Getting Lost

Every ten years or so, my family scrounged up the resources, traveled the short distance to Tattersalls Books next to the Bruno's store in Conyers and bought the latest edition of the Atlanta Metro Map book. About $100, 300 pages of maps, roads twisting from page to page, zip codes, rivers, the imagination running wild as to what was actually on those streets. What landmarks made the road builders make Atlanta's streets as they did, curved and hilly, with no seeming reason as to their existence? And we could travel down the myriad of Flat Shoals Roads or Peachtrees until we no longer knew where we were, or mistaken Ronald Reagan Blvd. for Ronald Reagan Parkway (which I have done) and wound up at a dead end late at night, with only the lights of the billboards to show us home. That's why the Map book was so necessary. It was our guide, our lifejacket in the middle of paths that went absolutely everywhere. But, of course, this was before the days of readily available internet connections, before Technopoly took over even these corners of our lives.

Last week I went with the Friends of the Nancy Guinn Library (Conyers, Georgia) to the FOGL conference in Cumming. It was my first trip in a car with a GPS system. It also strengthened my resolve never to purchase one of those for my car. It infuriated me, the logical ability it had to get the van (and it's driver) from one place to another. Because I, for one, want to get lost.

When I was little, I would be in the car with my mother, and we'd be going to the store, or to some doctor appointment. I'd look out and see roads going parallel, across, and away from me. I saw the houses, the businesses, all foreign to me, new, unexplored. "Mom, where do those roads go?" I asked, constantly. Take SW 15th street, for instance, away from our neighborhood, it became a dirt road and went into a forest next to a creek. And while my parents told me it didn't go over the river, it never kept me from dreaming exactly where it went. I don't think I ever went down the road myself, and maybe that's for the best. The unknown is so much more Romantic than what is traveled.

Detmer Highway, Yukon Territory, Canada

But there is nothing that is unknown now, not with the Internet within easy reach of our fingers at every moment. Google Maps has taken satellite images of almost every corner of our globe. I've talked about walking down a highway in the Yukon Territory in Canada, with the mountains in the foreground and the grass ranging forever to my side. I've traveled the streets of London, wondering who lived in those houses, what their lives were like. And so there's still the sense of the unknown, even when sitting at the repository of everything known. The GPS system, however, totally removes all Romantic notions of traveling down strange roads. Your path becomes a straight line, purple, with a British accented guy informing you of the way, as if God was speaking directly to you. There is no other path but Garmin, or Tom Tom. There is no getting in the car and cruising down the interstate, with the feeling of never wanting to get off of it, of traveling forever into the distance, to the ends of the Earth. Now it is point A to point B, and then, "You've Arrived!" What a feeling, to worship a piece of technology because we've gotten to our destination without using our brains. Perhaps that's what people want to do now, in all aspects of life. And now, I want to digress.

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Technology has substituted for us every simple thing we do in life, except breathing, I guess. Need to balance your checkbook or make change at the cash register? Why, we have calculators and tills that do that. It's no longer necessary to do any menial task like addition and subtraction, especially not in our heads. I remember going to a Virginia McDonald's near the Virginia state line some years ago. They had just installed monitors at the check out lines, and so the workers there had gotten into the habit of not remembering anything about our orders. So it was look at the monitor, get one sandwich, look at the monitor, get the fries, look at the monitor, get the drink. Each order took 10 minutes at least. They let technology take over for their memories. And this happens all the time. The number of people who can repeat their cell phone number, or ones for their churches or businesses, are dwindling, because they easily have them stored on their cell phones. There is no longer a need to remember phone numbers. And it's not just actual electronic devices. We have devices to take care of any thing that might be the least bit taxing. I once saw, while cleaning my mom's office, a letter folder. That's right, a machine that folds a piece of paper exactly into thirds. And then there's the shirt folder (now, honestly, I can't fold shirts to save my life, so I don't try.). There's an electronic pepper shaker, so that we don't have to actually grind and shake the pepper ourselves.

