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I like cords. You know, those rubber-coated wires that suck electricity out of the wall and feed it to the gizmos, gadgets and gewgaws that have need for it; or that move the yak-yak from the pole outside to the telephone inside, then to the receiver in your hand, reversing the process when you say your hellos and goodbyes and everything in between.
When stuff had cords, life was a lot less complicated.
But is seems cords are out of fashion. The word of the day is wireless. It was also the word of the day a hundred years ago, when telegraph without the telegraph poles was supposed to be just the ticket for keeping ships at sea where post holes are notoriously hard to dig in touch with folks on land so they’d know when their ship was coming in or if it had hit an iceberg or such. Well, wireless didn’t work out too well for the Titanic, and the way things are going, I’m feeling like we’re all in the same boat as Captain Smith.
Cords made civilization, well, more civilized. There was a time when a person had to go somewhere to do some things. If you wanted to make a phone call, listen to the radio, watch television or call up porn on your personal computer, likely you did it in the privacy of your own home and it was unlikely that I would be an involuntary participant in the experience. Cordless, wireless electronics have changed all that in ways that make me very grateful no one has come up with pipeless plumbing.
Time was when folks away from home discussed their personal business, they did it behind he closed doors of a telephone booth. No more. There’s no place too sacred, nor anywhere too profane, to take that all-important call epitomized by Paris Hilton caught on video tape reaching for her cell while, um, otherwise occupied.
But indiscretion isn’t just for the rich and infamous anymore. At the local grocery, right there between the canned peas and the jarred salsa, I find myself sharing in a girlfriend-to-girlfriend discussion of disappointment in matters that can’t but displace my mental grocery list resulting in buttered noodles coming off the evening menu in favor of stuffed zucchini and a baguette.
It all started with the transistor radio, when the sound of birdsong in the woods and waves lapping at the shore had to compete with “the boss sounds in the boss town that the boss told me to play
” It was Tex Ritter and disco, any time, any where, blocking out the wind rustling the leaves at least until the batteries went dead.
For a while batteries were the saving grace for folks subjected to unfettered electronic communications. They went dead with merciful quickness and were annoyingly costly to replace. As long as there was a limit to the duration of the disruption even the Energizer Bunny could generate privacy and personal space hung on by a slender thread, which was soon and regretfully replaced by the re-charger cord.
So now batteries no longer die. Like old soldiers, they just fade away to be revived and refreshed with a Frankensteinian jolt from a wall socket and a little black box. Recently, in the course of an extended family visit, there were nine adults in the house, and scattered on counters, cabinets and end tables, were nine phone chargers n each unique to it’s particular telephone. Although most of the phones were designed, assembled and sold by the same manufacturer not one could share a charger with another. Orphaned chargers are fast displacing half-dead D-cells, salvaged twisty-ties and random pliers, screwdrivers, bottle openers and assorted demagnetized refrigerator magnets in the kitchen junk drawer too good and functional for a frugal Norwegian to throw away, but of no earthly use to anyone not possessed of a working eight-year-old Nokia cell phone.
But equipped with the right connections, those chargers are “Lazarus, come forth!” to a host of inert cell phones, laptops, iPods, Blackberries and other forms of electronic produce and confer on them a veritable operational immortality while allowing them to be carried into all of life’s nooks and crannies where not even the longest cord could reach.
Although the couple at the corner table pop out an earbud before flipping open their phones, and do occasionally look up from the Wi-Fi to gaze into each other’s eyes, I wonder just how well romance lends itself to multi-tasking? But with no plugs to pull or hook to take the phone off of, how will they ever know?
Contact Jerome Christenson at (507) 453-3522 or jchristenson@winonadailynews.com.
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Maybe the WDN could embrace technology... wrote on Oct 2, 2007 7:59 PM: