The Good Old Days
There never were any 'good old days.' The Luddite knows. He has been there. Those days weren't that old and they weren't all that good, either. AIDS was unheard of and sex was STILL hard to get.
This doesn't mean The Luddite thinks that the modern technological world is all that wonderful. There is plenty in it that sucks just as hard as some of the things that drove us nuts in the 70s. Any of you reading this right now who are in your early 20s, will hear the same crap around 2040 that The Luddite is hearing right now. People will say how wonderful it was when there were just DVDs and cel phones. Do yourself a big favor, walk up to whomever is saying something like that and wordlessly hit them in the mouth. You will be surprised at how much better you feel.
Take this blog for example. In The Luddite's time this would be known as a 'diary,' A 'journal' if you wanted to make it sound less like something you'd find in the bedroom of a 12-year-old girl under lock and key. You would have been thought of as something of a fruit for writing in one. Now these are called 'blogs.' The fruit image has faded but that doesn't make them any more readable. Most blogs have about as much substance to them as a sneeze in a Kleenex. The Luddite has read plenty of blogs and remembers enough of his old journal entries to wince at both.
And what has made blogs possible? The web. The ultimate resource tool. The time it came in handiest for The Luddite when he was trying to finish a hospice story on deadline, it was 11 p.m and The Luddite needed the figures for the incidences of the five most prevalent cancers in the United States. Boom! The Luddite used the web to access the National Cancer Society's website. This was a hell of a lot better than waiting the next morning to call someone at the reference desk at the Public Library for the stats, let me tell you. What a nifty gizmo. You sure wouldn't find anything like this back in the good old days. What do most of you use it for? Looking up porn. Just wait until 2040 rolls around and your children are hitting you over the head with that one.
"Wow," The Luddite's nephews say to him, "did you live when color TV came out?" Well, not exactly, is The Luddite's answer. There was color TV, but The Parents of The Luddite could not afford color television until about 1967, so we watched everything in black and white. The Luddite does however remember a time when there were only four channels on television and nothing was on then, either.
I don't miss LP's much at all. I miss the liner notes, which you could read without a magnifying glass, but that's about it. After playing CDs and then playing an old LP last year, I immediately noticed the difference. A few years ago, there were people saying that LPs had the same sound quality as CDs but that was only if you took them out of their covers while wearing white gloves, cleaned them fastidiously and only played them with special needles. Screw that. I just want to hear a song, not open a wing in a museum.
Yesterday, I was giving serious consideration to getting a DVD player, which annoyed me because all my movies are on VHS. I didn't get too mad about it, though, because I remember how much bragging some farts did when they got Betamax and you all know what a rousing success THAT was.
I don't know what cooking method the children of tomorrow are going to embrace while laughing at their parents and their affinity for the microwave oven, but I am sure it will come. The Luddite actually LIKES microwaves. He used to be out of luck when he forgot to defrost something for dinner and he used to boil water in a kettle. Now, in an emergency, he just turns to the microwave. Anyone who tells you that the kettle method was better when all you wanted was a cup of hot chocolate is mentally ill. Also, if you grew up in cold climes, as The Luddite did, the microwave was indispensible for boiling water to be thrown outside into the cold to see if it would still be liquid when it hit the ground or whether it would explode into snow first. Hey, we had a lot of time on our hands.
This doesn't mean The Luddite thinks that the modern technological world is all that wonderful. There is plenty in it that sucks just as hard as some of the things that drove us nuts in the 70s. Any of you reading this right now who are in your early 20s, will hear the same crap around 2040 that The Luddite is hearing right now. People will say how wonderful it was when there were just DVDs and cel phones. Do yourself a big favor, walk up to whomever is saying something like that and wordlessly hit them in the mouth. You will be surprised at how much better you feel.
Take this blog for example. In The Luddite's time this would be known as a 'diary,' A 'journal' if you wanted to make it sound less like something you'd find in the bedroom of a 12-year-old girl under lock and key. You would have been thought of as something of a fruit for writing in one. Now these are called 'blogs.' The fruit image has faded but that doesn't make them any more readable. Most blogs have about as much substance to them as a sneeze in a Kleenex. The Luddite has read plenty of blogs and remembers enough of his old journal entries to wince at both.
And what has made blogs possible? The web. The ultimate resource tool. The time it came in handiest for The Luddite when he was trying to finish a hospice story on deadline, it was 11 p.m and The Luddite needed the figures for the incidences of the five most prevalent cancers in the United States. Boom! The Luddite used the web to access the National Cancer Society's website. This was a hell of a lot better than waiting the next morning to call someone at the reference desk at the Public Library for the stats, let me tell you. What a nifty gizmo. You sure wouldn't find anything like this back in the good old days. What do most of you use it for? Looking up porn. Just wait until 2040 rolls around and your children are hitting you over the head with that one.
"Wow," The Luddite's nephews say to him, "did you live when color TV came out?" Well, not exactly, is The Luddite's answer. There was color TV, but The Parents of The Luddite could not afford color television until about 1967, so we watched everything in black and white. The Luddite does however remember a time when there were only four channels on television and nothing was on then, either.
I don't miss LP's much at all. I miss the liner notes, which you could read without a magnifying glass, but that's about it. After playing CDs and then playing an old LP last year, I immediately noticed the difference. A few years ago, there were people saying that LPs had the same sound quality as CDs but that was only if you took them out of their covers while wearing white gloves, cleaned them fastidiously and only played them with special needles. Screw that. I just want to hear a song, not open a wing in a museum.
Yesterday, I was giving serious consideration to getting a DVD player, which annoyed me because all my movies are on VHS. I didn't get too mad about it, though, because I remember how much bragging some farts did when they got Betamax and you all know what a rousing success THAT was.
I don't know what cooking method the children of tomorrow are going to embrace while laughing at their parents and their affinity for the microwave oven, but I am sure it will come. The Luddite actually LIKES microwaves. He used to be out of luck when he forgot to defrost something for dinner and he used to boil water in a kettle. Now, in an emergency, he just turns to the microwave. Anyone who tells you that the kettle method was better when all you wanted was a cup of hot chocolate is mentally ill. Also, if you grew up in cold climes, as The Luddite did, the microwave was indispensible for boiling water to be thrown outside into the cold to see if it would still be liquid when it hit the ground or whether it would explode into snow first. Hey, we had a lot of time on our hands.
posted by S. Olson at 11:28 PM
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