 It's not just the idea that we are getting lazy, which we are, but that we are substituting technology, even in the simplest form, to do every task that we have done in the past. And for what cost? How much resources does it take to create these things? What plastic, what oil? I'm not environmental by any means, but we have been used to purchasing any device that might make our lives easier, and sacrificing those materials to do it. How long will those things sit in our landfills when, inevitably, we throw them away for something better? Why bother typing a text when we can speak into our phones and keep from typing all together. Soon the art of typing a letter will go the way of handwriting. It will become useless. The main purpose of all this? Capitalism. Producing things that cost money in order to feed our need to save time, money, labor, all the things we usually wind up wasting anyway because of these objects. Debating whether this is a good thing or not, Capitalism, I mean, is a whole other blog.  But again, I digress...
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Back to getting lost.  I never take the same way home that I took going wherever it is that I am going.  Which makes coming home so much more fun.  My mom and I often go to Southern Gospel concerts here in the Atlanta area.  And it often is that leaving the church or the Gwinnett Arena, the roads we came in on are blocked off.  We have to make a right instead of a left.  If I had a GPS system, it would automatically adjust and take me on a path straight home.  But what most people should know is that, if you look at Atlanta like a spoked wheel, it is impossible to remain totally lost for long.  You're bound to run into an Interstate or GA 400 or something, so driving home becomes an adventure.  Turn the car in the direction of the spokes, and go.  We were at a singing in Gainesville, and, heading west, we drove over Lake Lanier, over a beautiful blue steel bridge, and drove through little towns and hole in the wall restaurants, and we hit 400 and came south.  I wasn't lost.  I was just not in a hurry to get home.  When my family went to New Orleans to see Oklahoma lose to LSU in the Sugar Bowl several years ago, going home I went the wrong way and we ended up crossing Lake Pontchartrain, on a bridge that took you away from land, so far out that you could see nothing but the lake.  It was also a bridge that was destroyed a few years later by Hurricane Katrina.  Getting lost allowed us to see the beauty of nature, the exaltation of mankind's creations, the harmony of both God and Man intertwined in this great country.  So maybe getting from point A to point B isn't enough.  Maybe hearing "You've arrived at your destination," is the worst part of the trip.  As a busting-minded animated girl once said, "The Joy is in the Journey." There is so much to see between the cradle to the grave.  Let's not take the shortest route. 

MegaUpload to Holodeck

So one of my friends, S., posted this picture on Facebook, which is the going thing these days.  As if creating a picture will explain the whole world.  It's amazing, the way that people choose to communicate with each other.  Facebook was supposed to be a method for people across the world to talk to each other, but more and more I've seen just these pictures posted, without discussion or even thought about what they mean, how they impact the processes of the mind, how things are connected to others through synapses, often incorrectly so.

It seems to me that someone in the Occupy Wall Street crowd was downloading something on MegaUpload and all of a sudden {blink}, it's gone.  No more downloads of music, movies, software.  And let's not kid ourselves about this, it has nothing to do with all that for the normal computer user.  It's all about the Porn.  We just gave the Porn industry such a boost, because once you get rid of all possible places where pornography can be downloaded for free, the people who view such things will be forced, once again, to buy it.  But I got off track...  And so they think, it has to be the greedy bastards sitting at the top of their skyscrapers making money from all us poor people.  It's just not fair. Wall Street must be responsible for all this.  And in a very small way, that's part of it.  But the larger issue, one that is beyond this pictures ability to communicate, is that the Justice department was the one that implemented the raid and closed down the site.  That, along with the suspended SOPA bill, is giving the government full power to regulate the stuff that's on the Internet. Now, if that were the whole of it, I would go off on a tangent about how we should be able to download all the stuff we want, and haven't the RIAA and MPAA made enough money and blah blah blah.... except that's not it either.  There is no way that this issue (not SOPA, but just MegaUpload) can just be summarized in a picture. It is an argument of intellectual rights, free market issues; ideological, philosophical, and asethetic issues; so many issues. It could easily take up a book. We could produce arguments for and against MU, and be both right and wrong.  This issue brings together all the opinions of Free Market Capitalism, intellectual property, freedom of distribution of information, everything that the current generation feels about the way the world works.  The internet is a cacophony of information, stimuli, communities, vices, mind-numbing wastes of time, and we have ti pumped into our heads continuously throughout the day.  I go into most workplaces nowadays, and the workers have their iphones on and tuned into Spotify or their MP3s, and they're texting and checking their Facebooks, even watching videos when no one is watching.  It's an epidemic that is probably costing businesses tons of money.  And outside of absconding everyone's gadgets when they first come in, there's little anyone can do about it.  Everyone must have their fix of bytes and bits and kilos of data.   And that, too, is just a small part of it, and not what I was really focusing on.

I've gotten episodes of Disney shows from MegaUpload, they are free* on the Disney channel, so... was that wrong? Maybe. Is it illegal? Maybe. Should the government regulate such things. I don't think so, but the Libertarian paradox applies here. In the end, MU's shutdown won't matter much, as technology will change, methods will change, people will still get their copies of intellectual property. They'd have to shut down the internet entirely to stop it.  That would be the quickest way to start a revolution. Reminds me of the Pendragon Series, book 4, The Reality Bug, by DJ Machale. The Internet, and the things we download from it, are the fantasies by which we escape our own lives. To take that away would be akin to taking drugs away from the user. The withdrawl would be too much to bear. For the government to become that of Brave New World, they have to realize that the easiest way to control the people is through happiness, and whether our SOMA comes from a pill or through fiberglass cables, they have to keep the escapism alive.

