Keith Povall has been an online pal for years. He lives in Walsall in the UK where he and his mate (that’s the way they talk) Wally the Welder frequent the White Horse pub, a traditional pub that Keith says is quickly dying out. So we decided to visit (via Google Hangout). I love all things British and could listen to these guys talk for hours. A few minute should be enough for most folks. I share my poorly produced video here for archival purposes.
Tag Archives: Digital Life
When the net was young
A couple of nights ago I was browsing through some old Day-Timers (calendars) and came across a few memories from 1994:
April 26 – A meeting with some folks at MOREnet and the University of Missouri J-School. My first look at a web browser (Mosaic). I was blown away. The Internet was a very different creature before the browser.
June 20 – Sent check to someone named Bill Bahr a check for $1,700 for a used Toshiba notebook computer. Base price was $1,400 plus $300 for a fax/modem PCMCIA card.
I think it was this one. It was a heavy mother but I was giddy at the idea of being able to take a computer with me on the road.
“Internet thing” catching on
Five years ago I used this elaborate timeline to illustrate where I saw myself in relation to others in terms of technology awareness. A little out front (at the time) of most of our company… waaay behind the Smart Kids.
For much of the past 15 years I’ve been annoying people (mostly at work) with the latest gadget or –more recently– app. There were early adopters like me; others who would get on board once they clearly saw some proven value to their current job; and still others who jammed their fingers in their ears, chanting “la la la la la la I can’t HEAR you!”
This group always referred to “the Internet thing,” and to this day think Twitter is about what you had for lunch.
But something has changed. People are starting stop by my office or my table at the Coffee Zone and ask for a crash course in all this stuff I’ve been yapping about. It’s as though they woke up one morning and realized, “Shit! I’m way behind!”
Let me hasten to add, there is NOTHING I know that any reasonably intelligent person can’t pick up. But just as you can learn to speek Italian from a series of CD’s, you won’t really understand the language until you live in Genoa for a few years. It’s a cultural thing.
If I had to guess at what has brought this on –if, indeed, something has changed– I’d say it’s the iPhone and the iPad. The web has moved from your desktop (which you leave behind every night at 5 o’clock) to your pocket.
These latter day Luddites are hearing more and more expressions (from customers!) the meaning of which they have only the vaguest idea.
I’m doing my best to purge any “I told you so” from my thinking, but the simple truth is, a lot of these folks won’t catch up. They’re trapped on the wrong side of the digital divide. By the time they scramble up and over… everyone will have moved on.
Ehi, aspetta per me voi ragazzi!
The music of the 2050’s
My earliest memories of music are from the 50’s. If I described a song as having “a 50’s sound,” you’d probably understand what I meant.
I divide the next decade into Early 60s and Late 60s. The 70’s connote Disco for me. For some reason I don’t have any recollection of the music of the 80’s and 90’s.
So here’s my question for your musicologists out there:
How is that each musical era can sound not only different from the previous era, but from ALL previous eras? Will we have a period that repeats some earlier period?
If not, does this mean that it will get more and more difficult to create a completely fresh sound? How different will music sound to these disturbingly large ears in 30 years?
Covering election returns
Election night was a big night for radio station news departments. Or, they were back in the 70’s in the little town where I worked.
The candidates would crowd into the county clerk’s office and watch as the votes were written on a big chalk board. The radio station news guy would setup a small transmitter and send back updates that were broadcast live. You were either there… listened to us… or heard the results the next morning at the local coffee shop.
When I started working with The Missourinet (a statewide radio network) in the mid-80’s, it wasn’t that different. One of our reporters would set up at the Secretary of State’s office with a dedicated land-line (before cell phones). Maybe they used one of the state’s phones, I don’t recall. But the reporter would phone in regular updates to the network newsroom where they’d go out to affiliate stations around the state.
Sometime in the 90’s technology improved to the point where we could Telnet into the the state computers (via very slow modem’s) and access the numbers directly. And then report them over the network.
Fast forward to the Web. No more Telnet but those early websites were very glitchy. And slow. But they got better every election. It was a wonderful thing. Anyone with internet access could see the returns as they were tabulated. But it was still easier for radio stations (and their listeners) to take our reports than produce their own.
Last week one of our news directors stopped by my office to talk about what we would do online for the upcoming election. Missouri’s Senate race is the Main Event and we’ll have reporters at both candidates venue. They’ll do interviews and feed those back to the network where reporters will be working the Secretary of State’s website.
One the other end of the information pipe, people will still be listening to the radio and watching TV but I expect Twitter and Facbook to be where many get their first information. (Does the Secretary of State have a Twitter feed?). And most of it will be mobile.
Eventually we’ll all vote electronically, without standing in line. And we’ll see the results in near real time.
Will this elections more susceptible to fraud? Girl, please! Is the TSA making flying safer?