(This is something I started writing a few days ago. I figured I’d clean it up and send it out.)
Sitting here, trapped on a late flight, a flight upon which I had a non-existent seat, I have been nibbling on Nicholson Baker’s Size of Thought, a challenging collection of essays. One such essay is a discussion of the discarding of library card catalogues in favor of computerized systems. It is not a happy piece. The author is clearly disappointed by the death of card catalogs, showing evidence that the newer electronic system are no more accurate add certainly not more useful than the older card-based system.
This has me thinking.
… or maybe the Becks does…
How many devices vanish each day? Looking to man-made devices that have met with their end, there are numerous items that, within our lifetime, will become memories relegated to phrases like, “In my day, we used a thing called X.”
The manual typewriter. I have used one. Not the really old style a la The Naked Lunch, but a manual typewriter just the same. I truly would never want to mess with a secretary from the 20’s or 30’s; their hand-strength must have been awesome. I guarantee that if your younger cousin has ever even used a typewriter, it was electric, and that this younger cousin has never, ever, used a manual typewriter. But there are some who refuse to use anything but… Harlan Ellison comes to mind. He lives and dies by his manual device; a device that has written scores of books and essays.
Vinyl. Vinyl as in LP and EP, 45 and 75. I think my first clear memory of a vinyl is my best friend getting Michael Jackson’s Thriller. (There is a dim memory of getting Disney’s Disco Duck, a disco album built around Donald Duck, but it is a bit of a dim memory.) I have a strong suspicion that our younger cousins would not have a clue about how to use one. It amused me to go to a club downtown and watch the DJs spin their records, while a guy next to them furiously programmed the lights and smoke and the other optical doodads that go into a dance club.
The rotary telephone. When was the last time you used one? I remember we had one in our living room. A Bell Slimline. My dad wired a converter so that the old style four-prong system would work in the twisted pair world we were heading into. Granted, my cellphone has about the same audio quality as that rotary phone, but it is certainly not an equal substitute for a rotary phone. A rotary phone involved all the senses. You physically were a major part of the system, jamming your index finger into the dial, and “dialing.” Dialing… a holdover word from the days of rotary. And, of course, you couldn’t dial at the break-neck speeds that we do now. Could you imagine speed dial implemented on a rotary phone; what a cool thing to watch.
Here is your homework. Find a device. Something good and meaty. A washboard. A straight-edge razor. A 110 camera. Hunt through your closets. Route through your garages. Find something. Sit quietly with it. Try and remember why you have it. Try to remember who showed you how to use it. Bring those memories up to the light of day, if just for a moment.
Now pick up the telephone (doubtfully a rotary one) and call the person who is part of those memories.
Now find someone else and impart the (in)significance of this item in your life to them. Perfect strangers are completely acceptable for this role.