Let me see, the movies my father took with his 16 mm motion picture camera we transferred to Beta. At the time, people said, “Oh no, you don’t want to do Beta; do VHS.” Beta and VHS tapes are now, of course, both obsolete. So we then transferred them to DVDs, but within a year or two DVDs will be obsolete, However, I’ve been told to add them to my computer now and then store them on a cloud. If the cloud doesn’t go away, I’ll still be able to watch them on my computer. But, I’d better hurry, my old computer may be left behind by my friends’ tablets and e-readers and then I won’t be able to access the cloud without a new computer. Something about beware the Tandy syndrome. And whatever happened to BASIC, FORTRAN and COBALT: but I was warned not to confuse COBALT with Open Cobalt.
We have old DVDs and VCR tapes which we watch while we do the exercise bike. Someone was teasing us. “And how are you going to watch The Thin Man and Casablanca when your machine wears out? You know, Best Buy is not going to carry antiques for old goats forever?” We gave our friend a look. He said close your mouth and listen, “Streaming” He said it very slowly and continued just as slowly. He talked to me as if I were clueless. “Netflix is just one example. Get over it, your VCRs and DVDs are soooo yesterday. If you want media content stream it.”
Now, I admit, when it comes to still photography, we’re really out to lunch. In the basement we have boxes and boxes filled with Kodak negatives, duplicates and the pics that didn’t make it into the albums. We’ll never throw them away, even though in some dark recess of our mind we know we’re never even going to look at them again and our kids will have to toss them. Upstairs, we have over two dozen albums. But of course we don’t use albums anymore, we’ve gone digital. So we store our pics the modern way on the computer. But who looks at pictures on the computer? Who says, “Let’s curl up on the couch and look at the pics on our laptop from our wedding, the kids weddings, our trips, and the b-day parties?” Nobody. So we started using Shutterfly. Now we make our own albums on the computer, email them to Shutterfly and they send them via snail mail almost instantaneously.
We sometimes wonder what’s going to happen when Corporate America, in the name of efficiency , shuts down the USPS. How will the Internet deliver its products to customers’ homes? Are we going to have to pay $8 to have UPS deliver a letter size package?
But a friend said we’re just being cantankerous. “For god’s sake just spend a couple of bucks and get with it. Here’s the solution. I went to www.yellowpages .com, but you can go to the obsolete, soon to be history, print edition of the Yellow Pages and find: “Don’t wait any longer to transfer your 8mm, 16mm, and Super 8 Film to DVD. Revive those precious memories to share with your family! We can transfer your VHS, VHS-C, Betamax, Hi-8, MiniDV, Video-8 and Digital 8 tapes to DVD. Preserve your home movies for the future. Don’t let your Slides, Negatives and Printed Photos sit in that box any longer. We can scan them at Digital Camera Quality.”
Let me see, we threw away my father’s old 78s. Bing Crosby. Bing who? Then later, we threw away our own, old 78s & 45s, Simon and Garfunkel, “Do you mean Paul Simon?” Now our son-in-law is looking all over for what he calls vinyl. He claims, “It’s a richer tone.” We finally threw away the last of our eight tracks and reel to reels. We have yet to throw away all of our cassettes even though we don’t have a cassette player except in the old car. When we gave our kids CDs for the holidays they said a little too snarky for our taste: “Please no more CDs they’re so 20th century.” I asked them about their CDs & DVDs collections. They answered, “We never listen to them anymore, and we really don’t know what to do with them.” At one time, they bought a fancy, modern, sleek, brushed aluminum, floor to ceiling CD case. Now it sits in the back room, filled with beautiful CDs gathering dust. Another friend, just the other day, said pointing to a half dozen plastic milk crates filled with CDs and DVDs, “You want them? Take them, take all of them. I’ll help you load them into your car. Just get them out of my fricking house.” Déjà vu! He has a new device. It looks like a small radio and it has a little card. I was too embarrassed to ask him what it was. Somewhere in the back of one of the dresser drawers we still have an old walkman—it still works, good as new, even though we used it lots.
We were going to buy an mp 3 player, but then we found out that we would have to choose from Sony, Creative, SanDisk, Microsoft, Zune, iRiver, Archos, Samsung, and that we would need to buy speakers, chargers, cases, cables and connectors and get hooked up with Podcasts which is different from an iPad or an iPhone. We know they have classes for old duffers called intro to Facebook and advance Facebook; so they probably have classes on how to choose your mp3player. But it just seemed like TMI all over again.
We asked a friend if you have the same recording in multiple formats which do you choose and why? Our friend, who still has his vinyl, his cassettes and his CDs, listens to You Tube. He bragged,” I can listen to anything and everything any time of the day or night. I can listen to something I don’t have and I can listen to something I do have without having to get up and hunt it down.” He brags about the quality of his sound system, but he listens to You Tube on his laptop. He says some day, I’ll hook it up.” It was my turn to smirk and roll my eyes.
