staples

At least it makes sense, the evolution from crude tele-phone, in two pieces or more, to rotary telephone to answering machine with phone to portable phone to smartphone. Progress. Technology. The same with desktops to laptops to tablets to "devices." That sort of thing.

But what about staples? I don't see that stunningly simple technology evolving. Evolve to what. Staples and stapling, and staple removal, work fine. Why improve it? So modern yet so retro.

Same with paper clips.

Ballpoint pens.

Envelopes.

Does any of this make any sense?

It's not a Luddite sermon.

Staples. They're so simple and practical.

They're here to stay as is; that's my guess.

techless techNOcrat techie tetchy touchy

This quasi-Luddite, pro-tech, ante-vellum note of paradoxical interest comes from the San Francisco Chronicle's website, back on November 30, 2011:

Imagine your workplace without email. That fantasy (or nightmare) will soon be reality for thousands of people who work for information technology firm Atos.

The company, which has offices in the Houston area and in Norwalk, Conn., manages IT for the Olympics. Its clients include oil field services firms Schlumberger and Baker Hughes.

ABC news says Atos found that most email messages turn out to be a waste of time:

CEO Thierry Breton of the French information technology company said only 10 percent of the 200 messages employees receive per day are useful and 18 percent is spam. That’s why he hopes the company can eradicate internal emails in 18 months.

The rule would apply to 74,000 employees in 42 countries and will hit close to home for some Houstonians. In April, Atos unveiled plans to locate one of its U.S. headquarters in Sugar Land.

Breton, who served as French finance minister before heading up the IT company, told the Wall Street Journal he hasn’t sent a work email in the three years he’s led the firm; he expects employees to focus instead on communicating via instant message or through an internal social network akin to Facebook.

In a statement about the policy, Breton compared spam to smog:

“We are producing data on a massive scale that is fast polluting our working environments and also encroaching into our personal lives. At Atos we are taking action now to reverse this trend, just as organizations took measures to reduce environmental pollution after the industrial revolution.”

technology, and its discontents

"Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough."

-- Henry David Thoreau, "Economy," Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854)

Think he was talking about Facebook, or blogging?

Techno-no-oh-no-oh-no

Technorati is beseeching me to do certain unmentionable things to gain their alliterative allegiance, fecund fealty, and unctuous unswerving loyalty.

Alas, will The Laughorist be granted status as one of the loyal subjects of Technorati?

Stay tuned.

The Says-pool

I heard a radio commercial this morning referring to the Internet as the "information superhighway."

Whew, I hadn't heard that one in a long time.

I never felt that metaphor worked. It is typically invoked by advertisers promising high-speed Internet service, allowing users to drive up the information ramp quickly, yadda-yadda.

I'm reminded of something Henry David Thoreau wrote:

"We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."

What is a good metaphor for the Internet?

I think it's more like a river, stream, or ocean.

Or maybe a gigantic pool. Yeah, that's it.

*The says-pool.

(Of course, you might argue for sees-pool, seize-pool, or cease-and-desist-pool. But I like the fact that says-pool captures two elements of the Internet: our wading in (or diving in) to a great sea of Something-or-other interlinked like that old game of Telephone, driven by "he said-she said-he said-she said-they said-it said" ad infinitum. That said, let me note that in real life a Google search of my real name nets thousands upon thousands of entries, and maybe as many as 90% are wrong in their attribution. Almost right, but not quite. And it's all a matter of the rippling effects of misinformation upon misinformation, which can never be corrected or amended.)

Laugh. Or....

Else.

* The coinage "says-pool" is copyright 2007 by The Laughorist, Pawlie Kokonuts, and his antecedents, precedents, and malcontents.