I don’t get out much. Well, that’s not strictly true: like many people I’ve transformed into a mouse potato doing my “getting out” via the great “information superhighway,” which in many respects is really more like an information strip-mall filled with bizarro little shops that have merchandise that may or may not be reliable. Because of my age, though, I stand at an interesting vantage point.
I’m old enough to remember when we didn’t have the internet and video game consoles beyond Pong. Yes, indeed, I remember when one of the neighborhood boys got Pong when we were 7 or 8 years-old. All the kids seemed to be fascinated by this blinking thing on the TV. Me, I wanted to go outside and ride my bike.
I am, however, also young enough to have been an “early adopter.”
The internet, really the PC, changed my focus to a degree. I could use this new-fangled big (and they were huge) box to connect to an “online service” and read messages from other people. If you were willing to front the per-minute charges you could even “talk” with other people in real time. Careful, though, ’cause making that switch from 1200 baud to 2400 baud might make the chat too fast for you to follow.
Now we have computers that can “generate reality” for us. Indeed, there are huge parts of our entertainments, movies primarily, that don’t exist outside a RAID array storage farm. Terrabytes have become a commonplace unit of measure of capacity for special effects professionals and computer animators while having nearly conquered the fur problem (see Over The Hedge, Ice Age: The Meltdown, and Shrek 2 among others) they still haven’t figured out how to generate convincing looking human beings.
BBC News reports that Microsoft’s new(ish) operating system is pushing the development of new graphics cards which will have much greater capabilities, incorporating the physics and shadows and subtle cues that human vision takes for granted in the hard world outside the box while at the same time The Washington Post is reporting that attendance at America’s national parks is down.
As much as I love my computer and how it connects me to friends all over the globe, as much as I love information at my fingertips, there’s something sublime and comforting in nature and the way it works without guile or remorse or manipulation through guilt.
I wonder if there’s any air in my bike’s tires?