The Internet Changes Everything

Have you considered how completely different our lives are since the Internet? It's been brought home to me lately.

Most recently, my guy's new "album" is out. Well, it isn't really an album. It's an mp3 download. The music industry is quickly phasing out the last physical evidence of music recordings - the CD. Two years of hard work is now available (with some soulful backup work by yours truly) on the Internet for your downloading pleasure.



The entire music industry has been gutted by digital audio files because the big players didn't see it coming. Then Napster started giving music away for free. And the industry's been scrambling to figure out what to do ever since.

Anyone can be a rock star, at least in their minds. All you need is Garage Band or some other basic editing program and - ooooh - your music is out in the world. That's generally not a good thing, as some folks should keep their music in the garage where it belongs. But it's also opened opportunities for some truly talented people to be heard by a global audience.

My guy's been a professional musician his entire life and he's watched the industry expand, contract and then go cold like a dying star. He's feeling his way in this new world where anyone can knock on the door; only the truly talented get in.

My area of study these days is the publishing industry. That's changed a bit lately, hasn't it? Writers, for a decade or more, have found it easier to submit their work to agents and publishers. Agents and publishers have become more and more selective as their inboxes fill and crash. And then came the ebook.

My NPR affiliate has a no-ebooks policy. They won't talk about them. They don't think they're real books. It reminds me of the music industry's attitudes toward downloads. They'll be changing their minds soon because they'll have to.

I have an ebook. And it'll soon be a paperback. We're doing it backwards because nowadays we can.

At work? We all have computers and now we edit documents in a program that lets us all see each other's edits. We're phasing out paper, eliminating the need for thousands of square feet of storage space. And where are those documents stored? The cloud. The vast, nebulous, virtual digital warehouse. In other words, they don't really still exist. But they do.

It's a change in concept, in thinking. Just because you can't see it, touch it, taste it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's a transition to a virtual world. And when I think about where it could be going, I think it's time to write a scifi novel.

What do you think the world will be like in ten years?

Brave New World or Two of These Things Now Go Together

You will think I'm ridiculous, but I feel like the first man to walk on the moon. Or maybe like I've just taken my first ride in one of those newfangled auto-mobiles. Or like Alexander Graham Bell when his telephone worked.

I'm blogging on a bus.

Now this is probably a huge so what for most of you. You've been dragging your laptops around to cafes for years. You have an iPad. An iPhone. You probably Twitter (an unfortunate habit, in my opinion). But understand that this is new turf for me.

I resisted computers for as long as I could. We actually rented our first one from an outfit I can no longer recall and which is undoubtedly defunct - but the deal was you rented the computer and after a couple of years you owned the out of date piece of junk. We kept it for years.
I just went to a flat screen monitor three years ago. Laptop? I still don't own one - but my daughter just gave me her old Macbook Pro and here's where it gets incredible (to me).

I had to go to New York City today. It's a two and a half hour bus ride and it's pretty boring. So, I think to myself, why not bring the laptop? Maybe there'll be a wireless signal, maybe there will be an outlet (her batteries are fried beyond replacing), and if not, I can sit at a Starbucks and look like everybody else for awhile. Damned skippy.

But what to my wondering eyes should appear as I take a seat on the faithful Trailways bus, but an outlet. Two of them, in fact. One for each seat. And it gets better. When I fire up Gideon, as my daughter named this machine, a little message comes up asking me if I'd like to access the wireless remote network "Trailways". The bus has its own wireless signal!!!

So I am, at this very moment, speeding up the New York State Thruway, a young man in the seat in front of me snoring quietly, a woman across the way reading The New Yorker and eating her fourth snack of the trip (she's a small woman - but she's obviously hungry), and I am typing away on the Intergalactic NetWeb!

This is innovation beyond my wildest dreams. This is future shock.

It's not perfect. The bus shakes so much that the ac adapter periodically falls out of the socket and the screen goes black. The Model A wasn't perfect, either. But it was a big switch from the horse and buggy. And rather than staring out the window, which I do plenty of, thank you, I can sit here and blather on to you, my hapless readers. Until you move on to the next blog.

But isn't it amazing that a person in a bus seat can actually communicate with the entire world?
I wonder if we realized what a revolution computers would be...and we need only look at Egypt to know it now - computers started a revolution there!

My iLife Bites

You can have my iLife. You're welcome to it. It was stressful, frustrating, tense and upsetting.

I'm not blaming Steve Jobs, at least not entirely. But he can take some of the blame.

