Don't Take Me Seriously - Book - Page 151
Where is the hard drive for hard goods?
I
moved last week — and my
entire day-to-day life was
transported from the then
to the now with one trip in a
pickup truck. And the truck
wasn’t even roped-up and clutter-stacked like the Beverly Hillbillies’ clunker. There
was no furniture, and so things
were, pretty much, secured in a
group of large plastic bins.
And as I cruised the streets
on this trip toward possibility, I warbled “Lord, I was born
a ramblin’ maaaan,” offered a
thumbs-up to anyone who was
foolish enough to look my way,
and generally pulled muscles
patting myself on the back.
You see, in less than a year,
I had gone from being buried
under a houseful of dust-collecting possessions to this enlightened, Bohemian bin existence.
I felt so free and unfettered.
Material goods, nay the worldly dimension itself, had no hold
on me. …
… Well, until I had to lug
those heavy bins up two flights
of stairs and squeeze them into
one small bedroom, which
barely left room for my leaky
inflatable mattress.
Suddenly, things closed
in on me, and it was hard to
breathe. I longed to run away
and trek the streets of Europe
carrying only a knapsack and
leather wine bag.
As it turns out, there is no
Jim
WALKER
DON’T TAKE ME SERIOUSLY
feng shui adjustment for “too
much.” And when you have to
thrash to push things off you so
you have room to sleep, well,
my friends, you have too much.
You have clutter. And, they say
clutter constantly drains energy
from you. It can also negatively influence, or even completely block, the flow of events in
many areas of your life.
Hmmm.
I also understand that the
reason most people avoid clearing the clutter is not because it
takes effort and it can be time
consuming. The real reason is
the fact that clutter clearing is
a very emotional process and it
takes stamina to go through it.
Having been through one
tearful and bloody downsizing
already, I realize that is true.
And I have no more emotional energy available for further
possession-reduction, so I have
a better thought.
I submit that there should be
hard drives, storage drives, for
hard goods.
Come on you techies, get it
going. You can create tiny little sticks that digitally store the
equivalent of warehouses full
of paper files, photos and video. And these digital files can
then, when necessary, be reformed in the physical world.
Why can’t you do the same for
clothes, sports equipment, beds
and old Little League trophies?
Think of it. One could put
everything one possesses —
be it currently in use or not, be
it of sentimental value or merely odd screws and condiments
— all on a finger-sized digital storage device. When something needs to be slept on or
merely fondled, one could reform the item, temporarily, in
three-dimensional space.
And yes, this would work for
girlfriends, too.
People, this would revolutionize the concept of ownership and of feng shui. Rooms
would be full of, well, room,
and everywhere you turn
would be empty, echoing space
full of fresh air and spiritual
opportunity.
In fact, we could take this
even further. Your accommodations could be stored digitally. When you needed a place to
sleep, cook or take that monthly shower, you could reconstitute your abode anywhere,
even in Europe. The primary
consideration would be to do
it in open space so your house
wouldn’t drop on anyone like
Dorothy’s did.
The main drawback to
this, I guess, would be that if
thieves steal your digital storage stick, they pretty much
steal everything you own. But
the solution is to always keep
a backup stick. This way, they
can have your stuff and so can
you.
And this opens up more possibilities.
Maybe, eventually, through
digital sharing, everyone would
have everything. The whole
concept of “possessions” would
become obsolete and the world
would be left to butterflies and
the singing of “Shall We Gather at the River.”
War, poverty, famine — and
probably, pestilence — would
all be removed from the landscape through better digital
processing.
People, I tell ya, this is not
that far removed from reality. In fact, those guys in those
secret compounds are probably already in-process on this
physical-to-digital, this substance-to-sequence, this hard
goods-to-hard drive process.
I mean, they did it on “Star
Trek” more than 40 years
ago.
(And, yes, as usual, I hereby copyright the storyline.)
As the obvious “idea man”
behind this physical-to-digital process, Jim Walker wants
to get in on the patents, too.
Comment at jwalker@thesignal.com, @DontSeriously
or @SCVSignal.
