Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Ice cream with chunks of Toffler
After dinner, I loaded up my laptop and GPS into my backpack, along with my defunct Blackberry (which I use as an alarm clock, address book, and eBook reader), my cell phone, and the little gizmo that lets me log onto the hospital computer from a remote terminal, so that I can answer my patients’ emails. If I was into the iPod thing I’d have loaded that into the backpack, too. Tomorrow, when I leave my car in long term parking, I’ll take my Blue Ant Supertooth* and toss that into the backpack, too. Yes, I can fit all the electronics I need into one rather-heavy-now backpack.
I like to tell my son about our junior high school computer, the one that filled a room and looked like HAL’s memory from 2001. Most of that monster’s memory was dedicated to understanding Basic, and what little was left over could be taxed by a Blackjack program.
Earlier still, in our home growing up we had a built-in black-and-white TV with a built-in fish tank above it. (How’s that for intelligent design?) I can’t remember that TV ever working. TVs back then had radio tubes (pause a moment to explain radio tubes to my son) and a dial to change the channels. My parents still have one of those dial-type TVs, and gets decent reception on one channel. I showed it to Jake the last time we visited.
We still own a CRT-type TV, but we rarely watch it. It used to be our good TV. Nowadays, I turn it on if I’m working in the kitchen, peeling shrimp or what-not. I imagine we’ll replace it soon with a flat-screen TV. Considering how infrequently we watch it, we probably ought to sell it before we move. Sucker weighs a ton.
Not that the flat-screen TV is a lightweight, but considering the size of it, it’s amazing I can lift it. Meanwhile, our stereo from 20+ years ago languishes in boxes, and I’m beginning to wonder about the utility of hanging onto our VCR. VCRs. We have two. Not counting the one I used to have in the Crescent City office.
With any luck, my son should live well into his 80s, and maybe beyond. I wonder sometimes about what we’ll achieve with regard to life extension. But even ignoring that, Jake should see the late 2070s or even the 2080s. What will we see together? What will he see that Karen and I won’t live to see? Will all that gear I lug in my backpack fit into a wallet? Will it be built into a fancy set of eyeglasses, the ultimate heads-up display? And when will we start internalizing this gear?
As a sometimes science fiction writer, my mind wanders to stories where technology has allowed us to cheat death. If we could load the sum total of our knowledge, our personality quirks (mannerisms, diction), our logic and style and creativity into an AI, would anything be missing? We’ll probably see an AI beat the Turing test in our lifetimes; will we see one so sophisticated that we can’t tell a loved one apart from his AI doppleganger? I suspect so. At that point, have we cheated death?
. . . Which is what it’s all about, at least for me. It’s not my own death I fear (not MUCH, anyway!) but the death of loved ones. As I’ve said a hundred times, if I were a better Buddhist none of this would bug me. I’m simply too attached to this business of living.
D.
*cuz some of us don’t like looking like Borg, and besides, those other thingies hurt my ears.
Future shock
It’s all getting to be too much. I’m packing around chargers and connection cables and spare batteries and little bits and pieces of various electronic doodads. They all take different batteries, or no batteries at all but different $40 charging cables.
Maybe I’ll become a neoLuddite.
Good luck trying to sell your CRT TV. If you wait much longer, you’ll be lucky to find someone to take it off your hands for free. On the other hand, maybe your parents could use an upgrade…
My grandparents’ old house had a built-in radio/intercom that I thought was pretty cool when I was a kid. My parents’ house still has a built-in kitchen station (sort of a precursor to the food processor). Don’t recall that being used.
rdb: yup!
dean: naw, you know you dig it.
Kira: sounds like our house in Harbor, pre-remodel. Place was wired for sound . . . ably provided by a turntable and 8-track tape player! I say “ably” but we never did test it out. There were buttons of mystery in that house, I’m telling you. And we had one of those kitchen stations, too. Filthy thing. We never checked to see if it had power and we threw the attachments away first thing.