I do a radio show. I guess that makes me a professional. But in reality I'm just a hack who knows how to do what she has to know and that's all.

I had the opportunity to create my own personal studio and so I took a long hard look at the wonderful world of Mac. It looked good.

My guy swears by it (when he's not swearing at it). I wanted to get out of the "oh no here comes another virus" merry-go-round. So, as I so happily announced not long ago, I bought a Mac mini.

She was a cutey. Small, stylish, incredibly quiet.

I navigated the essentials with no trouble; I've worked with Macs before.
But Logic Express was another story.

Imagine you know how to drive an automatic transmission Chevy and someone hands you the keys to a Lamborghini. "You've got five minutes to catch on - good luck."

It's designed for music. I don't do music. It has a gazillion features I didn't need and I didn't have the time to sit and learn it. And I had an impending deadline.

My hair has all dropped out, I haven't slept in two weeks and I've now taken to drinking vodka for breakfast. Okay, I exaggerate. But really - it was just awful.

So I have surrendered. I packed up Minny the mini and shipped her back. I pulled my old PC out of mothballs, loaded a demo version of Adobe Audition and am trying to get back on schedule.

Why, you ask, didn't I just use the Adobe program I can do in my sleep on my Mac?
Here's where Steve Jobs takes the hit. He's in a snark-fest with Adobe. He doesn't let that program be compatible with Macs. He's got Logic and that's what you'll use if you want an Apple, dammit. Or Pro-Tools...yet another program I'd have had to learn from scratch.

So I returned the mini but I'm eating the cost of the extended warranty I bought. AppleCare, apparently, is non-refundable even if you've never used it and you don't own the computer. Register it and it's yours. Thanks, Steve.

I can't return Logic, either. Software is not returnable. Good thing I'm just made of money., huh? At this rate I'll be working six months just to pay for the equipment and programs I need to do the job.

My employer is totally off the hook on this; they gave me a budget to get what I needed. Sadly, I gave it to Apple and it cost more than they gave me. I thought it was money well spent. Wrong. Now it's coming out of my own pocket.

So that's my iLife. Expensive, stressful and, ultimately, not worth living.

My name is Susan and I guess I'm going to be a PC forever.

My Big Fat Mini iLife

It's done. I've converted. I've thought about it for years, listened to my mac-friends rave about their cool computers, watched my daughter, then my son, dive into the Applepond and call to me on the shore - "Come on in! The water's fine!"

I live with Mr. Mac. Most creative people are. And when we met lo those many years ago, he was surprised I was a PC.

"I'd have guessed you were a Mac."

My very first email on my new miniMac was from him, congratulating me on now being among the cool people who can sneer at HP laptops.

I won't be doing that.

But here's the thing:

I am going to be doing a huge amount of audio editing and my aging PC rolled its eyes when I told it what was coming.

"Seriously?" it asked.

I understood. It's at least six years old and the most I've asked of it is to save my writing and avoid viruses. It's done a fine job. This would be like asking a compact car to tow a yacht.

Money is most certainly an object and that seemed to put the Mac out of my reach, until the nice guy at Sweetwater (you want audio stuff? They're for you.) suggested the mini-Mac.

"You can keep your monitor. You can keep your printer. Get yourself a nice backup harddrive and you've got more than enough oomph to do anything you want."

Done. The box arrived and my brain seized up. How do I transfer all my stuff? How do I learn this new editing program? How do I find time to do all this learning with a new job starting, too? AAAAAAAHHHH!!!

But I put my head down, started unpacking and set it up last night. I am writing this with the help of my new friend, Minny.
She's a little white box with wireless and bluetooth (can't see that I'll need them, but I'm impressed), extra memory and one bonus I did not expect.

She's quiet. Incredibly quiet. No fan noise quiet. Until I installed the external hard drive, turning on the computer was a dead quiet experience.

That's amazing for someone used to loud PC fans, a constant whir, that white noise that's just part of computers.

Minny's on the desk beside me, not on the floor collecting cat hair. She's sleek and spiffy and raring to go.

So far, she's even allowing me to use my old PC keyboard, though I know that'll change as I start needing more keyboard shortcuts. She installs hardware without a question, isn't complaining about the fact that I've already got her USB hubs at capacity. She sucks in CDs with a quiet hum and spits them out cleanly on request.

I think I love her.

How I'll feel about Logic Express9 is another question. But I have hopes. And I have the advantage of living with Mr. Wizard.