→2013→04→13→Comic Strip of the Day→CSotD: Emily Dickinson and the Digital Bog
Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Emily Dickinson and the Digital Bog

Published: April 13, 2013 1 minute 12 comments

Rk130413
Today's Rudy Park touches on something I really worry about. Well, two things.

1. Are they going to change technology to the point where I can't get anything done anymore?

2. Am I just an old fart?

I refuse to get sucked into "new is better," but I'm also aware of times when the changes that upset me turned out to not be so bad after all. I think it's possible to reconcile those, but not without getting angry.

For instance, I resented it when they quit making vinyl and, if you wanted music, you had to switch to CDs.

But, hey, the transition wasn't seamless. (Remember the green Magic Marker thing? I wasn't the only one who was discontented.)

Anyway, a lot of the albums I liked never made it to CD.

And some of the ones that did, didn't survive the operation.

Case in point: Quicksilver's "Happy Trails" album.

Like the Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service specialized in long, rambling acid-soaked extended jams, and their take on "Who Do You Love?" is about 25 minutes of brilliance.

Until some spiritless dork misunderstands the liner notes describing the various movements of the jam and chops it up into "singles" for the CD, inserting three-second pauses in what was one continuous piece. 

That's not an old man's rant about the warmth of vinyl. 

It's a perfectly reasonable complaint about dumbass factory-line vandalism. It's about not 'getting it' in an industry in which 'getting it' is kind of paramount. 

However, my music now is digital, and my turntable is packed away and I'm pretty much okay with it.

But I don't play "Happy Trails" anymore, because it breaks my heart.

So the latest headlines are that PCs are on the way out. Nobody wants them anymore, and so they're probably gonna quit making them.

Nobody wants them. All the cool kids say so.

Yeah, well, I'm nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody, too?

Emily Dickinson said that.

Your old road is rapidly aging. Please get out of the new one if you can't lend a hand.

Dylan said that.

And, no, I don't mean Dylan Thomas. Whoever he was.

Paul Simon said that.

Anyway, when laptops emerged, I said it was just fine for the kids, but I don't move around a lot and I need a real keyboard because I type more than a few lines at a time, so I didn't really see a need on my part for a laptop.

But I've been on laptops now for about four years and I still don't move around a lot, but my laptop has more memory and more speed than my towers ever did. And, while I haven't tested the theory, I understand they can be dropped these days, which didn't used to be the case.

Mine works great. I like it.

Especially since I attached it to a decent size flatscreen monitor so I can see what the hell I'm doing.

And added a wireless keyboard to prevent ergonomic issues.

And a wireless mouse, since you can't lay out pages with that stupid touchpad, unless you enjoy doing everything six times and still not hitting the tolerances you wanted.

Which basically means that I have a laptop that serves as a kind of narrow, horizontal tower.

And if I could attach all those things to something the size of a garage door opener that had the same memory and speed as my laptop, I guess that would work, too.

So, okay, you got me.

And, by the way, I love the fact that, on the rare occasions I do hit the road, I can grab my laptop and my cell phone and I don't even have to tell anybody that I'm not going to be in the office. The office is wherever I can get wifi and a phone signal.

But if the kids decide nobody wants USB ports, they'd better come up with a damn fine substitute, because I'm not laying out pages on a garage door opener.

And they also need to support older versions of things like Photoshop and InDesign forever, because Adobe has decided, instead of having the program on our hard drives, that they will all be up in the cloud.

It's hip, it's modern and, besides, it lets them force us to subscribe to the programs rather than own them. 

I'll give up my CS5 when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

Not because it's better. Not even because it's cheaper.

Because it's already paid for. And, in a couple of years, when I'm living on Social Security, freelance work and cat food, that's gonna matter to this old fart, even if I manage somehow to remain semi-hip.

Meanwhile, as part of that effort towards achieving and maintaining semi-hipness, I'm working on the hopeful, optimistic theory that, while the innovations always seem to move faster than the speed of thought, things eventually catch up.

Sort of.

For some odd reason, you have to go listen to this on YouTube. They won't let me embed it here. 

But at least it's out there, despite those damn punk kids who think they know everything.

Quicksilver Messenger Service - Happy Trails - Front

Previous Post
CSotD: A few chuckles before Tax Prep Weekend
Next Post
CSotD: Carrying a trayful of large, white bears

Comments 12

  1. Great version of Mona also. Cipollina Lives!

  2. I, too, am concerned with this recent “Ding Dong the PC is dead!” drum beat. While I have to have a laptop for my legal practice, I always want to have a tower. They are easier to fix and upgrade. Also, because a tower has less heat build-up, they last longer. I see similarities between my 1964 Dodge Dart (in which one could have a picnic under the hood while replacing the water pump) and the cars of today which have killed the backyard car mechanic. While I suspect towers will likely always be around, it will lose the cost efficiency of being produced in the billions. So, towers will likely become more expensive. Oh well.

  3. My brother. My older, grumpier brother.

  4. @ Dave: I was going to say exactly the same thing about my ’53 Buick straight-eight that you said about your Dart. It taught me everything I know about internal-combustion engines, but I don’t even open the hood on my 2005 Dodge now. I would have no idea what I was looking at.
    @ Brian: you and that whippersnapper Peterson fella are okay as long as you stay over there, offa my lawn and outta my flowers.

  5. The rush to be hip can really trample public opinion. I watched in some horror as the newspapers gleefully showed how with it they were by declaring themselves dead rather than sensibly examining the emerging technologies to see how print might augment or at least segue into this new media. Now the rush is to agree with the Emperor’s tailors about how magnificent his new tablet is, and how nobody ever needs a full screen, a keyboard or any of that other dreadful old fashioned stuff.
    At least the old fix-it-with-a-paper-clip Volkswagens died because safety considerations called for a weight their air-cooled engines couldn’t drive. This is, by contrast, totally pointless — it’s better because it’s smaller, it’s better because it’s more portable, it’s better because you can walk down the street while you look at it.
    I’m waiting for some trendoid to come up with the insulting name for PCs, the way they branded “dead trees” and “snail mail.” If nothing else, they’re inventing a whole new meaning for “cyberbullying.”

  6. Bad/good (?) news: Young people are into the quality of vinyl. New music that we probably don’t like is coming out on “records” now.
    That said, I have heavy duty aluminum foil taped over the pad of my laptop because terrible horrible things were happening while I was typing. Maybe it’s just my “acer-on-sale” and I don’t know any better. I use a wireless mouse. Much better.

  7. There’s an option you can find in your control panel that will shut off your touchpad if you’ve got a mouse plugged in. I nearly went crazy until I discovered it and disabled the damn thing. (When I say “an option you can find” I mean it — I’ve forgotten where it is. But it’s not buried.)

  8. A hammer works pretty well, too.

  9. Well, yeah, but I’m trying to be productive, and, boy, you think Facebook is a distraction, hammers are even worse.
    If I had a hammer …

  10. Anyway, nobody uses hammers anymore. They’ve all switched to nailguns. I think they’re going to stop making hammers in a couple of years.

  11. @ Mike – Nah … needed too much to threaten your spouse. (Just joking!)
    @ Sherwood – Mine was a 225 slant six. Great engine. Originally designed to be an airplane engine, so everything was over-engineered.

  12. Half of the people can be part right all of the time
    Some of the people can be all right part of the time
    But all of the people can’t be all right all of the time
    I think Abraham Lincoln said that
    “I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours”
    I said that.
    Dylan said that.

Comments are closed.

Search

Subscribe to our newsletter

Get a daily recap of the news posted each day.
^ Top