Apropos of typing, I am honored to also announce that my short story “What Happened to the Dog?” has been accepted for Cold Hard Type: Typewriter Tales from Post-Digital Worlds, edited by novelist Frederic S. Durbin, writer and Professor of English Andrew McFeeters, and philosopher Richard Polt, the Dean of the Typoshere, and author of The Typewriter Revolution. My own vision of the post-digital world? A mashup of a Fortean echo of Aeschylus’ death, the Galapagos Islands, an Ivy League university quadrangle, and round-a-campfire singin’ with the Girl Scouts. (Like they say about the future, the imaginal can be a beyond-strange land.) What post-digital worlds did the other contributors come up with? I for one look forward to reading…
“There’s a small, international army of typewriter users and collectors on this planet called Earth. Many share some core beliefs: 1) The typewriter inspires creative, deliberate, and thoughtful writing through its singular purpose; 2) Typewriters have no distracting social media apps. Writing, after all, is a solitary act; 3) Typewriters do not require batteries; 4) New technology is not bad, but it is inferior to the mighty typewriter; 5) If you do not think typewriters are cool, then that leaves more typewriters for the rest of us. Still, don’t knock it until you try it; and 6) If you feel the clacking call of the typewriter beneath the full moon on a windy night, check out Richard Polt’s website”
P.S. Visit again next Monday for a fascinating Q & A with Ellen Cassedy, who has translated a brilliant, moving, and genuinely landmark book of short fiction.
Viva, Richard Polt! He says that if you send him your address he will send you this postcard.
One of the themes in my work-in-progress
on Far West Texas is the nature and pervasive influence of
technology, especially digital technology– but also other kinds of industrial
and military technology.
So what’s with the typewriter poem? The poem
pictured above, “The Typewriter Manifesto,” is by philosophy
professor Richard Polt. I’m a big fan of his blog and his book, The Typewriter
Revolution.
My 56 year-old Hermes 3000 works fine, no need to update the OX! (Yes, ribbons are easy to score on eBay).
Nope, I am not a Luddite, but yep, I use a typewriter on occasion. When needed, I also use a Zassenhaus kitchen timer, a 30 year-old finance-nerd calculator (I used to be a finance nerd), and a battery-operated alarm clock. Yes, I know there are apps for all of those, and yes, I actually have downloaded and previously used all those apps on my smartphone but, e-NUFFF with the digital! Too many hours of my day are already in thrall to my laptop, writing on WORD or blogging, emailing, podcasting, maintaining my website, surfing (other blogs, mainly, and newspapers, plus occasional podcasts and videos), and once in a purple moon, making videos. Most days my iPhone stays in its drawer, battery dead, and I like it that way.
But kiddos, this not a writer-from-an-older-generation-resisting-innovation thing. Back when I was avid to adopt new technology. I had a cell phone when they were the size and shape and weight of a brick. I started my website in 1999! I bought the first Kindle model, and the first iPad model. I was one of the first writers to make my own Kindle editions (check out my latest). I started podcasting in 2010. I even spent oodles more time than I should have figuring out the bell-and-whistles of iTunes’ iBook Author app… and so on and so forth.
From Charles Melville Scammon’s “California Grays Among the Ice” Whales! Magnificent outside! Digestive juices inside!
In short, with technology, especially anything
having to do with writing and publishing, I dove right into the deep end… and
I have seen the whale. And it was not, is not, and will not be on my schedule
to get swallowed whole.
(The original pretzel-brain inducing essay by
Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” with its handful of
profound points coccooned within copious noodathipious deustcher
Philosophieprofessor flooflemoofle, is here.)
And here is the Lilly interview with Jeffrey Mishlove, for “Thinking Allowed” (the one where Dr. Lilly wears his earrings and Davy Crockett hat). Um, you will not eat your popcorn during this one.
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Delighted to have surfed upon Tadeuz Patzek’s
blog, LifeItself. Patzek is a professor of petroleum engineering,
recently chair of the department at University Texas Austin. He
is co-author with Joseph A. Tainter of Drilling Down. I
read Drilling Down on Kindle this week, then bought the paperback to
read it again.
“Cryptocurrencies are a new
asset classthat enable decentralized
applications.“
In other words, “cryptocurrencies” are
not currencies as we know them. “Crypto” is too sexy a word for what
these actually are. So let’s call these puppies NACTEDAs. Rhymes with
“rutabagas.”
Ludwin’s most interesting quote? Buried deep in
the middle of his explanation of the nature of NACTEDAs is this colorful
explanation of how NACTEDAs are generated or “mined”:
“Now we need an actual contest… On your mark, get set: find a random number generated by the network! The number is really, really hard to find So hard that the only way to find it is to use tons of processing power and burn through electricity. It’s a computing version of what Veruca Salt made her dad and his poor factory workers do in Willy Wonka. A brute force search for a golden ticket (or in this case, a golden number).”
This is not a point Ludwin makes (he sails on,
with utter nonchalance): It is just a question of time– maybe a loooooooong
time, albeit perchance a seemingly out-of-nowhere-pile-on-Harvey-Weinstein
moment– until people recognize the environmental and social justice
implications of such extravagant electricity use for generating NACTEDAs.
Can you say, opportunity cost?
As it stands, most people don’t or don’t want to
grok where the magic invisible elixir that always seems to be there at the flip
of a switch actually comes from…. which is, uh, usually… and
overwhelmingly… coal. And neither do they grok that this flow of power is not
never-ending, but a utility that can be cut off. Ye olde winter storm can do it
for a day or so. More ominously, the grid itself can fail for lack of
maintenance, or any one of one a goodly number of events– it need not
necessarily be some cinematically apocalyptic cyberattack or epic solar flare.
Can you say Puerto Rico. Can you say Mexico City after the earthquake. Can you
say what happens when you don’t pay your bill. Or if the electrical company
makes a mistrake. Lalalalala.
In any event, I wouldn’t recommend a camping
vacation on some random mountaintop in West Virginia any time for… the rest
of your life.
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And
herewith, hat tip to Root Simple,
Lloyd Kahn demonstrates his low-tech dishwashing method. The duck part at the
end is charmingly weird.
Isn’t just too too too tooooo much a-gurgling and churgling and over-arcing and under-the-rugging in this techno-kray-zee world? In the spirit of calming things down, this Monday I offer a wee but wicked poem, typed on ye olde 1961 Hermes 3000:
