Greatest threat to humans: Macbooks won’t turn on

Revolution TV Show Logo
To turn off — or on! — your world, press the O.

A new TV show from NBC, Revolution, presents a world cut off from electrical power for 15 years. It offers sword fighting, so I’m sure it will be extraordinary. But what really interests me is the stylized letter “o” in the TV show’s title, above; it looks just like the power button on computers.
Power Button on Macbook Pro
Horseshoe vs. worm? Stick in a wine glass? Pacman’s death throes? Letter “o” in Revolution TV show? Power button on a Macbook Pro?

The implication is that on a planet sans power, the most striking loss would be the machines that allow us to watch the YouTube trailer at the end of this post.

I get that it’s something we can all relate to. A world without e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, Google, online bill paying, spam blogs and extraordinarily offensive comments would be empty indeed.

But what about oxygen machines, bank networks and military radars? Is there not a symbol representing the, ahem, power of those entities that would serve as one of the title’s letters? Bah! Suffocation, evaporated life savings and attacking armies are issues far too stark for serious consideration; extremes, such as death, are an abstract definite we can neither change nor complain about via online forums. But give me the fail whale for an hour, and I’ll raise an army.

Then again, it’s just a commonly recognized symbol that happens to work as an “o.” Certainly not a infallible indicator of the American psyche during the online era. Only someone writing on a blog would think that.

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