The “Obsolete Technology” Proposal
My work is online and uses “Flash”, “Quicktime”, and “websites” seen through
“browsers” on “VDTs” (“video display terminals”). All of this stuff is
hopelessly out of date, obsolete, and functionally worthless. The only
people who will tell you otherwise work for mobile phone companies,
or they are electronics salesmen, teachers, politicians, employers, employees,
journalists, apologists. While the academes get itchy and excited about
“remix culture” you and I live in a sea of useless downloads. Movies
that won’t play without the proper plug-in, sound files that won’t do
their dance without some obscure unlocateable codec. Digital Rights
Management: I have seen the future and in it you get charged for
whistling a tune you heard on the subway: your iPod is a surveillance
device for a detailed anthropology of the present. What is the
alternative? Where is the hope? Hanging out in trees with our shoes off?
Not ’til the weather gets better! In the meantime, we make social wedges
and spaces for confusion and noise.
What is the proposal? It has some cameras and some screens, the screens
are fun but you don’t stare mindlessly at them because there are
several people in your way. You stare mindlessly at them instead. Soon
you are all talking and laughing. Drinks are poured, we make phone calls
and update databases. It is called Warm Not Cold. And here is a sample of it: https://propertyistheft.com/warmnotcold
Al Larsen
April 16, 2006