Ah, my little three thousand dollar typewriter.
posted by nate on December 13, 2003
But now it joins the ranks of my periodically dysfunctional electronic army. The soldiers in lay in clumps around the house, reminders of my lowbudget existence. Recently assigned high-ranking members such as a new laser printer and XBox, born of an all-too-easily-attained credit card, stand aloof and uncomfortably operational.
My intent to write hinging on this failing electro-junkbox get's me thinking about our dependence on electricity. Last night as I waited for the bus, I watched the busy intersection of Powell & Milwaukie for twenty minutes. I noticed the freshly installed blind-friendly crosswalk signals and the complicated tangle of wires connecting the streetlights. I was fascinated that this seeming traffic-control hackjob, the result of a slowly pieced together system & technology, was able to successfully control the endless cars that swerved & meshed & sped every which way.
As soon as the lights fail, I thought, chaos ensues, cars back up, waves of traffic failure spread out for miles. I started wondering what would happen if they just never worked again. (Surely I wasn't the only shitmagnet for electronic dysfunction.) The concept of our dependence on electricity & technology being tested fascinates me. Even this intersection, a tiny nook in a monstrous maze of human growth, would cause so much trouble in failing. What happens when ALL this fails? How would we adapt? How many people would survive?
As a passing thought, it seems so unlikely that our system could fail. Surely someone would bring it back to life before widespread disaster happened. However, I realize that in my experience with the inner-workings of the internet, many of the people at the head of the servers forming the foundations of the tenous cyberspace have very little understanding of what they're doing. When something fails, they often have no idea what happened, let alone what to do. The concept that this scenario would extend to more important and vital services makes me wonder exactly how well our civilization could deal with widespread loss of power. It begins to sound like the plot for a terrible new disaster movie.
The lights go black. TV silent. The heat slowly escapes from the house. Food in the fridge begins to rot. Manufacturing plants come to a halt. Stores close because they can't charge for goods. Financial records disappear. Airports go batshit and planes collide. Who goes to work? What's there to do? Three days go by. No radio. No phones. Suddenly there's a reason to meet your neighbor.
The path back to an animal reliant on earth would be a painful one. Our everyday paradigm has become so reliant on modern conveniences that I can't even picture the steps back to farming, gathering, hunting, to creating light & warmth w/out power. Immediately the massive amounts of pavement and powerlines and skyscrapers and cars become a ridiculous & embarrassing reminder of our past existence. What would replace the ratrace scurry of suit & ties downtown? The perpetual interstate traffic? Our empty routines we've so lazily succumbed to?
So much of our society seems to stem from the fact that surviving is not a concern. Once basic survival is accounted for, we journey out into the brave world of RC car racing, powerline insulator collecting, christmas decorating and the stock exchange.
But I digress. I was writing about my typewriter. And it's now working again. The mere musing about the collapse of our technologically dependent existence has scared it into working, allowing me to finish this. Oh, archaic laptop, how you entertain me from the impending darkness!
And mm.. boxed pizza, baked in my electric oven, with Pabst, a latenight DVD viewing of the Hulk. I turn on some soothing music and turn in for the night. The irony! The irony!