I think that it's up to the providers of movies, games, etc... to come up with viable alternatives to free* downloading of their product. Spotify, for instance, is an amazing method, and would be more effective than any regulation or lawsuit. Hulu, Gamefly, Netflix, Redbox, also, are viable alternatives.  Another option would be the current companies that distribute intellectual property to vastly expand their "On Demand" line-ups, encompassing the entire line-up of TV shows and Movies that are available.  To do so would take an incredible amount of server upgrading, but would certainly doable, since the storage companies like MegaUpload basically have it already.  And there would need to be some way for the artists and producers to be compensated for their work. Basically, that would be Comcast or Cox or Charter hosting something like itunes or whatever, which would work. It's a viable option, something they should think about if SOPA actually passes with the vitrol it had in it previously. It would keep them from being liable while providing users with legal ways of obtaining their fixes. And if we can think this up, surely they can as well. Wouldn't be surprised if it's already in the works.  Comcast would have to increase their charges (or make it as a separate service) in order to do this, much as iTunes does now. And the public would have to accept that as a method better to get their fixes than downloading media online without compensation. It's a mental thing, a change in the minds of society's consciousness. That paying artists is actually a good thing, that the idea of the artists being just another part of the 1% is wrong, that they actually produce work for society and should be compensated as such, just as a worker laying the beams for a new skyscraper or the person making your Subway Sandwich. Changing the beliefs of Western Civilization is hard. It is done through technology or religion, and "Thou Shalt Not Steal" isn't working, so a change in technology is the best method. Thus the idea of Spotify and the iPod or like technology to provide all music everywhere with commercials. Although I think at some point it'll be a paid service (beyond the Premium service they already have).

I think that's the main issue here, when you get down to it.  The overwhelming idea that the Internet is free (totally and utterly free, without the * on it), and anything and everything that can be transmitted through the internet should also be free.  This ties in with the idea that artists and authors and directors are paid by these megacorporations that make millions (by other people besides me) and so they don't need the money from one measly download.  Because we're all broke, and we need our fix, and that fix is stronger than any legality or moral beliefs that would keep us from obtaining it.  It would be like speeding down the highway.  The desire to get to our location as quickly as possible is more overwhelming than the consequence of a speeding ticket, even if the ticket would equate to a whole week's worth of work.  The subsequent consequence for downloading a song or a video would be much more than that, even jail time, but most people don't even think of such things, so overwhelming is the desire to have music, film, games, and porn, all at our fingertips, and all free.  It's the thought process which is key here.

Once again I bring up two books which must be read to understand the idea behind changing the philosophies of Western Civilization.  If you can find, or download, these two books, they will be well worth the time to read them.  They are Clifford D. Simak's Ring Around the Sun and Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter's The Light of Other Days.  Both are amazing books which show how, through technology, the entire mindset of the world can be changed, much quicker than through a religion or through the machinations of corporations or governments to control the activities of the people under them.  It simply won't work.  However, changing the technology to adapt to the citizens' mindsets will work, just as the invention of the Internet changed the way the world thought and worked some years ago.  It's simply an adjustment, from one mindset to the next as the world speeds along forward, from book to radio, TV, Internet, Ipad, to Holodeck.  One day, we'll get there.

The Evolution of Paper

Tea. Earl Grey, Hot.  What?  No? We don't have that yet? Well, we should.  We have everything else.  Well, except maybe a transporter. That would be cool, too.   If you look at all the science fiction worlds of the 20th century, written in the golden age of Speculative fiction, Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek stands out as one that, for the most part, we've delivered on the prophecies made.   Look at our cell phones, for instance.  We might as well have Scotty beam us up.  But all this has been documented many times before, and you don't need me to remind you of it. The unique thing about Star Trek is that the society they live in is totally paperless.  And we're getting that way.  It's the next big thing, as it were. 

