MattMaroon.com

In the last post I mentioned the death of James Kim. That one saddened all of us tech junkies because the guy was genuinely good at his job. He and some of the other people at Cnet have been an invaluable resource over the years in picking out digital cameras, mp3 players and such. It’s been sad watching trusted reviewers slowly join the cult of the iPod in recent years and James was known as one of the last notable holdouts.

I have to say that I find it ironic that a gadget guru died in a situation where a GPS system could easily have saved his life. Had he had one, rather than a simple paper map, he would probably never have taken that wrong turn and gotten stranded. And even if he did he would have been able to find his way to help.

Even more ironic is the fact that on his personal page on Cnet there’s a list of gadgets he wanted. Number 9 on the list was Sony NV-U70 GPS.

This is why I have long been afraid of irony. I’ve always had the feeling that my death will be something like that. That’s why I never say anything like “gee, airplanes sure are safe” before I fly, or “by the time I’m 50 they’ll have cured cancer”. If Steve Irwin can be killed by an escapee from an aquatic petting zoo I figure irony’s iron jaws could clench shut on me at any point.

And that’s also why I’ll continue to buy every gadget I can think of. When I die I want people to say “damn, that was one unpreventable death.” If anyone can say “he might have lived if only he’d have had a digital camera” I’ve failed as a consumer.

This entry was posted on December 23, 2006 at 3:05 pm and is filed under Me Thinking So You Don't Have To . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed Both comments and pings are currently closed.