Technology

Trap-Jaw is the Swiss Army knife of the Eternia universe. For every occasion he has an appropriate arm attachment. Need to freeze someone? Trap-Jaw has an attachment for that. Need to blast through a door? There’s an attachment for that, too.

I’ve always wanted to have lots of cool tools, to have something ready for any situation. Gear is good. It gives us a longer reach – for Trap-Jaw, literally so. He is the symbol for the merger of man and machine. We use technology to extend our reach into the world, to give us powers not endowed by nature, and in doing so we become something different.

Something different, yes, but does it make us less human, like Trap-Jaw?

I’ve never believed that. Sure, the more we rely on technology, the more things can go wrong: computer crashes are a constant cheery reminder. An even greater consequence is the psychological impact of relying on things whose workings we don’t understand. It gives some of us a sense of perpetual unease.

Once upon a time we humans felt that way about the natural world. We lived in fear of storms and bear attacks and invented intricate cosmologies explaining their capricious behavior. And although the weather can still be a problem, what with hurricanes and floods and earthquakes, we are much better insulated from them than ever before.

It’s kind of funny, then, that just as technology has drastically reduced the worry of the natural world, it’s given us something new to worry about: itself, which we created. (Which makes you wonder if there is something in the human brain that requires us to be worrying about something all the time.)

Of course, some people understand the technology. Like Man-At-Arms. He doesn’t always get it perfect (like the time he invented the lasso gun; that didn’t work the first time), but he’s confident enough to tinker with a problem until it gets fixed. When he doesn’t understand how something works, he takes the time to figure it out because he believes it can be figured out. Why? Because he’s been able to understand so many other things in the past.

Machines can help us achieve what we want faster and better. When we feel uneasy, let’s take a page out of Man-At-Arms’s book: let’s tinker. (Under competent supervision, of course. Some things blow up when you mess with them. He-Man will be the first to tell you: Safety First!) Understanding how something works goes a long way towards feeling comfortable with it.