Making the World Safe for French Fries and Technology

On the day Republican congressman Walter Jones tells a reporter that he wishes his campaign to change "French fries" to "Freedom fries" didn't happen, [Fries Campaigner Recants], ZDNet's Charles Cooper takes up the keep-the-pressure-on-the-French slack with "Why the French can't Compute."

What is this obsession with finding fault with the French all about? After all, France was the world's top tourist destination in 2004, attracting over 75 million tourists, according to the World Tourism Organization--and they didn't come for the technology or the weird keyboards they have there, either. Do you feel a rant in the wind?

Cooper, who considers himself an "unabashed Francophile," writes, "I love their food, adore their language and admire their culture. But when it comes to high-tech innovation, there's no escaping the fact that France does not punch its weight."

The concerned traveler might ask, "so, what is this obsession that every country on earth should have the same aspirations to the exclusion of all else?" Just because some countries have shelved "quality of life" or "standard of living" in favor of an ever increasing level of technology that benefits fewer and fewer--why should everyone have to "punch their weight" in high-tech innovation?

Perhaps these are the opposite poles represented by the travel writer and the technologist. Here's Paul Theroux:

I travel to find obstacles, to discover my limits, to ease the passage of time, to reassure myself that innocence and antiquity exist, to search for links to the past, to flee from the nastiness of urban life and the paranoia, if not outright dementia, of the technological world.

Yesterday I thought Theroux's last sentence was a little misguided. After reading Cooper, I'm not sure. Why give up the elation of seeing a field of wildflowers or the joy of sipping from a glass of red wine at a Parisian cafe just because we all have work to do on a technology that threatens to roll on without us? Let them eat transistors!

Ok, so maybe it's just me, but I'll take the high technology found on a Renault Megane over that of a zippy, dual-core Pentium any day. My joy at being able to carry two huge bags of groceries to the Megane and have the car's doors unlock when I come in close proximity to it, with the key still in my pocket, trumps the (ecstasy?) of playing solitaire on a $3000 super-speed computer.

And I make a living with my computer. But, then again, I live outside of it.

/end rant.

Link: Why the French can't compute