I’m thinking today that maybe it was a bad idea for our species to progress beyond vacuum tubes. Hell, I’m so annoyed with my various gadgets that the Industrial Revolution itself is sounding questionable to me. I’m sure that 18th Century farmers, shopkeepers, and blacksmiths rarely felt the need to hurl their tools through the nearest window. But, man, I sure do. Here’s why:

1. The keypad on my cell phone has quite suddenly stopped working. I try to scroll through my list of contacts and the buttons either stick or are doing some kind of triple-action or something, because they won’t go sequentially from one name to the next. They’re leaping across six or seven names at a time.
2. My crappy DVD player seems to think that a request to go to the “episode selection” menu on one of my new Star Trek: The Animated Series DVD is an instruction to go to sleep. I end up with a blue screen that says “Welcome.” This is not happening on any of my other DVDs, and the disc that’s causing the problem worked fine at The Girlfriend’s house last night.
3. I’ve been having problems accessing Bloglines so I can catch up on what’s going on in the world.
4. And, if all that isn’t enough, the CD I’m listening to is stuck in the middle of Prince’s “Purple Rain” and making an incredibly annoying “wha-wha-wha-wha-wha” sound. Yes, I’m still a pre-iPod Luddite who listens to music in the form of shiny silver discs instead of streams of data. Given the luck I seem to be having with high-tech stuff today, I may just go shopping for a hand-cranked Victrola…

[ADDENDUM: As if I didn’t have enough evidence for my argument that we’d all be better off if the quill pen made a comeback, my ISP seems to be having trouble keeping me online today, and Gmail is apparently too colossally cool for my antiquated dial-up connection. As the bimbo character (whose name I can’t recall at the moment) frequently remarks in Singin’ in the Rain, “I caaaaaan’t stanit.”]

In the high thirties art, technology and design are so intertwined it is sometimes hard to pry them apart. …Since 1939 art and technology have broken apart, for many reasons. Architects still design skyscrapers, but they are rarely technological showpieces. we have stopped building bridges. Locomotives nowadays are not candidates for design competitions. Airplanes never were. Artists no longer paint heroic murals. Even if they did, one suspects that technology might not be a favorite subject. (Unless it were the villain?)

 

The art-and-technology divorce has been a disaster for both parties, and it has profoundly alienated us from the future. “The story of the relcamation of the site and the building of the [New York World’s] Fair on it,” says the 1939 Guide [to the Fair], “is a romantic saga of modern engineering.” Yes, once upon a time, engineering was romantic. …Today we respect technology, spend heavily on it and can’t live without it. But the spiritual glow is long gone. Art has lost its grip on technology, we have lost our grip on the future; and the American religion, in which skyscrapers and steam engines were beautiful and inspiring and numinous sacred objects, is dead.

–David Gelernter, 1939: The Lost World of the Fair

I’ve been saying for years that one of the most disheartening things about the modern-day world is that, aside from a handful of rare exceptions, nothing has any style anymore. Looks like this author agrees with me.

I took the day off work yesterday so I could hold The Girlfriend’s hand while she underwent a minor surgical procedure. Okay, I wasn’t allowed to actually hold her hand during the procedure, but I was out in the waiting room the whole time. Well, except for when her mom and I ran over to Village Inn for a quick plate of eggs and bacon with a side of pancakes. But we were there when the doctor came looking for us to tell us we could go see her in the recovery room, and that’s what counts, right? In any event, she’s doing fine, thanks for wondering.

Later, finding myself with a free afternoon and nothing better to do, I decided to drop into Beans and Brews for a Starbucks-style coffee-and-milk beverage and an hour or so of recreational reading. The particular Beans and Brews I visited is just down the street from a high school, and, as school had just let out for the day, the place was crowded with gangly, gawky young men dressed in their unofficial uniforms of baggy jeans and dark-colored hoodies, all eager to get their daily caffiene buzz on. I slipped through their gauntlet, bought a mochaccino, and found a sofa to settle into with my book.
I’d been reading for a few minutes when I suddenly heard Steve Perry belting out “Don’t Stop Believin’.” This was a bit puzzling because the coffee-house’s PA system had been — still was, in fact — playing some anonymously mopey rock song that I couldn’t name if you held a gun to my head. I looked around to see who’d brought in a competing music-player… and was surprised to see one of the hooded teenage boys pulling a cellphone from his pocket. The kid was using a song that had charted before he was even conceived as his ringtone. I grinned, thinking to myself that there might be some hope for the future after all.

