Today as I showered, I thought of the term: “Farmer Technologist”. It was a label my company’s UPS sales woman called me. I think she met it as a compliment, but my insecurities questioned that. Farmers are creative, innovated, MacGyer-like people that have to fix things around the farm that break with only material they have available to them – like bailing wire, band aids and duck tape. Also, farmers, today, often have PhD’s in how to get the most from an acre of land with the least amount of work and resources. They have to figure out how and when to invest, how to deal with major crisis and nature’s fury. They have to negotiate with big businesses, big government, and the stigma of being stupid. So, if I put my own insecurities aside, being a Farmer Technologist may be a good thing.
Then, I wondered if that applied to being a philosopher. Could I also be a ‘Farmer Philosopher”? A self made Aristotle, Plato, or Ann Rand? An Ann MacGyer Rand? Then I got side tracked and wondered why Plato and Aristotle had only one name.
Later, after I dried off, streaked to the bedroom to fetch underwear, and dressed, I read email and got jerked back to reality by a technology problem at the company I support. The backup program had a message that implied something didn’t work correctly. A hour later, I concluded it was what I titled: ‘planet aligning technology’. This is where certain multiple technologies or software happen to be in a certain state such that they interfere with each other causing one or more of them to not work correctly. I also found it was not worth the time it would take to prove it.
Such is the world of today. Sad, but true. It was not worth the time to prove it.
Is that a philosophical thought? A farmer technologist philosophical one?