kagablog

Let us light a candle tonight to the “Guess the Gadgets” of tomorrow.
 
Let us pause, for a moment, by the graves of those brilliant yet doomed designs which had been conceived at exactly the wrong point in time, those scientific experiments who died before they had a chance to live, and serve, and fulfill their destiny.
 
Let us shed a tear for those dodo’s of invention who never had a chance. Who never got past the starting lineup. Who landed on the dungheap of technical evolution through no fault of themselves.
 
Let us mourn their passing as if they were chance acquaintances, or temporary flat-mates, or short-term lovers. For they all had the potential to become a more meaningful part of our lives. If they only knew how. 
 
They were mere victims of circumstance. They were the still-born, useless, failed epitomes of our disposable culture. They were the small-town con men of civilization. They sold their shares a split second before the boom. They lost their footing on the scaffolding at the exact moment when they preparing for their greatest triumph.
 
Oops.
 
I am talking, my dear friends, of the electric typewriter. Who remembers the electric typewriter? That magnificent engine with the golf ball mechanism?
 
Killed, superseded, cancelled out by the personal computer, never to have an independent existence ever again.
 
I am talking, my dear friends, of the cassette and CD Walkman players of yesteryear. Remember those prehistoric, strange little tools? (I never liked them all that much, to be honest. They invariably had one defective ear-plug.) Yet, to be fair, they made long distance driving bearable. For a year or two. Until the advent of the iPod…
 
I am sad tonight, my friends. I am mourning the death of so many remarkable machines. I am grieving. I am grieving because I remember my friend the pager. Remember pagers? Those little square thingamabobs the yuppies of bygone times used to wear on their belts? Those beeping, urgent little things which used to be the dividing line between those of us who merely existed and those of us who were Wanted and Needed by the Outside World? They are cast aside now, no-one manufactures them any more. Because now, of course, we have mobile phones.
 
While I’m on the topic, let’s shed a tear for the first mobile phones that hit the market during the first years of that new technology. Remember them? They were huge. They were expensive. They had aerials. They had one function, and one function only: to phone. They could not take pictures, or video clips, or receive pornographic images, or do any of the very clever things the cell phones of today are capable of. They were honest, and true, and simple. It was as difficult to hide one of those as it is to hide a gun, because when you put them in your pocket, they made your jacket hang down on one side. Hell, today I’d pay through my nose to find a phone that can do just that one thing: phone. All these other new functions are terribly distracting, don’t you think?
 
Tonight I am feeling blue. I am feeling blue because I have seen the death of so many inanimate objects. I have seen the death of the fax machine, the telex machine, the telegram, the hand-written letter, the public telephone booth, the town library, the printed book, the stiffie, the photo album, the black and white TV set, the record player, the video cassette, the Hammond organ, the recording studio and record label (the entire music industry as we know it, for that matter), the photocopy machine, Tipp-Ex Fluid, the old-fashioned family video camera which used to be so indispensable on all our trips to the Kruger National Park…
 
And there are jobs that are becoming obsolete, too. At a much faster rate than ever before. Soon, there will be no more encyclopedia salesmen. No more people who work in photographic darkrooms. No more record producers. No more postmen. No more professional website designers. No more librarians. We’ll be able to do everything ourselves. With no training. With very cheap software. Life will be easy. All sensory experiences will be enhanced. Death will be edited out. We will not even fear sexually transmitted diseases, for holographic chat rooms will make the messy reality of real relationships unnecessary. Personal vulnerability will become a liability instead of an asset. All this will save a hell of a lot of time.
 
So, why am I feeling sad tonight? Why am I dressed in black like a pre-graduate Grahamstown Goth from the early nineties? Why am I nostalgic for movies like The Naked Lunch? Why do I hate Pop Idols? Why am I bored with the Fashion Channel? Why do I feel like a hollow man, stuffed man, a man dancing around the prickly pear at four o’clock in the morning?
 
Why do I feel lost, and lonely, and forlorn, like the lyrics of the latest Neil Young album (“Prairie Wind” – considered by some to be his best yet, though most young people today will have no use for it):
 
I feel like I’m falling,
Falling off the face of the earth…
 
Look there, it’s gone. Click. No sweat. 
 
 
 
(With acknowledgement to T.S. Eliot)