Why Stories
I wrote this around the New Year for Gizmodo, but for some reason (it’s super fruity?) it got lost in the shuffle, so here it is.
Fire was not the first technology. It was the alphabet. By allowing us to tell a story, the transmission of knowledge blossomed, from myth to story to joke. And despite what some may think, that’s what our gadgets do today.
My brain has been trying to close the chapter on this decade, because that’s what it is built to do. Is what we do important? Does helping to create a site like Gizmodo move our culture forward? Or are we simply acting as agents to uncheck consumption?
On the last point, I must concede. We’re probably harming as much as we’re helping, albeit no worse than any catalog or social gathering where one can show off a new toy or talk shop about the next.
But I’ve noticed for a long time a reticence by my peers—by which I mean the average yapping fuckhole on the internet, myself included—to adopt a position of post-innovation hipsterism. To express an attitude of so-over-it before things have barely begun.
Take Twitter. (Please!) Is it a distraction? It can be. Better to acknowledge it as protocol, the latest vector through which we communicate, regardless of what story we choose to actually tell.
It’s the story that matters. And our technology, our internet—or our gadgets by which we interface that internet—are tools for telling stories. Big stories. Little stories. And with the blossoming of sensors and passive collection of our personal data, stories that lie in wait, that won’t even be told until someone else recognizes they are there to tell.
Forgive me some dreaming. What will our gadgets look like in the next decade? It is certain they will be less and less visible. The smartphone lump will get more powerful and more aware of its surroundings, communicating data passively at all points. If I want to know the air quality around you and whether or not you’re still smoking, I’ll just ask your phone.
Augmented reality will work, and while I’m not convinced that mirrorshades will end up being the best solution, the technology to embed graphical overlays onto our glasses and perhaps even our contacts will advance at least to a point where we can try it on for size. If the price is right, every pane of glass or mirror will be double as a display.
The keyboard will probably become a specialized tool, much as we’re seeing the same happen to the mouse today. Cameras will eye us, microphones will listen to us, and together they’ll do their best to guess our meaning.
But more surely than anything, I expect our interface to the internet—through the internet—to our friends, family, and species will continue to flourish. Gadgets will provide increasingly granular elements of data, while engineers will dream up new ways to weave those bits into narratives that let us understand ourselves in new ways; or failing that, at least experience the banality of our fellow man with increased fidelity.
Stories are what matter. Stories are what make us human, what gives our outsized brain a reason to exist, even if our capacity to tell them, listen to them, and understand our existence through them is an accidental byproduct of an efficiency first developed to better hunt, feed, and reproduce.
Which is why, even though it may be lackadaisical or unprofessional to some for a simple gadget blog to stray beyond the bounds of firmware updates and product releases, I believe technology journalism remains one of the vibrant places to explore the human condition.
Any tool user can succumb to the navel-song of shop talk, if only to dream for a moment about the stories they might hear or tell if only their rock had a sharper edge or their pen a carbon-fiber quill. But to ignore the story of our storytelling—the exciting boundary where new technology lets new stories be uncovered and old stories told in a new way—is doing a disservice to everyone.
Because why are we here at all if not to tell our stories; and to braid ours with every new fiber we can invent?
Notes I Will Never Use: Amtrak
Romance has fled from travel. Flight is humiliating. Frisked and stacked nearly upright, airline passengers are captive patrons of the world’s least appetizing snack bars. Who rides the bus? Subways have utilitarian charm, but little grace.
In America, if we want to travel with the last scraps of class, we’re left with the train. I’m on one right now: Amtrak’s Coast Starlight, which runs the western ridges from Seattle to San Diego.
It’s not fast. To get from Eugene, Oregon—my current wet home—to Petaluma, California, will take about 18 hours. That’s at least eight more than I’d need to travel by car and something like 14 more than it would take by plane, even with security screenings and travel to and from the airports.
But one doesn’t take the train for speed, at least not in America. You take the train for comfort. And despite the best efforts of my fellow train travelers, there’s still no more welcoming way to get around than by train.
Compared to the typical airline seat, even the coach-class seats on a train are miracles. I’m 6′4″—on some airlines I literally do not fit into economy seats—but here my knees have at least six inches to go before they would rest on the seat forward. If I push a knob that looks like the gear shift on an old riding lawnmower I can extend a leg support, which when added to the seat backs which can recline past 45 degrees, make it possible to sleep in relative comfort.
The attendants—I’m not sure what they’re called on the railways—provide pillows that approach normal size. That’s a miracle unto itself.
But you aren’t confined to your seat. A snack bar is open for several hours, complete with bottle of cheap wine and cans of beer. Entire sections of cars are dedicated to lounges, with diner-style booths or individual seats that face the bay windows. It would be beautiful if it weren’t night; the lines of the Coach Starlight enter territory so remote that there’s not a single light to be seen out either window of the train.
It’s a shame, then, that so many passengers have forgotten how to act in a shared space. Families crowd around expensive cans of beers in the lounge, bragging about how they have enough money to buy every can of beer on board, but that they simply choose not to.
Things I Have Been Writing and Yapping
I’m back on board at Gizmodo, sans title, but I think you could call me a “contributing editor” or some such. Check your local internet for details.
I wrote this piece for The Awl, about New York and my ejaculatory experiences thereon.
I was interviewed from the showfloor of CES by All Things Considered about the future of cars and gadgets.
I was also interviewed by BBC Radio 4’s Americana about sex and technology. (I haven’t heard this one yet, but I’m pretty sure it’s mostly about how much I love porn.)
Review: Canon HF20 camcorder in a Canon WP-V1 underwater housing (with video)
From my review of the Canon HF20 and WP-V1 underwater camcorder set on Gizmodo:
But once I got underwater and watched many of the divers struggling with their rigs, catching protuberances on errant kelp fronds, I felt a little better about wielding this simple Canon setup. As a point-and-shoot (and shoot and shoot) piece of equipment, the whole rig is simple, capable, durable, and—especially compared to similar underwater gear of just a couple years back—cheap enough that it won’t be a tragedy when it gets lost at sea. The street price of the HF20 (an AVCHD camcorder with 32GB of flash memory) is $800; the WP-V1 can be found for around $400.
Review: H2O Audio iDive 300 underwater iPhone case
I reviewed the H2O Audio iDive 300 Deep Dive Waterproof Case for Gizmodo:
I affected an air of what I hoped would be perceived the other divers as seasoning before I jumped in with the iDive 300.“Seems like a pain in the ass to me,” I groused. “Just one more thing to break.” The other divers on deck responded in kind, mostly preoccupied with their own pre-flight checklists. “Don’t know why you’d want to even listen to music, really,” I said to their backs.
And I was right—it was a huge pain in the ass. At least at first, with the headphone cords whipping around my head very much like kelp; the case itself trying to spring to the surface, twisting the screen of my iPhone upside down; the music at once blaring and then fading to muddled distortion as my middle ear pressure equalized. (Truth be told, I could never quite figure out why the volume would vary so much, as it would often fluctuate even while I remained at a consistent depth. There’s something about the way the speakers make pressure and sound that I don’t quite understand.)