We would expect someone like Dylan, always immersed in folk songs, old norms and American history, to lament the corrupting influence of new technology. And he does provide some quotes in that vein. For example:
Everything has become too smooth and painless… The earth could vomit its dead, and it could rain blood, and we would shake it off, cool as cucumbers. Everything is too easy. Just one stroke with the ring finger, middle finger, one little click, that's all it takes, and we're there.
Or again:
Technology is like magic, it's a magic show, it summons spirits, it's an extension of our body, just like the wheel is an extension of our foot. But it could be the final nail driven into the coffin of civilization; we just don't know.
But Dylan's perspective is more nuanced than these quotes suggest. Although technology could doom our civilization, Dylan reminds us gave us our civilization – that is, “science and technology built the Parthenon, the Egyptian pyramids, the Roman Colosseum, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, rockets, fighter jets, airplanes, automobiles, atomic bombs, and weapons of mass destruction.”
Ultimately, technology is a tool that can decimate or boost human creativity.
Keyboards and joysticks can be like millstones around your neck, or they can support players; Either way, you be the judge. Creativity is something mysterious. It visits who it wants to visit, when it wants to, and I think that, and that alone, gets to the heart of the matter…
[Technology] can hinder creativity, or it can lend a helping hand and be an assistant. Creative power can be curbed or prevented by everyday life, ordinary life, life in the squirrel cage. A data processing machine or a software program might help you get out of there, get you over the hump, but you have to get up early.
Get up early
I've been thinking about these quotes over the last Christmas and New Year's holidays, much of which was spent coughing on the couch with some breathing nonsense. One benefit of this enforced isolation was that it gave me plenty of time to think about my own goals for 2025 and how technology could help or hinder them. (Another was that I had to rewatch the first four Die Hard films on Hulu; the fourth was so “dog ass” that I couldn't bring myself to watch the final, downright panned entry in the series.)
