Call me Lemuel washed ashore in a land of Lilliputians but now escaping. Charged with treason, it is time to move along. Do not ask me of whence I speak; I speak of the sun also rising and nothing more.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Monday, January 6, 2014
Back in San Francisco
I am back in the city after 6 hours in the air from Birmingham to Denver to SF.
Flying thru Denver was no fun. I miss the old days of BHM to Dallas to SF or BHM to Atlanta to SF.
Colorado is covered with snow. There is snow and ice surrounding the runways in Denver.
I get the SF and to the Hilton at Union Square. I do not know where US is in relation to the hotel.
I think about walking to City Lights bookstore first day but decide to rest in my room.
The big game is tonight. There is a sit-down dinner where we have to be seated by district.
There is no place to hide.
Flying thru Denver was no fun. I miss the old days of BHM to Dallas to SF or BHM to Atlanta to SF.
Colorado is covered with snow. There is snow and ice surrounding the runways in Denver.
I get the SF and to the Hilton at Union Square. I do not know where US is in relation to the hotel.
I think about walking to City Lights bookstore first day but decide to rest in my room.
The big game is tonight. There is a sit-down dinner where we have to be seated by district.
There is no place to hide.
Friday, January 3, 2014
All Aboard!
Last night I dreamed I was on a slow train heading West. The train had just left the Birmingham station. It would be an interesting trip to San Francisco for the train is full of shysters, confidence men, and swindlers. The trick is to tell the difference between them. They all smile and have winsome ways, but who's who? (How DO you tell the difference between these people types?) There is a... dining car where they are serving caviar and champaigne. There a card room where they are playing Old Maid. There is a car where everyone sits in silence looking at their smart phones. There is an elevated sightseeing car where everyone is exchanging meaningful glances excluding me. The train lets out a loud whistle as it passes into a tunnel. I reach for my wallet as I awake shaken. Oh, my.
P-Reading
Bookends
How Do E-Books Change the Reading Experience?
By Mohsin Hamid
In a world of intrusive technology, we must engage in a kind of struggle if we wish to sustain moments of solitude.
Mohsin Hamid
The advantages of e-books are clear. E-books are immediate. Sitting at home in Pakistan, I can read an intriguing review of a book, one not yet in stores here, and with the click of a button be reading that book in an instant. E-books are also incorporeal. While traveling, which I do frequently, I can bring along several volumes, weightless and indeed without volume, thereby enabling me to pack only a carry-on bag.
And yet the experience of reading e-books is not always satisfactory. Yes, it is possible to vary the size of the font, newly important to me at age 42, as I begin to perceive my eye muscles weakening. Yes, e-books can be read in the dark, self-illuminated, a reassuring feature when my wife is asleep and I am too lazy to leave our bed, or when electricity outages in Lahore have persisted for so long that our backup batteries are depleted. And yes, they offer more frequent indicators of progress, their click-forwards arriving at a rapidity that far exceeds that of paper-flipping, because pixelated screens tend to hold less data than printed pages and furthermore advance singly, not in two-sided pairs.
Nonetheless, often I prefer reading to e-reading. Or rather, given that the dominance of paper can no longer be assumed, p-reading to e-.
I think my reasons are related to the fact that I have disabled the browser on my mobile phone. I haven’t deleted it. Instead, I’ve used the restrictions feature in my phone’s operating system to hide the browser, requiring me to enter a code to expose and enable it. I can use the browser when I find it necessary to browse. But, for the most part, this setting serves as a reminder to question manufactured desires, to resist unless I have good cause.
Similarly, I have switched my email account from the attention- and battery-consuming “push” setting to the less frenzied manual one. Emails are fetched when I want them to be, which is not all that often. And the browser on my slender fruit-knife of a laptop now contains a readout that reminds (or is it warns?) me how much time I have spent online.
Time is our most precious currency. So it’s significant that we are being encouraged, wherever possible, to think of our attention not as expenditure but as consumption. This blurring of labor and entertainment forms the basis, for example, of the financial alchemy that conjures deca-billion-dollar valuations for social-networking companies.
I crave technology, connectivity. But I crave solitude too. As we enter the cyborg era, as we begin the physical shift to human-machine hybrid, there will be those who embrace this epochal change, happily swapping cranial space for built-in processors. There will be others who reject the new ways entirely, perhaps even waging holy war against them, with little chance — in the face of drones that operate autonomously while unconcerned shareholding populations post selfies and status updates — of success. And there will be people like me, with our powered exoskeletons left often in the closet, able to leap over buildings when the mood strikes us, but also prone to wandering naked and feeling the sand of a beach between our puny toes.
