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?

Don't Just Read This

I was finally depressed enough to watch "21 Grams" last night. To get in the right mood, I watched "Synedoche, NY", too.

I have questions. About life.

First, let me say they're both great films. I am a confirmed Charlie Kaufman groupie, but I wouldn't say one is better than the other. They're both insightful, touching films done in an interesting way. And there is a common thread between them. They're examinations of life, what it means, and what connects us all, as well as what keeps us apart.

The message I got from "21 Grams" is that life can turn in an instant, that each choice we make has a million consequences that we can't foresee. Sean Penn's character got a second chance and he made a new life with it. Naomi Watts and Benicio Del Torro were blasted out of their lives by an accident - and until each of them could feel they'd actively been involved and acted in response to it, they were paralyzed. It was disturbing to see just how quickly a person can disintegrate once he or she is swept under the tidal wave of random tragedy. Given a sense of control, that person can just as quickly begin to live again.

Are we living that tenuously? And what does that mean for the people who have lost so much in this recession/depression? Do we really understand the emotional cost of losing your job, your home, your retirement savings?

Then there's "Synedoche, NY". It's a term, I now know, not just a word that sounds like Schenectady. Understanding one part as a way of understanding the whole. And that's what we're shown through Philip Seymour Hoffman's character. By watching him try to understand life by recreating it, we see the universal confusion, the universal disillusionment, the universal disconnect. We watch Hoffman watch actors playing out his life, finally watching him become an actor in his own play, following the direction of an unseen voice.

"Is it about the futility of life?" KB wondered afterwards. I think it is, but it's more. It's about how important and simultaneously meaningless our lives are, a fact that we ignore - perhaps because we can't fathom it.

So we're all just "little people" wandering through our so-brief existences, trying to make meaning of something and looking for non-existent answers? That view should upset me, but it's strangely inspiring - doesn't that mean anything is possible? That we are free to make this experience whatever we choose and when our part in the play is over the spotlight goes out on us but other equally central yet insignificant characters continue the show?

Is there something liberating about knowing we don't really matter, yet we do?
I think there might be, because knowing that requires us to acknowledge that we are no more or less important than the other players in this show...and that each of us is capable of doing anything. There is no stage direction.

So why are we choosing to connect only remotely? We Twitter, we Facebook, we MySpace, we update our friends and family by email. Too many of us literally update the world when we go to work, have a cup of coffee, make dinner. "Tired - headed to bed now," we write. We actually say goodnight to the virtual world.

I sit here, alone in a quiet room, and ponder the ideas raised by movies I've seen, knowing that people I've never met all over the world will read what I write. Why?

Our teenagers text, sext and hook up without making connections. Our children play video games instead of stickball.

I love the virtual community for the understanding it can promote. But I hate that we're using it to replace real communication.

I'm happy to know you read this. I think it's important to wonder about the big issues. But I don't want us to stop here. I want you to sit down with other people and start a conversation. "I read this thing," you can say. "This woman was wondering what life was all about and I thought..." Finish the sentence. There is no right or wrong choice - just your opinion. But what is important is for you to think about what YOU think, then sit down with other human beings and find out what THEY think. Ask kids what they think. Ask old people. Ask someone you love. Or don't talk about this at all. Talk about something else that really interests you, that you wonder about. But talk - and then listen. That's connecting. And that is important.

Real People - Real Stories

This is a sidestep from the economy, but it stays true to the spirit of what I want to collect here - personal stories. It's a crowded blogosphere and good things can get lost in the shuffle. Please do not miss this:


http://last-of-iraqis.blogspot.com/2009/02/im-in.html

Do you want to understand what it's like to be an Iraqi right now? Are you willing to do a little of your own reading and thinking instead of sitting in front of the best news team on television with your brain on "fill"? Then rejoice. Dr. Mohammed is an Iraqi dentist, a voice from the streets who is describing life as it is now.