Then the in-store music switched to an artist I recognized — Warren Zevon — and I overheard the young barista telling his friends to listen to the amazingly cool song that was just starting. “I just love this one,” he said, “It’s called ‘Werewolves of Thunder‘.”
Doh.
I turned my attention back to my book and tried not to feel smugly old…

I’ve believed for some time now that we Americans are turning ourselves into a nation of infantilized wussies. Seriously. We worry constantly about achieving “closure” for every little childhood trauma, we dress ourselves in soft ‘n’ cuddly fleece outfits that resemble nothing so much as overgrown jammies (all they need are the sewn-in feet), and we’re downright obsessed with safety. Cops pulling you over for not wearing your seatbelt, those obnoxious seals that have to be removed from all of our food and medicine containers, warnings on the sides of our coffee cups that the contents may be hot (duh!)… it’s enough to make me want to run out and do something positively reckless, like run with the bulls in Pamplona or wave freshly baked cupcakes at the women coming out of Gold’s Gym.

Continue Reading…

Okay, the following is a bit of a departure from this week’s Talkin’ Books theme, but it’s so in line with my general philosophy that I thought it bore immediate repeating here. From a blog called Hooptyrides comes the Idiots Rule:

Everything you love, everything meaningful with depth and history, all passionate authentic experiences will be appropriated, mishandled, watered down, cheapened, repackaged, marketed and sold to the people you hate.

–Mr. Jalopy

Yep, that about says it all…

[Ed. note: Actually, on re-reading the source of this quote I see that the original entry was actually “Idiots Rule,” not “The Idiots Rule.” That puts a slightly different spin on things, doesn’t it? Oh well, I still agree with the sentiment…]

For the record, I did not write the following. Somebody sent it to me via e-mail, along with the usual daily batch of unfunny joke-type spams. However, this certainly seems in the spirit of something I would write, and it amused Anne when I showed it to her, so I’m going to post it up here. I’ve done some minor editing to correct eccentric capitalization and such, so apologies to whoever originally wrote it:

Continue Reading…

Lileks on modern movie-going:

I haven’t stood in line for a ticket in a long time – I get them from the kiosk in the lobby well in advance, because I hate lines of any sort. On the other hand, it moves us towards the depopulation of the theater staff; I still remember ticket booths, not counters – some poor soul locked in a capsule under the marquee, doling out tickets from a great spool. Then there’s the fellow who rips the ticket in half – not exactly a demanding job, but it always seemed to have authority. Only I can rip the ticket. Should you rip the ticket, it is useless. By destroying it, I fulfill its value. Hail me, for I am the Head Usher. These will be anachronisms soon enough, and one more human interaction, heretofore ubiquitous, will replaced with a beep and a green light.

 

Wow: from techno-glee to rueful nostalgic regret in one paragraph. That’s a record.

As a former movie-theater usher, and one who isn’t ashamed to admit that I quite enjoyed the job, I have to give props to ol’ Jimmy. He perfectly captures the banal self-importance of those who control public access to the cinematic inner sanctum. He also paints, for me, a grim view of a very-near future in which movie-goers shuffle efficiently and mirthlessly past automated ticketing kiosks and snack-dispensing cubicles and barcode-scanning gateways. Hell, that future is already here in some places. Personal anecdote: a few months back, I happened to be in Los Angeles, where I went to see a movie at a place called The Grove It’s a beautiful theater in many respects, but one which is suspiciously lacking in the human touch. I bought my tickets from an ATM-style dispenser, and then I ordered my concessions with a touch-screen panel and paid by swiping my debit card. When my number was called, a concessionaire handed me a sack of corn and an empty cup, which I filled myself at a self-service soda fountain. It was all very quick and efficient, no doubt a boon for the place’s managers, who only have to schedule a minimal staff and who don’t have to deal with queues of impatient people. But it just felt… cold. A little too much like something out of THX-1138.

I happen to like the personal interaction with other organic beings when I’m out in the world. And I worry about the kids of the future; I wonder what they’ll do for their first jobs if all those minimum-wage customer service positions we old-timers used to fill get automated. (I also wonder where today’s kids are going to go drink beer and make out when the time comes for them, because all the fields and canyons I used for those purposes now have houses sitting on them. But kids are clever, and I suppose they’ll find their own ways.)

We’ve got some degree of automation at the theaters around here, but I myself rarely use those automated ticket kiosks. Nope, not me. I’d rather have a couple seconds of face-time with the pretty teenaged girl at the counter. Call me crazy…