When it comes to George Carlin, I’m starting to feel like a Talmudic scholar – – the more I listen to him, the deeper the meaning that is revealed. Anyway, I was listening to this portion of his 2005 show (the entirety of which is genius, and this is only a segment):
At the 7:18 mark of the above video, Saint George is describing what kind of gift would need to be offered to tempt people into mass suicide (and I’ve hurriedly transcribed it here): “Give them a little prize or something like that. Everybody wants a gizmo. Give ’em a gizmo. Give ’em a cellphone. Give ’em a laptop. Give ’em a cell phone that takes a picture of a laptop. Give ’em a laptop that takes a picture of a cell phone…..give ’em one of those things they buy for themselves when they try to get their mind off of how badly they’re getting fucked by the system. I know what you do! Just before they jump, you give ’em a hat with a camera in it. Then you tell ’em it’s JumpCam. Tell them you’ll send the video home to the family.”
So a year before the earliest version of the digital GoPro was introduced (and many years before anyone had even heard of GoPro), and a full two years before the iPhone came out, George basically predicted these “gizmos” in advance. He even anticipated the ability to share videos via the cloud. I’m afraid our patron saint knew our culture far too well. The man was clairvoyant.