtual provocation. As well as lightening the workload of the city's Virtual Sanitary Engineers, this overdue advance will provide prompt and hygienic relief for diehards unbeguiled by the activities of Ms Hilton, Mr Affleck or any other virtual celebrity. We shall call this breakthrough Virtual Freedom of Expression. adyson@theage.com.au
© 2006 The Sunday Age
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