Let me introduce this painful topic by telling you a little tale from years ago, a tale involving a television set.<\/p>\n
Years ago, I was walking home from my Tribeca office when I found myself veering into a big electronics store, maybe even Crazy Eddie<\/a>, on Canal Street, known for discount electronics. Actually, that\u2019s not quite true. It was a street and store known for claiming<\/em> the electronics were discount, even though they weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n In any case, into the store I wandered. At the time I had a small black-and-white TV. Remember those? No? Never mind. I had begun to watch a lot of football games and was thinking, hm, how much better would it be to see the games in color, the way they’re actually played.<\/p>\n The store had aisles full of (color) TV sets and pretty soon I was approached by an aggressive salesman who asked what I was looking for. I told him, but said I was a little confused. I did want a color TV but wasn\u2019t seeing any TVs with dials. You know, those round things I was used to, the way I tuned into a particular TV channel.<\/p>\n Was that a quasi-sneer on his face? \u201cThat\u2019s analog,\u201d he said, as if to a child. \u201cEverything is digital now.\u201d He showed me a remote.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s what I didn\u2019t want, I told him. In my view, the trickier the electronics, the greater the possibility for breakdowns.<\/p>\n \u201cLady,\u201d he said, \u201cwhat planet do you live on?\u201d<\/p>\n Oh, I wasn\u2019t going to be called an alien without combat. \u201cPlanet Greenwich Village!\u201d I snapped. \u201cYou know, twenty blocks north of here.\u201d<\/p>\n I did buy a color TV w\/o a dial, but not then and not from that guy.<\/p>\n But I don’t want you to think I’m a Luddite<\/a>.* Well, not a dyed-in-the-wool one anyway (that was a deliberate pun of which I am ridiculously proud). I am competent enough with my (three or maybe four) remotes to get what I want from my television. I am especially adept at unplugging-and-waiting-five-minutes before plugging in again.<\/p>\n And that seems to be my philosophy of tech life: learn what you need to know to function happily. If you learn everything<\/em>, you’ll stop functioning.<\/p>\n Does that sound defensive? Well, if so, fuck it.<\/p>\n *I just re-read Dickens’ Hard Times<\/a>, <\/em>about English textile workers and their awful owners, at a time (mid-1800’s) when unions began to stir, after the Luddite movement. It reminds me how contemptuous and rigid the millennia-long British class system has been. Working class uprisings were violently destroyed, without any intelligent recognition within the British ruling class of the need to adapt to a society whose majority was poor and working class.<\/p>\n That was my infuriated reaction throughout reading The English: A Social History, 1066-1945<\/em>, by Christopher Hibbert. America’s ruling class wanna-bes have provided us with an excellent short word to describe the British ruling classes and themselves: unwoke. Forever unwoke. Possibly genetically unwoke.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let me introduce this painful topic by telling you a little tale from years ago, a tale involving a television set. Years ago, I was walking home from my Tribeca office when I found myself veering into a big electronics … Continue reading