How about a woman who is a doctor in Gaza? Yet another heart-wrenching blog.

http://fromgaza.blogspot.com/2009/01/letter-from-my-friend-s-robins.html

Then there are stories from Tibet, told from the inside.

http://www.jamyangnorbu.com/

These are just three. There are blogs from people all over the world, people who desperately want the rest of us to hear them, to know what their lives are.

I suddenly see just what an amazing gift the Internet is. Communication leads to understanding...and understanding leads to cooperation.

Technophobia

I never wanted to get a computer. I suspected it was not advancement at all, but a new "convenience" that would prove to be far more trouble than it was worth. But we wouldn't figure it out until we were so used to it that it was too late to get rid of it.

I was so right.

I have replaced sound cards, talked through geek sessions as some stranger across the country took control of my computer and tried to figure out why it hated me.
I've watched people link two computers together, switching back and forth as they transferred information from one to another.

I've watched my Handsome Significant Other, generally a sweet and gentle man, turn into a raving lunatic as the technology in his studio burps, rattles or wheezes and refuses to show him why.

And this week, I seriously considered tossing my computer out a second story window.

I woke and went to my office, prepared to go to work, and discovered that I couldn't get online. Not at all. I'm working at home temporarily, and my computer is on a network with HSO's downstairs. I don't like to mess with his stuff...he's a Mac guy and I've got a PC and I might get PC cooties on his cool computer. But he was fast asleep, having been working most of the night.
So I plowed ahead because without a computer and an online connection, I cannot work.

I don't get newspapers - I read them online. I type scripts, voice stories and do interviews all through my computer, then use the internet to feed them to the station's ftp site. It's all smoke, mirrors and remote magic. But there was no magic at my house and suddenly I was stopped cold.

First, I had to call my internet provider, Time Warner Cable. I have learned the secret of their automated operator....when she insists on calmly walking me through a repair instead of letting me talk to a human, I say "customer representative." Those two words are like "alakazam!"...they silence the recorded assistant and she meekly connects me. Or she used to.

Time Warner has caught on. Now when I said "customer representative!" her response was a placid, "Well, I realize you want to speak with a customer representative, but I think we should continue. I think we're on our way to solving your problem."

She THINKS? Really? Now THIS is innovation.

Well, I got past her with a second "CUSTOMER REPRESENTATIVE!" I don't know if it was what I said or how I said it. I know I wouldn't have wanted to talk to me anymore.

So I got a perfectly nice human, she told me to get on the floor, crawl behind the desk, pull out every plug I could find, run upstairs, turn off my computer, run back downstairs, turn the modem back on, then run around and cluck like a chicken until I ran out of breath. Okay. She didn't tell me to do that. But that's pretty much what I did.

And we determined, after 45 minutes, that the problem was the router.

That's the little box that enables us to both connect to the same internet cable. So I called work, explained what was going on, apologized profusely, and drove half an hour to the nearest store that carried such things.

Most of the ones they had were wireless. Apparently they don't want us to use wires anymore.
I'm not going for that one, thank you. You already roped me into this computer thing. That's enough for me.

I came home and had to wake up HSO. The new router had an installation CD and I couldn't figure out how to open up the CD disc tray on the Mac. I felt pretty awful waking him out of a sound sleep, but I was way late and I honestly didn't want to install a damned thing on his computer without him knowing about it.

He stumbled downstairs, looked at the wreckage that used to be his office, looked back at me and just said, "Really?" I apologized again.

So not only does it turn out that the Mac didn't need the CD...there's a key to open that tray right on the keyboard, though it's not marked in any way that I might recognize. Golly, those Macs are so darned intuitive.

So HSO got the new router up and running, we both were miraculously back on the internet, I thanked him profusely and ran upstairs to go back to work.

And then the printer went on the fritz.

That second story window is looking really good right now. Just don't know if it'll be the computer or me flying out of it.