Take the mail, for instance.  The United States Postal Service has been losing money for years now.  Millions of it.  But since it's subsidized by the Federal Government, it doesn't matter.  So it can continue to do things exactly as they have done it for years and continue to lose money. The main problem is that they haven't changed as our methods of communication and commerce have changed.  I found it amazing, as I was talking to my grandmother, that back in her day (30's, 40's), the Mail was delivered to every house twice, a day!  They had that many letters to deliver.  Not so many bills, probably.  That didn't happen until there were credit cards and debt out the ears.  The doctors probably had someone hand write bills, or they just went over to your house and talked it over.  But transportation and population have grown since then.  You'd think there would be more letters to send, more bills to mail, and you'd think the USPS would be making tons of money.  But the truth is that there are so few letters sent by envelope and stamp and paper anymore.  Email (and now, Facebook) makes writing to people unnecessary.  We can just type it out.  & y typ out all th ABCs when we can abbr them?  It's not even worth using standard English grammar and usage since we only have 140 characters to spell out what's on our minds.  I write very few checks for my bills since they're all done online now.

My grandmother gets letters from pen pals that she's had for years now, children of friends of her parents.  And they write her, and tell her all about the weather, and about the quilting projects they have done for their grandchildren, and how the tomatoes are growing. The speed of their lives is so much slower.   They write once a week, as if that is part of their lives they couldn't live without, like a TV show that comes on each week.  As Neil Postman said, there's a correlation between the way people think and the media that they use to communicate.  Sure, my grandmother can talk on the phone, but she'd rather not.   I wouldn't either.  I like writing letters (e-mail, of course) because it's a slower paced conversation.  I talk, and then you talk, but there are never any interruptions.  And they had those letters twice a day to return, as obviously they had no TV, no Internet, cell phone...etc.  Maybe a radio, with music or the ball game, but that was it. The conversation was slower because life was slower.

But now, in the electronic age where things are so quick that not even words need to be spelled out to communicate (i.e.  LOL OMG WTF BTW IMHO...etc....), we have no need for that mail.  I'm lucky, when I go to the mailbox, if there's a couple of bills in there, maybe a pamphlet about voting for the next congressman.  Pizza Coupons,  a worthless catalog.  So I had an idea.  What if, to turn around the financial position of the USPS, they drastically reduce the days they deliver the mail.  Say Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays only.  Special trucks could be used for priority or overnight services, but otherwise, only three times a week.  Talk about saving money! Because it's just  not necessary anymore. 

What else could we change through the evolution of paper and ink? Think of Gutenberg's invention, the printing press.  Think of how many things changed because it became so much easier to create books, pamphlets, a brand new way of communicating.  Through writing.  Reading became a necessary skill, where before only the wealthy and the clerics actually needed it.  But what would Gutenberg think to see his ink and paper system turned into a series of 0's and 1's on an electric-run board with wires, circuits, etc.   Paper becomes, at this point, irrelevant.  But so many other things do as well.

If you give me a pen and a pad of paper and tell me to write an essay, my hand will start aching after about 10 minutes.  I can't stand to write anymore.  It does nothing for my handwriting skills which are horrid anyway.  I would argue strongly for the elimination of cursive handwriting in schools and the mandatory keyboarding class to be taught to every student.  Learning to type is so essential to today's world.  School would be much different than today's affair.  Every student would have a laptop or tablet, with all the textbooks loaded into it, as well as a word processing program and a network tie in with the system so that the teacher can illustrate points on everyone's machine, which could be saved and reviewed for later.  Setting aside the idea of learning from a computer online at home (which would eliminate the school building, altogether,) we should at least eliminate the need for school lockers that simply take up room in the hallways.  If everything was fully done online, with laptops, electronically, there would be no need for forests full of paper records.  This is highly beneficial for the special education section of most schools I've worked with, where IEPs and other forms are spread out among filing cabinets throughout the building.  It would combine discipline notes, communication between teachers and administrators...the benefits of this are endless.    

I would go on and on spelling out the benefits of a fully electronic, paperless society.  And I would be wrong.  Because the permanence of paper is the one gigantic thing that will always keep books, newspapers, and the mail, circulating.  What if a cyber-attack wiped out the internet completely, or a virus that destroyed all electronic data on those computers.  The results would be tragic.  No medical records, no book manuscripts, no letters between presidents and their staff. All historic information saved purely this way would be lost.  All of my blogs... gone.  Makes me sad thinking about it.  And I've experienced this many times.  I don't think I actually have a single research paper from my college days in any electronic form, as every disk I ever used went bad on me, usually before I turned it in.  So that's why I have a paper copy of all my blogs printed out and taped into a Borders bought journal.  It's all there in its low-tech glory.  So while I am perfectly willing to have a paperless society, I know the importance of having paper copies of the world's information.  It would be worse than Fahrenheit 451, because the world's works would be more than burned up, they would be instantly deleted.  No one could save it.  So let us change and rely on our electronic book readers and our laptops and our online bill payment systems.  But let's also not forget that the system that Gutenberg invented some 500 years ago has lasted a good long while, and it's permanence is worth more than all the circuitry ever made.