What happens when superficial air-heads collide with superficial gear-heads? Someone gets called a jackass.

(In case you're wondering, the air-heads are superficial because they're not interested in the substance of the issue and just want to make fun of the nerds, while the gear-heads are superficial because they've drunk so much Kool-Aid that they are willing to stand in line for hours just to get their hands on the new 3G iPhone as quickly as humanly possible.

The person who sent me the link to this video thought it was funny. In fact, it depresses the hell out of me. Those talking heads in the TV studio (not to mention the jackass on the street) probably aren't as ignorant and vapid as they seem. They just think they have to come across that way in order to connect to their audience.

The guy waiting in line was probably wishing he was somewhere else and certainly didn't want to be the butt of someone's joke--and then be accused of not having a sense of humor. (That's a common trait of bullies--make fun of people and then call them humorless when they hit back. But that's a rant for another day.)

Of course, the air-heads in the studio didn't pick this story either. That was their producer, who maybe has an idea of the actual importance of the 3G iPhone but isn't paid to ponder the future of technology. He needs to come up with ratings, and what better way to attract viewers than to sic a slick reporter on a line full of preposterous-seeming nerds waiting for the next gadget from Jobs as if it were manna from heaven.

Fortunately, we're not really as bad as we make ourselves out to be. (Anyone remember the John Carpenter movie Starman, starring a really young Jeff Bridges as an alien who comes to check out Earth and gets the crap beat out of him and almost dissected by unfeeling scientists? I think that if aliens really came to Earth, we would actually treat them properly.)

We just need to be a little less quick to judge. The jackass got things rolling when he asked the gear-head whether he preferred gadgets or humans. But really, we are indissociable from the gadgets we make: flint-rock knives were the gadgets of one era in human history; portable computers that allow instantaneous communications in a myriad of ways are the gadgets of this one.

In fact, these gadgets speak rather highly of our species, because they reflect our need to create, communicate, and appreciate the creative efforts of others.