Eco Cycles or How I Feel About Technology

Eco Cycles or How I Feel About Technology Umberto Eco, the author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum (my personal favorite), wasn’t just a brilliant scholar—he was also a bit of a geek. He once wrote an essay comparing Macs to Catholicism and PCs to Protestantism. He thought about technology a lot. And he loved his fax machine. The ability to send manuscripts to his editor in minutes felt magical. At first. But the magic didn’t last. Too many people had his number. The machine started spitting out unsolicited ads, junk, spam. Eventually, he just turned it off. What began as a miracle of speed became a firehose of noise. That story isn’t unique to fax machines. It’s a familiar arc—one we’ve all lived through in different forms. The Eco Cycle Every major technology arrives with a promise, and for a while, it delivers. Early adopters ride the wave before anyone else even sees it coming. Imagine driving a car on an empty highway, going wherever you want. Or using the int ... Read full article.