Or not. I don’t know. How can we be sure? Even though the premise seems like a set-up for easy present-bashing in favor of a twisted nostalgia for a period when new music was, you know, good, I’m looking forward to reading Simon Reynolds’ recent book, Retromania. Part of the blurb on Amazon makes it […]
Archive for the ‘Technology’ category
Post
This post is in response to Stella’s post from last Friday. It is not an argument against anything that Stella wrote, but I was inspired by the subject and some of the comments. Before I go on any further, I should tell you that I’m actually writing this post as a spoken piece which is […]
The written words
Once, the tools of writing were precious. People had to invent paper. Use chalk on slate. Carve stone with hieroglyphics. Prepare calf vellum. Make ink. Even growing up in the 70s, pencils, pens, felt tips, chalks, crayons and pads of paper were celebrated birthday and Christmas gifts. Then, those things become cheap and plentiful. And […]
Punctuating a text.
“The medium is the message!” “Form is content.” “Fuck off…” “No” When I first started writing for this blog close to five years ago, I barely texted. It was a pain in the ass. The iPhone hadn't been invented. But today, I text 10 times more than I talk on the phone or email. In […]
OMG – Where’s the un-send key?!
It has been a long time since I inadvertently sent an embarrassing email to the wrong party. Or, it had been until about an hour ago, anyway. Who hasn’t felt that special panic, that sudden gasp of dread, that accompanies watching an email shoot off into the ether toward the wrong recipient? I can’t remember […]
Twitter for Dummies
Rule 1: Everything must be 140 characters or less. A character is a letter, number or space. Rule 2: No mundane comments on where you are; e.g., “I’m drinking coffee at a Coffee Bean.” Rule 3: No cutesy observations that only you will understand, e.g., “Well, that was a sticky wicket, wasn’t it?” Rule 4: […]
Dude, That’s So Random
Hey, kids, do you ever get sick of looking at the same few websites, over and over again? Have you worn a rut between your email, facebook, the Huffington Post, and The Greatwhatsit? Are you bored with the interwaffle? Well, my friends, bore no more! There’s a tool out there in the world wide webs […]
Your kids can dance to it while it wins a war
Anyone interested in music, history, technology, and how all three sometimes converge will find Dave Tompkins’s recently published book How to Wreck a Nice Beach fascinating reading. It’s a history of the vocoder from its development in the 30s by Bell Labs as a voice encryptor for the US Military to its infiltration of techno […]
