OF COURSE! THE BLOG!
So, my first thought was this weird idea about how many things are described as "digital." Digital this, digital that, analog wha? How awesome are things that are digital? I don't have to put any effort at all to telling the time, how useful! Little digital things are embedded so far into our brains, we don't even think of them as digital. Digital clock or just clock?
That's how far I got on that train to nowhere, on to something new!
The sequel is much less interesting, because I was thinking about how things that are digital affect animals. This is just a sad stem from me paying attention to how my cat seriously enjoys chasing my mouse pointer across the screen and sleeping on my keyboard all night long in the seriously bright glow of the monitor. I know she can't type, or even spell.. or.. well, you know, anything human-- at all.
My third idea was my original idea when we first got the dish about what we needed to be thinking about.
My latest online purchase was this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Medium_is_the_MassageCoincidentally, I stumbled upon (no really, I used the Firefox plug-in StumbleUpon) this book and decided to buy it because I really felt a connection with the subject and this course. What's so gripping about this book is that it was written so long before what I think of as modern technologies were even manufactured, but it completely captures the ideas and concepts behind a lot of the technologies that I use day to day. Right after I received the package in the mail through AMAZON.COM (internet!), I started to leaf through the book and I have to say, it's pretty entertaining. That evening at work I took a call from a woman from California who deals used cars and doesn't understand her phone bill about ordering some DISH Network service. After talking about the advantages of satellite television and shitting about some more about long distance charges, we started to talk about technology and how we viewed it as children. I'm not sure if she was completely sane or not, but she had a lot of ideas about "pre-inventions" of things we use day to day that have been realized. We talked BLUETOOTH, walkie-phones, moonboots; we mulled over vo-coders and sex toys that still were attached to electrical outlets vs. the growing market of really, really strange mechanical bull dildos on the market. Obviously, we got off the subject.
Now, I want to tie almost all of these ideas together to form something comprehensible. I think there's something underlying that I'm not seeing or grasping that I need to pull out of all of these ideas. I'm horrible at arranging ideas, but don't seem to have any shortage of useless things to find interesting in everything. See? I don't even know if that makes sense to anyone but myself.
I also littered this with links because I felt they might help deliver the meaning a bit more. Maybe I'm also in the fourth-dimension.
3 comments:
Miranda:
When I first began broadcasting, we edited tape with razor blades! I used to repair wooden headed drivers and woods for golfers and I used to write with a typewriter.
The tools of nearly everything have become easier to master but we are not making better entertainment, scoring better on the golf course (at least non pro's) and MS Word has not introduced a new enlightenment in creative writing.
What about automobiles? Conveinence and compfort have improved (ie. satelite radio, power this n that, GPS) but the dynamics of getting from point A to point B is exactly the same as it was nearly 100 years ago.
Lydia
SOme interesting thoughts here. My cat likes to sleep on my keyboard, or at least walk across it and she actually writes stuff, it's not good, but may be she is trying to communicate!
I have read that book and find it very interesting, especially when we think of the inventions people thought were possible and are now part of our everyday lives. I was just reading an article about DIsney World and how they are refurbishing TOmmorowLand because it was originally Walt Disney view of the future, which looks a lot some some weird sci-fi novel. But it is really outdated, what was suppose to be a glimpse into the future is now so far in the past that it is commical. This dichotomy is very interesting, what were the views of the future? How do they stack up to today? Have we exceeded expectations, or do people still want hover cars?
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