CSotD: Changing Drivers on the Old Road
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I feel like I’ve had enough politics. I’m not suggesting anyone stick their head in the sand, though. We know Election Day is coming, we know the stakes, we know the importance.
My oft-mentioned dog park is across the river in Vermont, and yesterday we got to talking politics. One of the women is running for state senate and said that, as she puts in the door-knocking necessary for small-state campaigning, she’s finding person after person who has already voted. It’s not an option in New Hampshire and I’m jealous, because I do want it to be over.
No worry that I’m going apolitical. We’ve got just under two weeks and there’s plenty to discuss, though I don’t expect that a blue wave can, at this point, be anything more than a sea-anchor to slow the drift until 2028.
But we need that anchor in the current tide.
This is only a little political, but it set me to remembering the two times I’ve collected unemployment.
Getting fired isn’t the worst thing in the world, particularly if they’ve been trying to get you to quit so they don’t have to pay unemployment. However, you can’t live on the pittance. Unemployment puts you in the position of either paying your rent or buying groceries but not both. If you don’t find something soon, it involves not just belt-tightening but burning through any savings you had, selling a bunch of your stuff and maybe couch-surfing or declaring bankruptcy or both.
Ah well, wotthehell. It’s good practice for living on Social Security.
I remember those predictions, including one about a screen that would be like paper, so you could fold it up and carry it around. As I recall, it was going to be just the newspaper, not a multi-purpose device. I think this was a pipe dream of the people who didn’t want the newspaper to disappear, but then it was also a time when there were very few laptops and the ones that existed were fragile and not all that practical.
My problem with online papers was losing the serendipity factor. When you had to physically turn pages to get to what you wanted, you sometimes came across interesting things you never would have found on purpose.
I remember bringing a bound copy from the 1940s to the front of the building where the copier was and one of the 20-something classified clerks looking at the big page, eight columns across and saying, “Wow! So much to read!” in the sense of what a bargain to get so much stuff every day. And she was right.
Alas, the serendipity is gone. As Joy of Tech notes, instead of having a little something for everybody, the algorithms determine what you surely must want to see, so that even the stories in the rails are based on the story in front of you and it’s possible to read all day and never learn anything new.
Though to be fair, people have always had a choice between responsible news coverage and supermarket tabloids, and we shouldn’t forget the lady who called Walter Cronkite in the middle of the JFK assassination coverage to complain about her soap opera being preempted.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
I gather people aren’t too crazy about MUSE, Meta’s new AI assistant and industrial spying device, and both Carrillo and Noth show the more sinister creature inside the cuteness costume.
IMHO, the real problem with these things is their intrusive nature. MUSE is being compared to Clippy, the annoying little helper that used to pop up when you did not need or want help, and the issue of “Who asked you?” seems to be everywhere.
Maybe it’s not my problem. As Arlo says, technology seems to be pushing the old folks aside. Downloading apps and scanning Q-codes and such is for digital natives. I’m not a Luddite, but I’m not a compulsive adapter, either.
There’s a pretty wide spectrum between those two extremes, and I’m okay where I am. F’instance, I ran into a story about a new website that sounded good, but when I went to see about downloading it, I found it only works on phones. I’m a desktop guy and I use my phone primarily as a phone, though I do read from it when I’m waiting at the hospital or the mechanic’s.
It isn’t just the digital world. I bought a car with a manual transmission not because I couldn’t figure out the PRNDL but because I prefer the manual. And in my world, a “martini” is made with gin. Nothing wrong with vodka martinis, but they’re not the default.
As Thomas Aquinas said to Simeon Stylites, “I used to be a renegade, I used to fool around, but I couldn’t take the punishment and had to settle down.”
It’s hip to be square.
Unfortunately, I fear Toro has a clear image of our future selves. In Fahrenheit 451, Montag’s wife is a dullard who spends her days watching interactive TV, which is why he finds the literate young girl in the woods so entrancing. But the protagonist of that book, as in 1984, as in Brave New World, is somebody who is not like everyone else and who sees through the system.
Such characters rarely come to happy endings, and while kids were transfixed by Holden Caulfield in the 50s and 60s, young people today despise the book because they see him as a whiner. By contrast, if you read their dystopic novels, you see that a heroic figure like Katniss Everdeen is more the model they want — someone who not only recognizes the faults in the system but rises up in active opposition.
We’ll see. The generation that identified with Holden Caulfield, Winston Smith and Guy Montag marched in Selma and then brought LBJ and Nixon to heel.
But I don’t despair of Katniss Everdeen’s fans. I saw how many Gen Z’s registered to vote when I worked the primaries last month, and now I see that students at several colleges in North Carolina marched long distances to vote, and to defy the powers-that-be who shut down polling places near their campuses.
They’re keeping the faith.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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