What a Travesty

Rafe, we aren't laughing with you, we are laughing at you. And it's depressing to see the editor of Tyee run such rubbish on its site. I'd have more respect for your editorial if you ran another left wing rant typified by anti- (choose one or all of the following) Campbell, Liberal, American, capitalist, globalization rant.

Instead, we have the mutterings of someone who is proud to be inept, ignorant and in the dark. And Mair is supposed to be someone whose opinions about the affairs of the day matter? With such limited access to the outside world, Mair's advice must be anchored in the shallows of his 60s and 70s context. Technology and the ability to use it will be important to solving many of our problems and challenges. Now I know why Mair's only advice is to direct all of us back to the Stone Age.

So Mair and the Editor think we're supposed to chuckle at wiseman Mair when he admits feeble electrical skills? It's a surprise that he can even feed himself. Mair's piece is worse than fluff- it's admitting you're stupid and being proud of it.

The fluff debate

Okay, I don't love this article. Maybe it resonates with an older, less tech-savvy demographic, but I'm sure a lot of us younger readers don't really see the humour.

But, gosh darn it, I will defend the editor's choice to run it! For the most part, I think the Tyee has the best 'fluff' out there--colour pieces that indeed make me think and ponder serious cultural issues.

Not so much in this piece, but there are usually bigger issues in what may seem like trivial topics, and for the most part Tyee culture pieces are pretty good at bringing them up (and I challenge anyone to find an arts feature in the Sun that goes beyond a deeper understanding of the alphabet).

I don't know what it is about Tyee commenters, but tone is something that seems to be completely lost on them. Wit and humour don't seem to be appreciated here, and that's a shame.

It would be nice to see some support for writers who attempt to look at aspects of life beyond Gordon Campbell's bowel movements. A mix of material and a range of tone--from the deadly serious to the light and sunny--is a good thing. It's not like the Tyee is becoming People Magazine. I say keep on with the mix!

Lighten up people. It won't kill you to read articles that offer some range.

Geez

Actually the article was meant to be light and entertaining and it succeeded.

Rafe is not the only person who feels that all that electronic crap should be serving them instead of vice versa.

Fact is most techies couldn't design a simple lightbulb that didn't need 13 pages of instructions.

Besides, since when is IQ measured by how fast you are at recording your non-existent life in your expensive digital notepad.

Perhaps this is as good a place as any

Perhaps this is as good a place as any to begin a conversation about what a lot of commenters (and those I've talked to who don't comment) have been saying about the lack of substantive material that pertains to the Canadian and British Columbian scene here at Tyee lately.

Not to say that I have a problem with the occasional piece of 'fluff' (towelpower's word, not mine) but I do sense the ratio of serious articles to more casual and, dare I say it, barely relevant ones is rapidly changing.

I'll try to steer clear of making specific remarks about particular 'journalists' except in the sense that I suspect an old war horse like Rafe Mair doesn't really feel the need of the kind of nurturing that the editors seem to wish to provide for their writers. As evidenced in the novel redaction of ME2's post above...an edit which, by the juxtaposition of its edits, creates a far more imaginative impression of whatever ME2 may have said than actually leaving the comment in place.

Suffice to say, I suspect that whatever has been blacked out from his(or her) post was not, given the usual style and tone of the writer, particularly offensive.

That's the problem with censorship, at least most censorship; it creates questions and suspicions where none may in fact exist...and, it permits someone in a position of assumed authority to make a judgment about what others ought or ought not read or see.

However, getting back to the point I made at the start of this comment, would I be wrong to assume that a number of readers here share my concern that the ratio of widely interesting and relevant journalism to extremely light (and often copied from another source) material has changed here at Tyee in the last couple of months?

I mean really, Arianna Huffington?

And Rafe, just in passing, you’re not the only one who hates cell phones – though not because of any technical mystery they present – I am equally appalled at the gross wastefulness and lack of manners of the ‘culture’ of using the damn things at every conceivable event in ways which intrude into the already diminished personal space of one’s’ neighbours, friends and, truth to tell, complete strangers. Next time you’re yelling to some interlocutor about what kind of a day YOU’VE had over your omnipresent ‘personal communication device’ please, please, think of the lady across from you, or the guy beside you on the bus who has had just as bad a day as you and is now forced to listen to someone else’s pathetic complaining to top it off. Get a life!

it's Monday so it must be Rafe!

