Up in the Air. Technology at People’s Service
Posted by igsegma | Analysis, Cinema | Posted on February 3rd, 2010
I’ve just been to see a movie that I really enjoyed: George Clooney’s latest offering, “Up in the Air”. When I came out the cinema I felt like going over the stories and talking about them in detail with somebody. And there were a lot of stories. The movie has been nominated for a number of Oscars, and rightly so. I think it’s the best movie that Clooney has made yet. He’s still on the ball, and he knows how to act convincingly, whether he playing a winner or a loser. He’s still got far to go.
But, more interesting than Clooney’s acting skills, is the plot and the stories the characters tell.
They talk about all the crises that are happening in the world in 2010; about the economic recession and how there are some companies that see an opportunity there and set up a business. Though in this case, it’s a genuinely reprehensible business.
And about how these companies go over the top trying to apply new technologies to their services. The whole thing is so grotesque that it turns into a caricature of where new technologies could lead us, if we persist in believing that they can be used indiscriminately for everything in our lives.
I myself, a firm believer in new technologies, recognize that there are limits. I believe that people are more important than companies, and that there are limits that we shouldn’t and mustn’t overstep. Machines are people’s slaves, not the other way around.
In this blog, I try to teach the wine sector how to use the Internet more efficiently.
But what I like best about the wine world, is the stories that lie behind each wine and each winery, is the traditions, the diversity, the personalities, the different ways of making wine, the exaltation of certain senses that modern society tends to dampen down, etc.
There are more and more people who approach the world of wine (like the world of classical music for example) as a counterpoint to daily stress, information deluge, dumbing down of the senses, and general rushing around. The wine world helps us escape from this crazy world we live in, especially in the big city.
I’m all for new technologies if they help us spread this philosophy and way of life. I’m not interested in them if they’re used to convert wine into something globalized like CocaCola, or Gin or Vodka.
Nor am I interested in the idea of wine competing with long drinks or cocktails. They are two completely different things, and there is no need for any competition there.
The successful use of the internet by wineries does not lie in the indiscriminate use of new technologies; rather it lies in knowing how to use them in order to improve and enhance their presence and relationships with consumers, without losing any of the mystique and uniqueness inherent in the wine world.
Post in Spanish: Up in the Air. La tecnología al servicio de las personas.