Speakers? People see our speakers and they roll their eyes. They get that patient, I’m trying to talk to a child voice and very softly say, “Small and at least three for authentic sound. And wires? Get rid of those wires. Haven’t you heard of wireless?”
They tell us, “In the old days, I’d get up in the morning and I’d have to wait for the paper or run to the corner (later drive to the highway) and buy it. And, then, it would be full of all the old news that I saw last night on TV. (They must have missed the night that old Walter Cronkite said, “Before I say good night, I want you to know that everything that I have just said, the whole text, of this thirty minute newscast could fit on the front page of your daily newspaper.”) Now, it is so cool. I get up, I boot up my tablet. I have instant access to every paper in the world. I read the NYT, the WSJ, the J-S, the T-H, and even the ( Chicago Trib)—all in less than half an hour. I could never do that in the old days. And then I’ve got NPR and MSNBC and U-Tube. And it’s all practically free.”
They think it is so cool, the on line paper even tells them what to read. The paper says, “We know what you like to read—sports and entertainment. So we’ve prepare a list of sports and entertainment stories for you. Please, don’t waste your time skimming and scanning the paper and getting sidetracked when something else catches your eye, just go straight to the good stuff. You’ll never have to look at a nasty old science story again.”
Surf the net. One of the great strengths of the internet is one can literally just go browsing and who knows what one might learn. One can type in Gettysburg and before you know it one is reading about the slaves’ role in the battle or about battle field aid stations. But studies show folks no longer surf. They don’t want to be bothered with different opinions and different points of view. They go straight to their favorite sites all bookmarked and conveniently wanting for them. Don’t dive, don’t go down deep into the water, don’t explore the reefs and currents, just skim the surface and get ready to buy the next gadget, because as sure as GM created planned obsolescence, Apple has perfected it and another new gadget is coming our way as soon as they can get their work force to stop committing suicide. (Our computer’s spell check is so old that it thinks that Facebook is two words.
They tell us this is the information age and they’re right; we see it all around us. In the car, “Honey, I just got off the highway, I’ll be home in five.” At the super market, “I forgot, do you want the big box or the small box of detergent? What brand again?” In the stadium “I’m at the game. I just saw it. He hit it over the fence.” The important news is always right there streaming across the bottom of the screen: Packers win! Tigers slump! Bulls out! Sox Lose! Cardinals come from behind! Woods looks stronger! Vanessa’s bound to win!
When the pictures from Afghanistan went viral, we sighed. The story was treated as something new. And right away on TV, the internet and via Facebook and Tweeter the discussion was heated, not very learned, but heated. How can one be very learned in 140 characters?) Was there, will there be a serious discussion about torture? Not likely. SNL has already done a skit, Jay Leno has passed judgment and David Letterman got the best laugh. Someone says reread 1984, someone says read the Shock Doctrine. And someone asked, “Can I read it on my eBook while I’m waiting for the game?” No, tomorrow’s another day, another sound bite and another witty repartee. Someone said that the today’s kids are illiterate; boy he should’ve looked in the mirror.
They asked us the other day about The Game. We asked, “What game?” Chuck watched his first and last Super Bowl forty years ago. They asked, “What about the commercials?” We explained that we haven’t had a working TV in over fifteen years.
They said, “Well what about Masterpiece Theatre? We said. “We have the book. We hold it in our hand. We sometimes pause and look off into the middle distance creating the scene in our mind’s eye.”
They sigh, they roll their eyes and give us a hopeless look, “But, that’s so yesterday.” We quote Thoreau. They give us the all-knowing smirk.
Truth be told, maybe we’re just old. We asked a kid, he’s almost forty, did he have an iPhone and an iPod, or a Bluetooth and a Blackberry and did he download apps (and what does that mean?) and did he have an E-reader. He answered, “For a long time, I had everything and I got it just as soon as it came out. I’d wait in line to buy the newest device. I got rid of my iPhone 4 for the 4s and now I should have the 5 but I don’t yet. I use to be up-to-date, but not anymore, I must be getting old, I can’t keep up. Now my wife she’s still into it. Anything new, she’s got to have it and right away.” If he can’t keep up, how can we be expected?
Maybe people really do sit down and read 2, 4, 6, even 10 page stories and essays on line and then another and even a third. Maybe they do learn as much on line as anyone ever learned from newsprint and acid free paper and maybe they do go back and read last Sunday’s NY Times because they missed so much of it the first time round, but we doubt it.
Thoreau was better read than most people then and now. Books send by boat from England took two months and it took weeks to get back and forth to England but Emerson was better informed, read more and travelled more than many Twenty-first century Americans who brag about their very own Fantasy Baseball team.
We can’t keep up, but then neither can RMI.
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