I suppose there will come a day when some 20-something
guy (face it, it’ll be a guy) in skinny jeans and a hoodie, armed with a 3-D
printer, will succeed in creating a kind of turkey with all the trimmings from
a machine. Judging by the pace of change in our dizzy world, it won’t be long.
If you doubt that, think about this: Google went public less than 10 years ago,
and BlackBerry is already close to being BlackBuried.
After the turkey, the virtual Christmas tree can’t
be far behind. As for Santa and his reindeer? Don’t ask.
Aren’t we tired of this yet?
There are signs that the answer might be yes;
sales of typewriters and ribbons are brisk on eBay, more people are exchanging
and valuing handwritten notes, and turntables and vinyl recordings are the rage
in certain places. The so-called Black Friday, which I have previously
fricasseed in this space, is now more widely recognized more curse than blessing.
In short, there is hope. The milkman may not be
knocking on your door, most newspapers have gone, and the postal carriers’ week
may be shortened (and they always seem
to be on their phones), but farm-to-table is alive with a vengeance, our
firewood hasn’t yet been confiscated, and printed books are holding on nicely.
As we contemplate entering the Age of the
Bitcoin – so new that Word cannot even
spell it yet – there are plenty of us analog pilgrims around and we’re not all
boomers or geezers either; the young are getting fed up with the 24/7
digital feedbag too.
Recently, the people of San Francisco, Ground
Zero for the digerati and e-money* billions, hit their limit when a hapless
young millionaire with the tabloid headline writer's dream name, Shih,
expressed his outrage at the city’s homeless** and other inconveniences. It seems that these were getting
in the way of his desire to complete the purification of any remaining
“edginess” in the city and its many neighborhoods. His claim to fame and
fortune is a payment system called Celery. How cute.
I have just returned from a trip to that city,
and, while there, wondered just the
opposite of what Mr. Shih was thinking. It appeared to me that the city was losing
too much of its edge, with some neighborhoods beginning to too closely resemble,
shudder to say it, Brooklyn.
That is not a compliment.
Fortuitously, I spent some time with a dozen or
so young people there, all of whom exhibited value systems well beyond what Mr.
Shih and his ilk could imagine. Some of them work in the e-industries, but
have little pretension, and know how lucky they are to have good jobs, and to
be able to pay the rent and bills living in San Francisco, Seattle, and
elsewhere.
What are we looking for when we gaze zombie-like into our sell-phones, tablets and computer screens? To paraphrase St. John
of Liverpool, “Life is what’s happening, while you're busy watching your
Inbox.” Do we seriously think that future civilizations will take us seriously
because we figured out myriad ways to share photos, restaurant reviews, and the
too intimate details of our previously private intimacies?
And we can’t erase it; the NSA’s got it all on
file. Forever!
Thanksgiving is real. It is not owned by any
particular religion. There are no presents to buy/exchange. We celebrate a
feast made possible for pilgrims by the natives and their local harvests, and
it does not
get much more heirloom and artisanal than that. Even turkey tastes
good on this day, which is saying something. Oh, and the celery is real. Crunch.
We get together and partake, placing our
normal taking mode on hold, at least for a day.
That’s a good thing. If our culture saves one
thing only, let it be Thanksgiving.
Please. It’s there for the giving.
* a phrase “coined” by the excellent Aussie
writer Peter Temple
** He has since "volunteered" at a homeless shelter
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