My dear wife C.M. recently sent me a peculiar sort of message on the akin-to-email Facebook funcion. She messaged me urgently, telling me plainly that I needed to "get with the times" and obtain a blog on Tumblr.
Tumblr? Really?
In my opinion, Americans are far too much about the newest thing. One shiny grows a year or two old and suddenly it's all about the new shiny!
Blackberries. MacBooks. Razor phones. 3G cellular reception. The Droid... all sorts of nifty gadgets so thin - as thin as a penny and almost as light as a feather! - you're fascinated and awed by them for all eternity.
Or almost. Just until they come in contact with your 800-page Psychology textbook - yes, those still come in pages -, or the ground, or the penny it is just barely fatter than. Then the wi-fi no longer connects, and of course there's no port for a cord; the paint has been chipped, anyhow; and the new one is thinner than a penny. So, of course, you have to rush out and buy the new one.
Does anybody remember the fascination that a computer as big as a house once held? This was the FUTURE! And on Star Trek, a thin sheet of metal and glass that could translate sentences into other languages and store thousands of pages' worth of data? That was so far in THE FUTURE people laughed at the idea!
Now, look at us! The iPad! Nooks! Kindles! This is THE FUTURE about which they laughed! No one thought it was possible, and here it is - but it'll be improved next week. It will also be able to record and play music and videos, in a file type the name of which we can't speculate. Not today.
People don't have any appreciation for THE FUTURE anymore because they are too busy anticipating its descent into what is PAST.
In fact, those were C.M.'s words exactly. When I protested that I have a perfectly good blog on a perfectly good website, which, by the way, I know how to use, she told me: "Blogger is a thing of the past." The dreaded past into which no good, fashionable human being in a first-world country should fall.
Well, maybe it is. And maybe, eventually, I'll cave in to peer pressure.
However, a friend of mine recently realized the wonders of old technology. Needing a place to express herself to herself, but privately - away from the judging eyes of others - she has turned back to Xanga.
Do you remember Xanga?
I hadn't either. This friend had encouraged me to get my very first blog - prior only to this one - on Xanga, a similarly alright blogging website that was replaced, ironically enough, by Blogger. This was years ago - maybe four years, if I'm counting right.
I was never all that into it - I had had my paper diary for a number of years, but then I replaced it with a (now) 400-page-long Word document. It was private, fancy and password-protected, and it suited me fine. But, of course, the craze was to share your private thoughts with the world, with anyone who cared to care about what you had to say about whatever it was you thought and did all day.
At the encouragement of this same friend, B., I got a Xanga blog. I probably gave it three entries or so before I became bored and went back to my Word document. However, I signed up to follow her blog, a thing which Xanga did with nifty e-mail notifications. Every time she made an entry, it was sent to my convenient Yahoo! inbox, and vice versa. However, eventually, we both gave up on our blogs. Four years later I obtained this Blogger and the username Nineteen. Xanga was a thing of the dreaded PAST.
And then, just this morning, I get an email - a BLAST FROM THE PAST, if you will. From Xanga.
Xanga? I thought. I barely remember this Xanga thing. I can't believe it's still around. But there it was - still up and running, four years later - the miniature WALL-E of the blogging world, maybe. I opened up the email and there it is: someone willingly going back to the world of the not-future: someone who had found a benefit to remembering the websites and the blogs of THE PAST. I quote:
"I haven't posted here in forever, wow!Tumblr? Really?
In my opinion, Americans are far too much about the newest thing. One shiny grows a year or two old and suddenly it's all about the new shiny!
Blackberries. MacBooks. Razor phones. 3G cellular reception. The Droid... all sorts of nifty gadgets so thin - as thin as a penny and almost as light as a feather! - you're fascinated and awed by them for all eternity.
Or almost. Just until they come in contact with your 800-page Psychology textbook - yes, those still come in pages -, or the ground, or the penny it is just barely fatter than. Then the wi-fi no longer connects, and of course there's no port for a cord; the paint has been chipped, anyhow; and the new one is thinner than a penny. So, of course, you have to rush out and buy the new one.
Does anybody remember the fascination that a computer as big as a house once held? This was the FUTURE! And on Star Trek, a thin sheet of metal and glass that could translate sentences into other languages and store thousands of pages' worth of data? That was so far in THE FUTURE people laughed at the idea!
Now, look at us! The iPad! Nooks! Kindles! This is THE FUTURE about which they laughed! No one thought it was possible, and here it is - but it'll be improved next week. It will also be able to record and play music and videos, in a file type the name of which we can't speculate. Not today.
People don't have any appreciation for THE FUTURE anymore because they are too busy anticipating its descent into what is PAST.
In fact, those were C.M.'s words exactly. When I protested that I have a perfectly good blog on a perfectly good website, which, by the way, I know how to use, she told me: "Blogger is a thing of the past." The dreaded past into which no good, fashionable human being in a first-world country should fall.
Well, maybe it is. And maybe, eventually, I'll cave in to peer pressure.
However, a friend of mine recently realized the wonders of old technology. Needing a place to express herself to herself, but privately - away from the judging eyes of others - she has turned back to Xanga.
Do you remember Xanga?
I hadn't either. This friend had encouraged me to get my very first blog - prior only to this one - on Xanga, a similarly alright blogging website that was replaced, ironically enough, by Blogger. This was years ago - maybe four years, if I'm counting right.
I was never all that into it - I had had my paper diary for a number of years, but then I replaced it with a (now) 400-page-long Word document. It was private, fancy and password-protected, and it suited me fine. But, of course, the craze was to share your private thoughts with the world, with anyone who cared to care about what you had to say about whatever it was you thought and did all day.
At the encouragement of this same friend, B., I got a Xanga blog. I probably gave it three entries or so before I became bored and went back to my Word document. However, I signed up to follow her blog, a thing which Xanga did with nifty e-mail notifications. Every time she made an entry, it was sent to my convenient Yahoo! inbox, and vice versa. However, eventually, we both gave up on our blogs. Four years later I obtained this Blogger and the username Nineteen. Xanga was a thing of the dreaded PAST.
And then, just this morning, I get an email - a BLAST FROM THE PAST, if you will. From Xanga.
Xanga? I thought. I barely remember this Xanga thing. I can't believe it's still around. But there it was - still up and running, four years later - the miniature WALL-E of the blogging world, maybe. I opened up the email and there it is: someone willingly going back to the world of the not-future: someone who had found a benefit to remembering the websites and the blogs of THE PAST. I quote:
"I've got a new blog now, and that's the one that I mainly post on and that people read, but for some reason [...] I wanted to post here. Mostly because this is a blog that I don't want [people at school] to read."
A-ha! I think, my mind racing. A good reason for "obsolete" technology? I began to read the rest of B's entry.
And it was the most incredible thing.
It invoked the image of seventh-grade me, sitting down at my computer to work on an enormous Word document that was password-protected even though I got the distinct feeling that I was writing for someone's benefit. And how about that.
I was reading it.
So say all you want about iPads and Motorola Razors, automated parallel parking (nnnnngggg that idea is so frightening) and voice-activated chandeliers. I'm cool with having a two-year old phone so I'm cool with having a Blogger. Maybe in two weeks I'll upgrade and never return, or maybe I'll come back to the perfectly equal PAST over here.
I'm not saying stop using toilet paper and replace your silver crown with a block of wood. I'm just saying appreciate the technology you have before you consider trashing it for something new.
Remember, air conditioning units break. But pouring water on your head will always cool you down.
Just be careful not to short out your iPad.
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