In a world of intrusive technology, we must engage in a kind of struggle if we wish to sustain moments of solitude. E-reading opens the door to distraction. It invites connectivity and clicking and purchasing. The closed network of a printed book, on the other hand, seems to offer greater serenity. It harks back to a pre-jacked-in age. Cloth, paper, ink: For these read helmet, cuirass, shield. They afford a degree of protection and make possible a less intermediated, less fractured experience. They guard our aloneness. That is why I love them, and why I read printed books still.
How Do E-Books Change the Reading Experience?
By Mohsin Hamid
In a world of intrusive technology, we must engage in a kind of struggle if we wish to sustain moments of solitude.
Mohsin Hamid
The advantages of e-books are clear. E-books are immediate. Sitting at home in Pakistan, I can read an intriguing review of a book, one not yet in stores here, and with the click of a button be reading that book in an instant. E-books are also incorporeal. While traveling, which I do frequently, I can bring along several volumes, weightless and indeed without volume, thereby enabling me to pack only a carry-on bag.
And yet the experience of reading e-books is not always satisfactory. Yes, it is possible to vary the size of the font, newly important to me at age 42, as I begin to perceive my eye muscles weakening. Yes, e-books can be read in the dark, self-illuminated, a reassuring feature when my wife is asleep and I am too lazy to leave our bed, or when electricity outages in Lahore have persisted for so long that our backup batteries are depleted. And yes, they offer more frequent indicators of progress, their click-forwards arriving at a rapidity that far exceeds that of paper-flipping, because pixelated screens tend to hold less data than printed pages and furthermore advance singly, not in two-sided pairs.
Nonetheless, often I prefer reading to e-reading. Or rather, given that the dominance of paper can no longer be assumed, p-reading to e-.
I think my reasons are related to the fact that I have disabled the browser on my mobile phone. I haven’t deleted it. Instead, I’ve used the restrictions feature in my phone’s operating system to hide the browser, requiring me to enter a code to expose and enable it. I can use the browser when I find it necessary to browse. But, for the most part, this setting serves as a reminder to question manufactured desires, to resist unless I have good cause.
Similarly, I have switched my email account from the attention- and battery-consuming “push” setting to the less frenzied manual one. Emails are fetched when I want them to be, which is not all that often. And the browser on my slender fruit-knife of a laptop now contains a readout that reminds (or is it warns?) me how much time I have spent online.
Time is our most precious currency. So it’s significant that we are being encouraged, wherever possible, to think of our attention not as expenditure but as consumption. This blurring of labor and entertainment forms the basis, for example, of the financial alchemy that conjures deca-billion-dollar valuations for social-networking companies.
I crave technology, connectivity. But I crave solitude too. As we enter the cyborg era, as we begin the physical shift to human-machine hybrid, there will be those who embrace this epochal change, happily swapping cranial space for built-in processors. There will be others who reject the new ways entirely, perhaps even waging holy war against them, with little chance — in the face of drones that operate autonomously while unconcerned shareholding populations post selfies and status updates — of success. And there will be people like me, with our powered exoskeletons left often in the closet, able to leap over buildings when the mood strikes us, but also prone to wandering naked and feeling the sand of a beach between our puny toes.
In a world of intrusive technology, we must engage in a kind of struggle if we wish to sustain moments of solitude. E-reading opens the door to distraction. It invites connectivity and clicking and purchasing. The closed network of a printed book, on the other hand, seems to offer greater serenity. It harks back to a pre-jacked-in age. Cloth, paper, ink: For these read helmet, cuirass, shield. They afford a degree of protection and make possible a less intermediated, less fractured experience. They guard our aloneness. That is why I love them, and why I read printed books still.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Tech Support
I am switching our ATT & T home internet service from 620-3162 to 663-9747 because I am discontinuing the 3162 line. It is being done 1-13 but the phone company tried to do it today and so I had a confrontation with their tech support, which resulted in this FB post.
People who work in tech support must be unemployable elsewhere. People who work in tech support must have been fired from a fast food drive-thru. They were mistreated as children like someone out of a Dickens novel. Can they feed themselves? Can they sign their names correctly? That smooth voice, that silky personality, that obnoxious tone that I like to bring out when I'm upset enough. Do they laugh at us suckers between calls? Read their lines just to get us off the phone? Tell me someone; please tell me.
People who work in tech support must be unemployable elsewhere. People who work in tech support must have been fired from a fast food drive-thru. They were mistreated as children like someone out of a Dickens novel. Can they feed themselves? Can they sign their names correctly? That smooth voice, that silky personality, that obnoxious tone that I like to bring out when I'm upset enough. Do they laugh at us suckers between calls? Read their lines just to get us off the phone? Tell me someone; please tell me.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Happy New Year
I don't drink. I don't do fireworks, and I don't do celebatory gunfire. I don't eat special food on this day and I don't think about 2013 and make resolutions for 2014. Our holiday decorations are put way so the house is dark. I am such a spoilsport for New Year. Oh, I do watch college football, but not with much passion.
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