Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk. PHOTO | AFP
The Good: My favourite news in 2017 is courtesy
of Elon Musk. He is about to launch his personal Tesla into space —
because he can. I love this man, in a platonic can-he-adopt-me kind of
way.
Whimsy, humour, an eye for the greater good, a
willingness to make and lose fortunes pursuing dreams for a better
humanity. So, my winner is his Muskness, because he is the embodiment of
a utopian pursuit of technological advantage. Also, he dared Boeing to
make space accessible before he does — which is exactly the right kind
of folly this world needs.
Elon wins because the 2017
theme for this column was technology. It is something that I use every
day and struggle to understand, but I am a big fan. What does it do to
us? How is the world changed by it? What’s going on?
The
reason I chose technology was because it is the one theme that can
happily leap over all other serious issues: Gender, poverty and the
alarming wealth gap, the environment, even politics of all parts of the
spectrum. It is a great lens through which to examine our contemporary
lives, meditate on the past and imagine the future.
As
a result, I am majorly excited about what the future holds. There is a
deep philosophical conversation that my society needs to engage in,
about how we integrate present technological forces with our realities.
Also, renewable energy may be just around the corner — maybe even
perpetual energy. Yeah, Tanesco! Elon invented a battery. Look into it.
PS: Dude is African. Yup.
The Meh: Writing
about tech is wonderfully distracting. 2017 was so intense in East
Africa. Among other things, a couple of elections took place, got
cancelled, recalled, whatevered.
Tanzania has fared
relatively alright, considering, but let’s not ignore the change in tone
that has led to disappearances of journalists, opposition members and
vocal activists.
A paradigm shift happened to us, just
like to much of the rest of the world, and we are blinking into the new
dispensation with a few questions in our hearts and minds.
I am optimistic. I am pessimistic. The only contradiction in life is pretending that life isn’t full of contradictions.
The Could Be Better: Okay,
who invented the concept of fake news? You are an international
criminal! I don’t know if anything has been more detrimental to the
fabric of the global human society than fake news.
Social media is pretty bad, with its monetised reward systems, but it is now just being used as a conduit for fake news.
You
know how neoliberal economists are like, but even they are not as bad
as fake news. And if anybody uses that term without irony, may they get
an itch in an intensely embarrassing and also unreachable spot of their
body during the hottest part of summer for the rest of your life.
The Whoop, There It Is: You
know that feminist revolution that we have all been waiting for? It’s
still not happening here in East Africa. Or America. Or anywhere.
There
has been a lot of reversals, like Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi
being in the wrong side of history about the Rohingya massacres in
Burma.
But for those of us who love the artistic
format perfected by Hollywood, it is a horrifying, if not completely
unexpected, realisation that so much of it has been built on the
foundations of predatory sexuality. Sigh. We all love movies, but
movie-makers? Awful.
The Predictions for 2018:
Too soon. Go and have fun. Trump and Kim have been prevented from
ending the world so far. You might as well make the best of the rest of
it. Happy new year!
Elsie Eyakuze is a consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report. E-mail: elsieeyakuze@gmail.com
No comments :
Post a Comment