Maybe the reason we see so much "fluff' here is that Tyee has contracted with people like Rafe to provide article at preset intervals, regardless of content?

Maybe this is a good time to illustrate what I meant earlier about lack of good service?
There is no end to the willingness of the employees to help, but the back-up for them is sorely lacking, so they improvise!
Anytime you need anything not a stock item you are likely to get "bafflegab" instead of actual information.
That goes for written instructions as well, even if most by now feature readable english.
It is not a matter of age, but about expecting things to work!

great site .. keep up the great work rafe

keep up the great work rafe!!!!! u gotta great site...people can always leave if they dont like it>

heavies on holidays

maybe its summer and only the fluff people are around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6waXPTSrGiA&eurl=

This was CounterPunches pick for the Website of the day a few days back.

electric stuff

I just got out of my polka dot bikini and off my inflatable sea-horse...or is it a polka dot sea-horse and a ?.....anyway, just wanted to tell you I thought that piece was funny, Rafe. ;-)

A sorta clash of civilizations/culture. A techno converging point....of ummmm...convergence. Old meets new. Serious stuff. ;-)

(Just to make you feel better, Rafe, I remember Jay Leno telling the story about how his mother always used to pick up the remote control and walk all the way across the living room to the TV set and only then finally press the buttons on the remote to change the channel mere inches away from the screen.) ;-)

It may be light...

...but it may also be important. There's no question that technology is rapidly changing virtually, and perhaps absolutely, all aspects of our lives. Those who do not or cannot keep up are being left behind as they drop off of the evolutionary train.

This is already happening in all aspects of business and employment, as well as it is in personal communications.

One could not find employment today in any modern office without computing skills of some kind and increasingly this is case in manufacturing and service industries. The other day I was with a maintenance guy at a community facility that has a new energy-efficient lighting system. No longer just a janitor, he now has to learn how to programme the computer which controls the lighting and probably the heating of the building he's responsible for.

Maybe you can fix your 1970's car with a screwdriver and a pair of pliers but anything newer needs a diagnostic terminal to make it run at its optimum level or to figure out what might be going wrong with it. All machinery is now like this and basic muscle is not sufficient except for the most basic employment.

Last week Ray Kurzweil [Google his Wiki page] described on CBC's 'Ideas' programme how technology is leaping forward at a quantum rate and is affecting everything including energy systems and particularly health-care.

Apple has an application available for its iPhone that can give doctors, anywhere in the world, a detailed close-up 3D view of the human body's interior functions via an on-line diagnostic service utilizing the latest knowledge collected from the latest research from around the world. Far more up-to-date, detailed and interactive than any journal and all in 3D living colour video. One can visually traverse the inner workings of the body, twist and turn, move forward and back and zoom. This may well be a life saver for those doctors in remote regions around the world.

It took seven years to map the first 1% of the human genome. Many said it would take forever but because these new technologies leap forward in quantum measures, it only took another seven years to map the other 99%. That's happening with all developments as we plainly see in data storage devices.

There will be an increasing gap between those who do not embrace and learn new technologies and the young that are born within this revolution.

Get with it Rafe! It'll keep you young!

Gizmo Gods

Though I do not share your problem with electronic gadgets, I do question why so many options on them.

I hate the cell phone, it should not be called a phone in the first place, it should be called a cellmess with an option to phone.

No one seems to use them for a phone only a as a text message sending feature, probably the reason Telus and Bell want to charge 15 cents an incoming message, the see the profitability in this move even though the text message uses smaller bandwith on the signal.

The microwave is another gadget that seems to have too many options, I bet most don't use one setting, high!

"I must be the only person

"I must be the only person in the world who thinks cell phones are going to nuke him."

Oh no you're not, I'm with you there. I developed an earache two days ago which seemed to have abated by Sunday afternoon, until I made a call on my cell and I swear, excruciating pain to my ear while I was talking on the phone! Once I had turned my cell off, the pain subsided again. That creeped me out. The thing I find most disturbing is that I only ever use my right ear to talk on the phone (as I'm deaf in my other ear) and this is the second bad earache in a few months. I never had earaches as a child. Needless to say, whether the phone is causing the pain, or just exacerbating pain caused by something else, I'm thinking of ditching the damn thing completely.

