Don't Take Me Seriously - Book - Page 234
Early-onset foolishness
The line between real and virtual is getting blurred
ow, I will admit that I was a bit
distracted, but there I was the other
day, leaving my abode and having a little
difficulty locking the front door – with
the remote door lock button for my
truck. After a couple of unsuccessful
tries, the honking coming from my
truck in the parking lot clued me into
the fact I was a doofus. So, I put the old
house key in and turned the deadbolt.
Glad that no one had seen this foray
into early-onset Alzheimer’s, I chuckled
to myself and mentally filed the incident
under “column material.”
Of course, some of you out there will
worry that I had a stroke, and anything
is possible, but I call it a stroke of genius
– and, herein, I copyright the story
idea for my next screenplay, which is
about the blurring of the lines between
electronic and manual, and between
real and virtual. And let’s call this
brilliant cash cow, oh, I don’t know,
“The Matrix.”
What’s that you say? That’s been used?
No wonder it sounded so right. So, OK,
let’s make it a comedy and call it “The
Dipstix.” I will write, produce, direct
and star … because I refuse to delegate.
But, leaving my screenplay out of
it, because, you know, that will take a
couple days to write or so, and I only
have 37 minutes, just now … let us
explore this topic.
You see, in my opinion, my fumbling
in the physical world comes from
N
Jim Walker
Don’t Take Me Seriously
spending too much time in the virtual
one. Those of us who fritter away most
of our days in front of computer screens
live in a drag-and-drop, right-click,
cut-and-paste world where we can make
anything immediately come to life, short
of a sandwich. And that is only limited
by delivery time. If you toss in those new
thingies where you can wave your hands
at a screen across the room and stuff will
move there like you were the Sorcerer’s
Apprentice, well, you’ve got somebody
else’s computer system – but you get
my drift.
It’s really getting hard to tell what
is push-button-operated and what is
manual, what is virtual and what will
raise a bump on your head.
It’s enough to cause you to leap off a
third-floor balcony, believing that cyberwings will save you if you just refuse to
consider the alternative. And, no, things
have not progressed quite that far in my
head yet, but I can visualize it, which is
half the battle, right?
Aside from piloting our desks, this
removal from physical labors and
consequences is growing like toxic mold
in our homes, where we (you anyway)
can program everything remotely from
our smartphones to turn on, record,
adjust, flush and feed the cat. I mean, if
you lose your phone, not only will you
probably not be able to unlock your
front door, if you do get in, you could
be headed for a night of poltergeist as
Video Link of the Week:
Rube Goldberg page-turning machine
s you know, the point of a “Rube Goldberg machine”
is to create an excessively complicated process to
accomplish a simple task. This one is amazing and it
features a hamster, so how can you go wrong. Enjoy.
A
http://bit.ly/QLmctV
8 | >>
WWW.CONNECTSCV.COM s OCT. 10 - 16, 2012
the guy who found your phone and his
friends have a grand old time messing
with your head.
And cars? Holy frijoles! You can now
start them before you get to them,
open the doors remotely, operate
them by facial expression and cruise
in them completely sealed off from
exterior sound, weather and curbside
panhandlers. They will warn you of
dangerous situations, like when you try
to take control, and they will cushion
collisions so that you can walk away and
think it was all Bdream. It’s no wonder
there are so many high speed chases.
These fugitives are hoping to slip into
another other dimension to shake off the
cops. They’re just having trouble locating
a phone booth these days.
And money? OMG, that was always
an arbitrary concept at best, but at
least there used to be cash. These days
the difference between your having a
billion dollars and none is only a mutual
agreement between you and a computer
program. And I, for one, refuse to agree.
So this is where my visualization, my
full consciousness and my dimensionbending dream power have been
concentrated of late. Small wonder I
have trouble with such an insignificant
thing as a deadbolt.
Comment at jwalker@the-signal.com or
at http://Twitter.com/DontSeriously.
