Digital life.

I forgot to tell you one errand that brought John and Sam north this time. They packed all their CDs — around 600 — into bankers’ boxes, and gave every last one to some friends in the Upper Peninsula. Not because they’re joining an ascetic cult. Not because the U.P. lacks record stores (although it does, at least the last time I was there), but because John and Sam have moved beyond even CDs. They’re an iPod-and-hard drive family now. They are the wave of the future.

John’s an odd sort of early adopter; he can be incredibly sluggish on some things, ahead of the bleeding edge on others. He still has no cell phone, and his cable is primitive, but he was the first person I know to get broadband at home and generally buys the computer today that I’ll be buying in two more years. He does BitTorrent, which I haven’t figured out yet, but I still pay attention when he talks about it, because I know it’s the next step.

He’s trying to make me more Unix-literate. He has his work cut out, as they say.

Another thing: Although John is hugely well-informed, he gets no newspaper, and hasn’t for years. He thinks his hometown rag is less than impressive, and besides, how can one paper satisfy any single reader these days? Like everybody else I know, he reads a little bit of a dozen papers, plus blogs of all stripes, this, that and the other thing.

This bothers newspaper publishers. It should.

Services like Craigslist should bother them more, since classifieds are such a cash cow for newspapers. (The money crunch in newspapers didn’t get serious until the economy went south, taking job classifieds with it.)

Head-scratchers spend a lot of time thinking about these things. I wish I were a head-scratcher these days; they seem to be working quite a bit.

I am a happy girl today. I have a lunch date! With adults! Downtown! I’m a grown-up again!

Full report later.

Posted at 8:25 am in Uncategorized |
 

One response to “Digital life.”

  1. Danny said on March 16, 2005 at 9:44 am

    I’ve been a little shy with BitTorrent because the whole issue of leaving my machine open and unattended makes me a wee bit nervous. But it is intriguing. What have I used it for? Bootleg concert recordings.

    In general, I am vehemently against copyright infringement but, I am a huge fan of the group Yes. I have bought about everything they ever produced multiple times over (original issues, remasters, imports, you name it). So I don’t feel bad getting audience concert recordings. It does not diminish what I will spend for their officially released material. Same goes for Zeppelin. Plus some bands, Yes included, seem to have at least a tacit approval of these recordings.

    They can keep Britney and Christina and Justin.

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