I concur. Just about

I concur. Just about everything made in the past 20 years is badly designed. Sometimes, during paranoid moments, I feel it is done this way deliberately to keep us in a state of frustration, in the hope that we will consume more to assuage our anxiety. I think a lot of these products are designed by people for whom quantity is more important than quality. We are sold products that do 10,000 things badly, when in fact most of us would like something that did 10 things well. Notions of simplicity, ease of repair, which motivated people like Edison and Ford, have long gone by the wayside. I suspect this has to do with profitability, forcing us to buy cheap, poorly made crap that quickly becomes obsolete.

The Gizmo Gods hate me too

The Gizmo Gods hate me too and one wonders why we need so many Gizmo's in todays world. We have been 'high-tech' to death, with gadgets and gizmos, that are deemed essential, which 25 years ago did not even exist.

God help us if we didn't have Nintendo or any other of the mind eroding computer games, our children would just have to go outside to play. You know, run, play soccer or just walk to the store.

90% of the electronic clap trap being marketed is just that - clap trap. Electronic wonders that within a few short years become obsolete and reduced to fodder at garage sales.

In just the past 5 years, there is more information 'on-store' in computers alone, than in the previous 5,000 years.

I like my simple to use, window's 98 Compaq job as it is sufficient to my needs but now is not supported by Microsoft. My wife's year old HP, with Windows Vista job, with all the bangs and whistles, is just dreadful to use. I hate the damn thing as it crashes, refuses to cooperate and is just ill designed.

Which brings me to the end of this rant; the Gizomo Gods, are just really mega corporations marketing ill designed & poorly made, next to useless rubbish to try and pry more money from maxed out consumers, who have precious little to buy the stuff in the first place.

built in obsolescence

I had a Canon combination Printer, Scanner copier which I really liked as it suited my needs perfectly. It had its own little control panel with LED screen was compact and well ..just what I needed. About a month after the warranty expired the printer began to "scrunch" the paper and would become jammed. After exploring all other possibilities I concluded the plastic rollers that grab the paper and roll it through its process had worn in places and were no longer even ..causing the paper to be grabbed unevenly and to "scrunch".

Now the ink replacement for the printer is expensive and I had figured Canon was making an ongoing profit from my printer by selling me overpriced replacement ink every couple of months.

I questioned a known reputable computer dealer about the printer and if in fact it was the rollers causing my problem. Yes the rollers would have worn out he said.
Is it repairable?
Not worth it he said..very expensive.
I said " They could easily have made this thing with rollers that last a lifetime"
He smiled and replied " Of course but how would we fill the landfills"?
But I liked it!
I bought another printer only and would keep the original for the scanner.
I removed the ink tanks from the original and would use them in the new one and save the new tanks as replacements when the other ran out.
The first time I went to use the scanner
in the original printer..the scanner (not requiring ink or paper) and quite separate from the printing process....the machine wouldn`t allow the scanner to be used because it now didn`t see any ink tanks present.
My only way to use the scanner was to wait until the ink in my new printer ran out and place the empty tanks back into the original now useless printer so it could "see" the tanks present and allow the scanner to function.
I have recently encountered someone who seems to have this all figured out.
You may see his work here:
http://m1m.info/Tichy/index.htm

Lost Worlds

And while the Gizmo Gods obsessively blink: Connect. Connect. Connect...... the process itself has become one of human disconnection.... which Rafe's article uniquely reveals as well... the ways in which the Gizmo Gods have changed us as human beings.

A fascinating link, thanks for posting it, bob the cat.

Re: The Joys of Farting Around:

Take the Lint out of your belly button?

There are times when technology can wear on the best of us. Have a real expensive software program but can't make out the serial numbers to download and 3rd party has recipt somewhere? Got trojans, and adware up the tech ying yang to rid yourself of all for $49.95 or hours of deleting files or even crashing your system? Did a download screw up everything you been working on for weeks and finanly get it right to see it disapear as like magic? Do you wonder were the time went when all you were doing was catching up on the daily news but hours go by. Are you spending more time with your new on-line family than your own? Is that how you are meeting new people, online dating? Do your shopping and banking on-line? No its not just a shiny electric box its a new day, and a new way of communicating and interacting.