With an irony too delicious not to report the hell out of, last week Amazon reached into the electric minds of its Kindle book readers and deleted copies of George Orwell's 1984. These were copies that users had paid for, and thought they owned. They did not, it turns out! Granted, these were unauthorized copies of 1984 and Animal Farm, and users in question were refunded the purchase price, so maybe it was more like a recall, except under cover of darkness and completely involuntary.
Had the books not been Orwell's, and instead, say; Dr. Phil's, the act would not have echoed so loudly in the Blongoverse. They were, though, and they did, and today Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos gave the increasingly common Big Giant Apology to make up things.
This, along with my net connection crapping out every 20 minutes yesterday, and the island-wide AT&T outage the day before, got me thinking, that hey, a lot of who I am exists in that digital space--not just work, and email, but goals, and plans, and memories, and friends. This is a common modern realization, I know. But now that a good chunk of what I consider to be my mind is subscription-based, I wonder if I've made the right move, here. I couldn't tell you my wife's phone number. I mean, I can access it, and my expanding definitions of what it is to know something make me okay with this.
But every disconnection from the network leaves me a little clammy, and power outages have become downright existential experiences. And if my life is so easy to remove, is it still my life? If I back up properly, will I live forever?
So is this a lot of eggs in one basket, or just the price of doing business? Or perhaps... An entirely different clichéd metaphor, heretofore unexplored, ladies and gentlemen?
14 comments:
I hear you and am 100 percent sympathetic.
But if we gave up all our technology, we'd all have to go back to being farmers. Or pig hunters.
So how much technology do you give up and how much do you keep? Where do you draw the line?
Yes, I don't know what I was thinking. This feeling hits me about twice a year, and then goes away. I think it comes from an innate misunderstanding of my own mortality. Somehow, I think I'm going to outlive the Internet.
I mean, that's just stupid. right?
I do not think it is stupid. I don't have the same thoughts though. I wonder if it might be a generation thing. You went through your teenage years without computers, right? Or at least the modern day conception of what computers do for us.
Interesting point, but I also went through 2003 without a modern-day conception of what computers can really do. Still, you might be right. I did a fair amount of computing growing up, but I always had to seek it out, and let's be honest, I was playing Choplifter most of the time.
I think you are selling yourself short Pone.
I think were you to move to that log cabin in the Adirondacks it would all come back really fast. That's how I am when I go to my grandparents farm. Stuff gets nice and slow, but my attention span goes way up.
sidenote: I was obsessed with Photoshop 1.5 when I was in high school, but then yeah, Wizardry was pretty serious as well.
"Somehow, I think I'm going to outlive the Internet."
I sometimes think would be nice to know how to grow tomatoes, or a similarly useful food, in case everything goes to hell and I need some basic survival skills.
You Palolo folks are lucky - you can practice hunting on the piglets in your yards.
I guess Litcube already hunts moose!
True Odori. I bet, though, that Hawaii has more vegitative support than B.C. would. Or at least obvious vegitative support. I should speak to my native friends and see if I could talk with their parents about living off this land. You dudes should do that too, so that if shit goes down we'd know where to meet up to repopulate the Earth. I'll try to bring a female, as I'm single, otherwise, I'd be *that* guy; the dude who shows up at a potluck with a fork.
I think I said vegitative one too many times to pass it off as a typo on vegetative.
Odori will you please stop talking about the hunting of MAH BABIEZ. thank you.
'Cube, I'm sure all our spouses wouldn't mind giving the world some lantern jawed children!
Galspanic -- I'm sorry I keep talking about hurting your babies. But they ARE invasive species, after all. Granted so are humans, but that's maybe a separate issue.
Litcube - yes, true we have enormous vegetative support in Hawaii. But on Oahu, a lot of it is moutain ranges, housing developments and hotels.
We have enormous tourist support.
We need to start farming tourists. that's what you are saying, isn't it Odori.
Absolutely! We need more!
Send... More... Tourists
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