Chain Smoking Blue Monkey

The csbmonkey’s jobs are many.  Fix.  Prevent.  Crush. Kill. Destroy.  Save. Console.

And noticing.

Noticing things that the regular monkeys are noticing but don’t have the language or facilities to express except with a grunt here or a screech there.  And noticing things that the other chain smoking monkeys don’t notice either.  Things that that other chain smoking monkeys think the regular monkeys are grunting and screeching abou.t

This is one of the days when the csbmonkey  realizes that he is indeed a caged monkey.  One of those days when looking over at that other shiny cage is a realization that a shiny new cage is still a cage.  A day of caged recognition.  That to keep doing the non-monkey things in life one has to subject to being the monkey for a large portion of life.   It is not a good day for csbmonkeydom at all.

Soon you don’t even really bother picking at the lock of the cage anymore, since you realize that the small cage just happens to be sitting in a larger cage.  You can’t escape your monkeydom that easily.  Swinging from cage to cage is not swinging from tree to tree.

The csbmonkey is linked in spirit to his automaton cousins.  He does this thing because other people are doing a thing because someone wants a thing.   Whirrrrrr…

When do I stop doing this?

Starting is easy. Stopping is not. Starting an addiction is as easy as having a bad day and needing something to help forget it. The new thing. The thing to make life easier. After all, there’s a need for that new thing. Something to forget that lousy day? Something to make life easier? There are times, in fact, that something new and novel is necessary.

The old stuff isn’t working anymore. The rolodex is stained beyond legibility. The day calendar is covered in beer, coffee, whiskey and cigarette stains. Some of the months are analogous to your memory in that they are missing. Torn out. Tossed aside in a fit of frustrated inability to write down what should have happened instead of what did happen. Or worse… writing down appointments you actually did keep as opposed to the ones that you planned to keep, and they all had to do with putting out that fire your friend started and then cleaning up the aftermath instead of building that dream cottage on the beach with a place for a fridge full of beer and margaritas.

The journal is a wire bound high school ruled notebook written in with number 2 pencil, a pen found on the sidewalk, and sometimes something that may or may not be blood (but for certain isn’t graphite or ink). This is where the best thoughts of the day end up? In the same place some kid is dashing out heartfelt poems and doodling bleeding hearts?

This stuff is a MESS! Piles of stained paper. Paper. Good technology. Tried and true. Textural in nature. Smells. Feels. Cam be held. Exist. Good stuff. Messy stuff. It’s a MESS! Needs a place to BE. Needs a place to stay. Needs physical space. Collects dust. Oh paper, how much love there is for you, yet how much hate.

Paper isn’t going to end here, though. Paper is just going to start being a part of something new. Something more. Something with more demanding needs, but something with a mighty high payoff. Paper and the computer are going to be pals. Like the good old days. Like the 80s when paper held computer’s hand and led computer into a strange, scary forest of new creatures and new people. New people that liked computer A LOT. A little too much. People that liked to hang out with computer so much that paper wondered how those years passed so quick and so many drunken nights happened until one morning paper woke up alone ten years behind computer with no retirement plan. Paper got dumped.

This story isn’t about paper, though. This story is about how, exactly, to make a decision. How to decide on when it’s finally time to start looking for that technology to solve that problem. This Palm Pilot was good enough then. Why isn’t it good enough now? This Blue iMac was good enough then. Why isn’t it good enough now? All manner of things once were good enough and mysteriously, now, they aren’t. The Palm Pilot evokes wide eyes and provokes the same reaction as a slide rule or abacus. The Blue iMac is remembered in a “I had one of those!” moments. But… but… but… it all still works! What’s happening? Why can’t it still work?

Because it all moves as fast as what it moves. And it moves data. Data moves fast now. Very, very fast. Accelerating along with the unstoppable tide of time and human desire. SCORCHING ahead. Burning. Causing the hand to pull back in pain. The head spins dizzily and this thing start to feel heavy and slow. And worse. It feels worse. It won’t stay on long. It’s big. It’s got that… color. It’s beige. Or gray. Or blue. But is that a reason to just toss it aside? Oh yes, yes, yes it is. It isn’t the only reason. It isn’t keeping up. With thinking. With viewing. With adapting. Those other things that aren’t so set in stone, they are.

What is next? There has to be something next. The next thing to try that works. That, for a little while, will serve a purpose. No! Serve THE purpose! The purpose to keep up with it all. The purpose to profit. The purpose to take those damn ideas and keep them. NO! Not keep them. Cultivate them. Make them grow. Make them into things that themselves have purpose.

What is here isn’t working. The deck needs shuffled. A new card has to be pulled from the deck.

Next time, I’m going to pull a new card from the deck.

This is not about technology. This is about people. Two people that stood behind me and said of a fun idea “But it’s really stupid.”

I’m here to tell you, folks, the idea was useless, but it was not stupid. I suppose, to old men, which they were, and by old I mean they were perhaps 10 years older than me (any many pounds heavier… wait, is that prejudice? Yes? Damn. Ok, they were fat old men. How’s that?). What was this stupid thing? It was something called Hullabaloo. It was essentially interactive technological art. Useless it was. Interesting it was. Fun it was. Stupid? That wasn’t my first thought. The technology was simple, but the idea behind was quite sophisticated and without the explanation on hand for it, difficult to discern without knowledge and participation and thought. The idea tapped into a fundamental human desire: uniqueness.

You can read about what Hullabaloo does on the page, and see it there, but I will briefly describe it. It is a box with a receive inside it (a phone, I believe) with two plastic wiring conduits running out of it. One goes to an AC power outlet. The other stretches upward to a speaker. Inside the box the bluetooth receiver is connected to another device that generates a unique audio signature similar to a birdcall based on your bluetooth ID (you have to discover the device and join to it briefly). When you wander back by, it knows who you are and plays your unique call.

I am not sure why the gentlemen, sorry, the old fat white guys, thought it was stupid. It was thoughtful and new. It was a concept that someone thought would fun and then they did it. Indeed, much that one person finds fun others find boring, or even stupid. I could not help but think of another story.

There seems to be a tradition going on. The tradition is that technology provides us with amazing wonders and contemptible tragedies. The tradition of useful, clever, smart inventions that have great use… great practical use. And the tradition of technology that results in ruin, destitution, and nothing worthwhile. Those are the blacks and whites of technology. The two sides. The lustrous and wonderful blacks and the blinding and sterile whites.

Oh dear sir, the grays. The in between things. The… stupid technologies. Of what use are these technologies? Certainly they will remain as they are. They will remain stupid. It almost goes without saying that they are useless technologies. Useful technologies are NEVER stupid! Not the steam engine. Not the roller washing machine! These are practical, useful technologies that I am sure will never be surpassed or thought of as stupid. Certainly not thought of as stupid at the time they were invented. I for one am enjoying our era of steam engine airplanes and computer controller roller washing machines that I must stand next to and attend.

The Hullabaloo has no use beyond it’s novelty. Except to light up the minds of simple minded folks like myself. Smart, sophisticated fat white guys know better. They know it’s stupid. A useless contrivance. Like so, so many other technologies.