The internet is dying

Here's the other thing about Facebook. Or the other two things. Or something.

The internet used to be where I went to talk to people I wouldn't have met otherwise. And, like the famous New Yorker cartoon put it, where no one knew that you were a dog.

People didn't used to post under their real names. Sure, this meant that some people felt freer to be assholes. But it also meant that you could talk about adult issues and politics and be snarky and funny and not worry about what your mom or your boss thought.It's a good thing for people to be able to discuss things that they're not sure their mom or their boss would approve of, you know? What's more, it's a good thing to be able to discuss them with people who don't already agree with you, who don't live in the same place and know the same people and are likely to have exactly the same world view.

But on Facebook, you not only have to use your real name, you can't talk to people you don't know, and you can't even read people's stuff unless they've approved you as a friend. There's no browsing around and experiencing ideas and thoughts you'd never be exposed to otherwise.

Now, to some extent this is no great loss because most of what people post on Facebook is trivia. But it's the principle of the thing. I'm afraid something important is being lost, if this comes to be most people's idea of the online experience.

Maybe I am panicking for no reason. I guess there are a zillion public blogs and messageboards out there, so plenty of people still want strangers to read their stuff and maybe interact with someone new. Maybe this is an addition for those kinds of things and not a replacement. But it worries me.

Peer pressure

I finally gave in and joined Facebook. It turns out that it's as bad as I thought, and worse.

I much prefer to use a simple tool that does one job well. I don't need my refrigerator to connect to the internet or my phone to make toast. I don't want to scroll through a dozen irrelevant menus that make it harder to use the thing for its main purpose. But that's the modern way, to add features just because you can, not because they're a good idea.

So similary, I like Twitter and Flickr and a blog and messageboards that all different things well. I never longed for a one-stop-shopping experience, so there was no problem that I needed something like Facebook to solve.

But it turns out, it's not just that it tries to do too many things, it's that it can't even decide on one way to do each of them. There are several slightly different ways to post things, several slightly different ways to see material displayed... Basically, the thing seems to have been designed by a committee that gave up and, instead of making any choices among competing alternatives, just decided to do everything, no matter how confusing that was.

It's better than MySpace because at least people don't make sites with horrible designs and music. But instead, it's got a totally bland design that you can't customize at all - I feel like I am hanging out in a bus station. It's a clean, well-lit bus station, but it's exactly that comfortable and stylish.

I don't get it. I don't know how this became so popular. But, as we know from the case of Microsoft, bad design is no obstacle to worldwide dominance in software. I can only surmise that this is one of those things that's a result of EVERYONE being on the internet now. I suppose many of these people have only ever used badly designed software, so they don't even imagine there could be an alternative.

Another career change? No thanks.

I have resumes posted on some of those big sites where you can set it up to automatically search for appropriate jobs and email you the ads. This morning, one of them thinks I should apply for a job as a lawyer for a local public school district, or, if I am not feeling so ambitious, as a legal secretary.

I think where I should really apply is the company that programs that search agent. Even I could do a better job than that.

The Eskimos have one hundred words for 'hyperlink'

Last night I looked over the Technical Staff's shoulder at his computer and asked him why he was Googling 'Taunton river.' He swore he didn't remember. He knew he hadn't started with that, but didn't know what he had started with.

There needs to be a word for that thing, where you end up lost somewhere on the internet after clicking too many links and searching too many terms and don't know how you got there, like you're waking up from sleepwalking. Googlewalking, maybe.

Technical difficulties

Kind of bad weather for swimming. Fortunately, we never go swimming at the beach. Not so fortunately, we got home and found there was a power failure that fried our cable modem.

After lots of yelling on the phone, tomorrow I have to go try to get one, or else I can't really work. In the meantime we're hoping that our neighbor's wireless doesn't stop working. Thank goodness for people who don't worry about computer security.

Middle age is not for sissies, but preferable to the alternative

Nature, in her infinite wisdom, did us the favor of having our vision deteriorate at the same time that our skin becomes wrinkled. We had to go and screw it up by inventing eyeglasses.

But just after thinking this, I noticed I was having trouble seeing a tiger at a distance yesterday. Which could have been a problem if it were happening somewhere other than at the zoo. I guess the survival value of eyeglasses outweighs their cost to vanity.

Mysteries of technology, etc.

Nothing I can think of to post would be funnier than this.

Also I don't usually delve into politics but let's just think of this as a plea for civility.

Mysteries of technology

Words that my MS Word spellchecker does not recognize as correctly spelled English words:

website
blog
snark
dammit

Words that it thinks are perfectly fine:

microbrews
The f-word itself, spelled out
"the f-word"

Miracles of modern technology

I got out of the habit of wearing a watch when I was working at zoo jobs. It would get stuck on things, and it would get dirty and wet, and there was usually a clock on a wall somewhere, and precise times weren't usually that critical anyway. Since I didn't wear one at work, there wasn't much point in putting one on for a few hours when I got home and changed, and since I wasn't wearing one most of the time I mostly didn't on my days off either. And gradually all the batteries died and I was pretty much watchless.

I just put batteries in all the dead watches and started wearing them again. It's really cool. All I have to do is look at my wrist and I know what time it is. I don't have to dig in my pocket for my cell phone and push a button. It's so easy! What will they think of next?

Wombat bows to technological progress

I just had the urge to listen to a particular album in the living room, where the least primitive technology we have is a CD player.

I failed to do so, and thereby, had a relevation: I just figured out the real reason why mp3 players and downloading music and so on are better than CDs. It's because the music on your mp3 player is always there, in alphabetical order.

You younguns reading this, you probably don't even know what I am talking about. You have probably never spent ten minutes of your life trying to find one thing on an unorganized shelf of hundreds of objects that have music on them.

Progress?

I just walked Rose to the ATM outside our back to deposit some checks. I had filled out a deposit slip, remembered to bring a pen to write on the envelope so I didn't have to sneak a dog inside the bank, and expected it to take ten seconds.

Well, I discovered that they have installed new machines, labeled with great fanfare about how you don't need deposit slips and envelopes. What you have to do instead is:

Press "check"
Type in amount of check
Hit another button to continue after reading instructions to endorse the check and smooth it out
Insert check, facing in the correct direction, flat and smooth enough to go into the machine
Wait while it is scanned in
Hit another button to answer whether the number you gave is the correct amount
Wait while they process it
Hit another button to say you want to deposit another check
Repeat for each check.

I think that was all the steps.

Hello? How is this easier than filling out a deposit slip in the comfort of my home and sticking one envelope in the machine? When did I volunteer to work as a bank teller for free?

Wombat 0, Technology 1

During the several years of owning my current laptop, I have sometimes wondered why the manufacturer bothered to put speakers in it when they are inaudible even when the volume is turned all the way up. But I figured I should just be thankful that they remembered to put in a headphone jack.

The Technical Staff just revealed that there is another secret adjustment, like Balance or some such, that actually raises the volume to an audible level if you turn it up.

Better late than never, I guess.

And they wonder why music sales are down in this country

I just bought a CD from Japan. I now hold in my hands proof of something I have always believed: It is possible to sell CDs in wrapping that is easy to open.

I am a Luddite about all these links to YouTube that have taken over the whole Internet, but here is one of the songs on the CD.

Wombat 1, Technology 0

Last night I set our newish DVD recorder to record two programs off the Japanese TV channel and they both worked.

Might this bode well for my propects of wrangling the blogging software?