Jack's Rant Monday March 30th

Is it Daata or Dadta?

Everything today is zeros and ones, at least that's the way the computer deals with it. Very few things in our lives are analog anymore. Analog is when you put a needle on a record and it played music. Digital is when you put a CD in a slot and it reads the 0s and 1s and figures out it's music and plays it.

It's actually a little disconcerting.

In the late 1800's (1898 to be exact) someone came up with the idea of recording sound on a flat disc, rather than a cone, as Edison first did. This allowed them to be easily molded and then re casted in vinyl plastic. In the mid 1920's everyone settled on a standard speed for the rotation of the record; 78.26 rotations per minute. Prior to that, you had to manually "dial in" the record by using a speed lever next to the turn table.

This set the standard for the recording industry for over 30 years, and in fact up until the early 1970's "78's" were still manufactured. Even when the much superior 33.3 rpm stereo records came out, where by requiring a much more sophisticated playing unit, most still had a setting to play the older technology.

Even after the use of magnetic tape to record with - a master cut on a disc and replicated was still the choice to archive what was on the tape.

Now tape is not even used at all. Everything is recorded directly into the computer on to a hard drive where it is mixed and exported in a digital format to any number of formats - which may or may not go to an "archival" medium.

This is not only true of music. It's true of what I write here, and countless other things that are in the digital domain, and exist there only. Photos, scanned documents, manuscripts, et al. All 0s and 1s.

One day the hard drive fails and just like that - ZAP - photos of Jimmy's fifth birthday are all gone!

Which leaves the question. How do you archive all this stuff in such a way that it's preserved.

Programs and operating systems are constantly being updated or replaced. You can't stick a 78 record in your CD drive to listen to it. Nor can you play an audio cassette. Not unless you have sitting on a shelf in your basement an old record player, and old 8 track player, and old cassette player, and old Betacam player, an old VHS player, and soon, who knows what else will be replaced by some bigger, better gadget whereby making all of this obsolete.

When the first PC's came out in the '80's, before Micosoft, there were no operating systems, just DOS. The word processing program I used was WordStar, spreadsheets Lotus 123. Backup was done on large floppy discs. A black CRT screen with gold characters was how you looked at your work.

Once MS Word came along it didn't know how to read the WordStar files, so I had to buy Lotus Amipro, which would read the old files (I had to buy a floppy drive as my new computer wouldn't read them, only diskettes). Once the files were in Amipro I could convert them to MS Word and the job was done. Kind of. Once a file was converted from WordStar to Amipro to MS Word for some reason spell check no longer functioned, and in order to reinstate that feature, I had to open a new file, copy and paste the old file into the new one.

Believe it or not, I still keep Amipro on my computer - although my computers no longer have diskette drives, I had to buy one (just as zip drives used to be the mode of storage.)

Now I have an external 80 gig storage drive and a 1 gig thumb drive to back stuff up.

But the point is, if you don't constantly update your operating system and software and your files as well you can't:

1. - Read your old stuff

2. - Open a file that someone else has sent you!

I have a box of my Grandfather's manuscripts. They were typed on a Smith Corona typewriter. And guess what, I don't need one of those to read his words. Just a good reading lamp and a nice glass of wine.

Cheers!

Jack's Rant Thursday, March 26

"Bloggers and Twitters and Facebooks, Oh My!" Part Dux

Yesterday I mentioned Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World briefly, but didn't really get around to making the point as to why. The point is that in Huxley's idealistic novel in order for the general populous to have this wonderful society, they sacrifice, unknowingly, other rights that they don't discover until it's too late. And moreover the antithesis of their society develops outside of their realm. The ying and the yang.

We can draw countless other literary examples that use this plot structure, but I won't bore you with them. The simple point is that anytime we accept or bring into our scope a new piece of technology to make our lives simpler, we are really sacrificing some other part of our rights in order to do so.

I remember my very first real job. Our main contact with the outside world was the telephone, a land line with a rotary dial and a couple of blinking buttons on it to access another trunk. That was it. If we needed something in a rush, we called a runner. If we needed something sent to somewhere else, we used air mail.

There wasn't any other way to send or communicate something. No answering machines, no faxes, no pagers, except the office secretary who would shout out your name, nada. If you didn't get it in the mail, oh well, maybe tomorrow.

This gave us several things. First, we had to plan ahead and anticipate that the mail may not get there on time, so we always gave ourselves some wiggle room so if it didn't get there when we thought, it was no big deal. The check's in the mail.

Second, it gave us time to focus on other things and be in a proactive mode, not a reactive one.

Then one day a rep from FedEx showed up to the office, and the rest is history.

Every time a new piece of communication technology has entered our lives it has allowed others to be more intrusive on ours. Forgot to arrange for some photos to be taken - that's ok, I'll call in the morning and have them take some and email them for my 11 AM meeting. Reactive, not proactive.

And the list goes on.

When I was in college I took a class, Mass Communications in Modern Society. One of the required readings was The Medium is the Message an insightful book by Marshall McLuhan. In sum it discussed the relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived.

For example, if you read a story in the National Enquirer you might not believe it at all, where as if you had read the same story in The Washington Post you would probably take it to heart.

Now we have all these very personal ways people can report on events around them. How true are they? We don't have the staff of the Post fact checking any of this. Is much of this hearsay and innuendo?

