Why I like this rock

Considering low-investment, low-risk technology

I like this rock.

It has limited functionality. I can use it as a weight, as a small barrier, as a primitive weapon (hope I don’t need it for that), and as a “natural ornament”—something placed in one’s environs to be seen and evoke the “natural” and even the “timeless” while perhaps simultaneously serving in the first two capacities (weight and small barrier). The rock to which I refer is actually one of perhaps two hundred similar rocks I have. Lined up roughly, they form borders around the pebble paths and beds in our back garden. It would be incorrect to say that they were originally collected from riverbeds in Pennsylvania, though they were. Originally, they were formed by natural processes over expanses of time we have severely limited capacity to grasp in any meaningful way.

There is much that the rock cannot do. It cannot actively entertain me. (I am, fortunately, not someone who would be entertained by using a rock as a weapon.) It cannot cook, transport me somewhere, convey written information, provide sexual pleasure, or record video. I cannot use it to talk to someone a thousand miles away. It basically just sits there until I move it somewhere else. And then it will just sit in that new place.

Here are the positive benefits that accrue from “owning” this rock, which are easy to overlook in 2024.

I exchanged very little currency for this rock. It’s true that I exchanged quite a bit of currency for all the rocks, but not for this one in particular.

The currency I did exchange for this rock went to a woman named Nina who owns a local company called The Stone Garden. It did not go to a billionaire megalomaniac wanna-be oligarch who poses a real threat to my entire society and perhaps to the human world in general. It did not go to a group of “shareholders” who have no idea what the companies in which they invest are actually doing. (Full disclosure: all of us who hold investment accounts fall into that category of culpability.)

I did not have to accept any Terms & Conditions upon purchase of this rock—which of course I would not have read, knowing that they all say the same thing in far too many words: we retain all the power in this transactional relationship; any that we choose to grant to you is entirely at our own discretion and thanks to our largesse.

This rock neither has nor needs a warranty.

This rock does not require that I download an “app” on an electronic device, which will require a “login” and “password” which will, over time, cause a series of short but intense spikes of aggravation—as will the “app” itself, when it ceases to work properly, which it will do, because of [see the bit above about Terms & Conditions]. As will the electronic device in which the “app” malfunctions.

This rock does not require batteries in order to “work”—which means that it will not cease to be operable when the batteries are left in it too long, leak, and corrode the tiny little electronic connections inside that only people with specialized skills can repair—but won’t, because it’s cheaper to just throw it away and get a new one.

Related: this rock will never end up in a landfill, or in a giant heap of “electronic waste” in a “developing country.” It will never, even a little bitty bit, poison anybody or anything.

Perhaps the thing I most like about this rock is that it will never disappoint me. It promised me nothing beyond what I already knew to expect from it before I bought it. There was no marketing campaign for which people were paid to use their brains to come up with lies and half-truths and little cheap tricks of psychological manipulation to get me excited about buying it, only to be, in all likelihood, disappointed in it when it didn’t (and couldn’t) fulfill the unrealistic promises made for it. No one implied that purchasing this rock would somehow grant me access to sexually-desirable women or a house featured in Architectural Digest or the sort of popularity that gets you a group of people around you who think you’re so cool that they are all smiling and laughing around a well-stocked dinner table with you at the center of attention.

No one has made up bewitching slogans for this rock, like “This rock. Unlock the possibilities.”

When “I” have ceased to exist and the material in which “I” currently exist has disintegrated, this rock will still be here. The same will be true for generations of my kind over expanses of time we  have severely limited capacity to grasp in any meaningful way.

I like this rock.