What If It's The Preacher's Phone?

Hat tip to Mark Shier

Keep Your CPU Out Of My DNA

Every once in a while, an open-minded middle-aged person becomes so exuberant about some new thing and even his own obsolescence that he lapses into sheer nonsense. Daniel Lyons, 50, writing about Apple's rumored new tablet computer, which he actually doesn't know anything about, gushes that, whatever it is, it will be "great and scary":

Great because the techies in Silicon Valley are giving us powerful new tools for telling stories. Scary because the old ways of telling stories are about to become obsolete, and if we cling to them, we'll be washed away. In the past we've all worked in silos. "Print people" had one way of describing the world. "Video people" had another. But the silos are getting crunched together. It's as if for most of your life you could get by speaking only English, but now you need to learn a bunch of other old languages, and, what's more, you must then master a new language that is evolving out of the DNA of all the old ones.

What's scary is when actual journalists surrender so willingly to the notion that improved media technology necessarily entails more advanced values. Actually, I have a friend who does make this case when it comes to medical IT, and I'll stipulate that. My greater concern is for a well-informed public in a complex republic. If it hinges on the Hackosphere as currently constituted, no matter how cool-looking the devices, that we're in big trouble.

The way the most diligent "print people" have of doing their job is called journalism. You interview people in the know, investigate what's going on behind the scenes or under the rug, take your sweet time, and do your best to keep your own ego and preferences our of your copy. "Video people" usually read what print people report, make a few calls of their own, and videotape an interview or two. "Blog people" by and large sit in Starbucks and aggregate and comment on what everyone else is reporting. The shape and size of computer displays don't alter the indispensability of good reporting and well-written, longer-form texts.

Accountablogability

This might as well be me. Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan. A year ago I wasn't blogging, and my life was full. On this most glorious of unallocated days, I tried to figure out where the time is coming from. Neglect of of either vocation? Inconceivable. Of loved ones? Starting to worry about that. Less guitar playing? Unfortunately, although the loved ones reckon it as a blessing. Less reading? More. Fewer movies and reprises of "The West Wing"? Undoubtedly. Less exercise? Oh oh.

Unplugging, I headed out for the traditional three miles around the neighborhood. I sometimes like to listen to music when I walk, plus I took something to read while getting a cup of coffee. Since everyone had gone shopping, I wanted them to be able to reach me. And so I prepared to pocket one device containing the equivalent of 1,000 CDs, another that has the book I'm reading (The Professor and the Madman) plus 20 more and about 45 newspapers and magazines, and a handheld with ten times the computing power of Apollo 11 and the capacity to reach every telephone and web site on earth. This was nuts. I left the BlackBerry home. Ironic, as I think about it.