I believe that one of the dangers that all these new communications present, is that we might take them as fact.

A police officer taking statements from witnesses of a crime scene might hear many variations of the facts, which one is the most honest? And I believe that the same is true of the bloggers and twitters and facebooks, OH MY!

My advice, take anything you read in one of these blogs with a grain or two of salt. Except for mine, of course. I fact check everything!

Check again on Saturday, for my next rant!

Jack's Rant Wednesday March 25

"Bloggers and Twitters and Facebooks, Oh My!"

In 1932 Aldous Huxley published Brave New World, his futuristic novel set in 2540 AD London. It's idea of the future may not be as far off as we might believe, listening to synthetic music, human embryos raised artificially and all the while the care free population indulging in sex. Of course there's a dark side to all of this, but this isn't a book report after all.

This is a narrative on how quickly we have adapted to "sharing" our lives with others, often anonymously for anyone to look at. (Case in point, this blog.) It would be rather like our great grandparents leaving their diaries on a park bench for anyone to read.

Life's journals used to be left to the discretion of the writer, or their heirs, as to who and when might read them. Diaries were often kept under lock and key hidden in some forgotten place to be shared with only the closest of friends.

Important letters were also a way to keep a journal of one's trek through life. My maternal grandfather ran away from home at the age of 16 to ride the rails, never to return again. But what he did do was to write to his parents of his experiences. Now, as it turns out, his father thought someone else might enjoy his travels and presented them to the local paper in Duluth. They published a great many of them providing a permeate record of his early life.

This in turn allowed him to later write a book based on those letters The Winds Will and is a wonderful family record for us to have of his early life experiences.

I imagine there is some gene in us that makes us want to preserve some part of our past in some way. It's always been an important part of all cultures.

And like an adolescent going through puberty with a bad attack of ache we have seen a plethora of these new sites where we can share pretty much anything we want, as often as we want. Even this one has an option for "adult" content!

There's Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, NetCafe, Blogs, Twitter, a ton of business networking sites and my personal favorite, "Bebo" (I'm not making this up), AOL's latest attempt to enter the din of countless personal logs.

And why in the world would anyone name a site "Twitter". Did they bother to look it up? It's an old English word actually, that means to be nervously excited. "She was all a twitter when her love entered the room." Now I ask you, how does that exactly correspond to noting your daily schedule in Twitter. Were you "in a twitter" when you read how your best friend got 15% off at Macy's one day sale? Or were you twittering around the computer awaiting the next installment of my blog? OK, I can accept the last one. But you see my point, and that is, between text mailing, emailing, blogging, twittering, business networking... it's all gotten way to much!

I guess I sound like an old guy sitting on the porch of the general store, sipping on a warm sarsaparilla seeing the first horseless carriage drive by, amazed at the new contraption, pets his dog on the head and says "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore"!

Part two on this subject tomorrow (and you thought I was done with this!)

Today's Rant March 24, 2009

Hi all, if you're reading this it's clear to me that you have way to much time on your hands, and I share in that as I have succumb to the 21st century and formed my own blog.

Not that I have any exciting news that anyone would want to read, but that's not the point, is it?

It's like having your very own newspaper, where you are editor in chief and control all the content, or lack there of.

Here is the chronicle of Jack. It's no wonder newspapers are closing up left and right, who wants to read all that depressing stuff when we can go on line and entertain ourselves with mindless drivel from someone that's not about to tell you how bad the economy is or how hopeless the wars are - oh, wait, I guess I just did! DRATS!

I drive a lot. Many of you know that as I am fond of calling people I know on the phone while I make the tedious commute of 65 miles each way to my place of employment and back.

When not running up the cell bill I like to listen to NPR - I know, I'm a glutton for punishment. This is their pledge weeks - I say weeks because I seems to never end. And not only that, they stay on the air for what seems like hours giving some bleeding heart liberal spechel about how we all need to donate to them to keep them on air. By the time they are finished, THAT'S the last thing I want. A better idea is if they would say, "Look I'll shut up for twenty minutes if you'll donate $200." DONE! They just don't know how to market themselves, I tell you.

Driving home yesterday the traffic on the 15 slowed going through Corina, which is not uncommon. However, on the opposed traffic lane, as I approached closer, I realize that the lookie lou's were slowing to observe the fact that a truck had overturned in the two right hand lanes scattering about the household belongings of some poor person just trying to move their stuff. Clothes, dishes, audio tapes, kitchen spices, books fluttering like birds trying to take off from the passing traffic's tail wind. A cloud of cinnamon, cumin and other earthly herbs and spices billowed in a cloud of mixed aroma, being kicked up again and again as traffic attempted to pass this wreckage.

A set of mattresses sat next to the overturned truck marking where the accident happened like some ominous grave stone. And all the while the owners of these positions stood helpless on the shoulder in shock of what to do next.

"Less for the grace of God go I", whoever god is! But that's for a rant of another day.

This evening as I drove home, I noticed a stack of orange trash bags, the type the highway crews use to collect trash from the side of the road, neatly piled up where the accident happened yesterday. Nothing else remained.

Obama delivered a new conference again this evening. OK, now he is officially over exposed. He's got to stop talking and start producing, that's what I have to say, and I'm a bleeding heart liberial - go figure.

More later.

Jack