American Fez

You've Got Mail

Imagine the dinosaurs gasping with wonder and amazement at the fiery asteroid in the sky which was their eventual undoing. All that glitters is not gold, as they found out at cost, caught between smoldering impact crater and inescapable tar pit. I'm sure there was a wild-eyed Cassandrasaurus who raised the alarm back then, but what self-respecting Velociraptor would've listened to some prehistoric Chicken Little with a walnut-sized brain, even though their own minds were equally as small. But what would it have mattered anyway: the end was nigh; the obliterating comet was unstoppable and there was nothing the ponderous, dim-witted Triceratops could do to save themselves from catastrophe.

I always think of those doomed dinosaurs whenever Internet pop-up windows inform me that "Updates Are Now Available" for my computer programs, or when my inbox is flooded with emails claiming to contain "Time Sensitive Information." These lethal asteroids of unwanted 'improvements' and bewildering 'workflow enhancements' are often an extinction event for the Operating Systems that were working quite well in my home office, leaving nothing but a massive crater of shattered microchips and unpaid software subscriptions. A million years hence, android archaeologists will find a fossil of my Apple keyboard with its depressed escape key still visible in the sedimentary rock.

To survive, of course, I guess we must evolve with the Tech Bros and follow their lead. But I really don't want to crawl out of my desktop sea onto a cloud-based platform, my organic brain superseded by Artificial Intelligence, my fingers replaced by robotic pincers and my two eyes become a pair of QR codes forever scanning a world comprised of zeros and ones. Such a future is enough to make you want to wander back into the deepest recesses of Plato's cave. It's dark in there but at least you have an actual fire and not just a TikTok video of a virtual fireplace with pictures of famous influencers on the mantelpiece. 

"If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change" was perhaps a suitable strategy for the Italian Risorgimento but fails completely in the Digital Age. Things will change anyway now and they most definitely will not be the same as they were. In fact, things will be completely different whether we like it or not because we have absolutely no say in the matter. But change is good, we are told, apparently even when Change walks arm in arm with Progress, dragging us to places we don't want to go and from which there is no return. So I guess this dinosaur will keep wallowing in his tar pit and ignoring the asteroid overhead for as long as he can. Perhaps one day there will be reconstructions of my home office in Museums of Natural History where little boys will buy plastic models of me from the museum shop. Just don't paint me purple and call me Barney.

How The West Was Won

Having been made redundant by Old Father Time, I find myself at a loose end; an end so loose that it is perhaps impossible to find the end, never mind the beginning. My career is in ruins, ruins not dissimilar to an old Western frontier town, once thriving, now derelict and abandoned, a runway for tumbleweeds careening across a deserted street flanked by splintered buildings in various stages of collapse. Only the saloon bar remains. Inside sits the drunken sheriff with double vision, staring at the swinging, creaking doors, fearing the arrival of black-hat bandits long since dead. And I can see multiple reflections of myself in the shards of a broken whisky bottle. This town ain't big enough for all of us, my reflections say, and fire their pistols into space, not particularly quick on the draw, unfortunately. Yes it's finally High Noon for my career and I'm an unemployed gunslinger. What would Clint Eastwood do?

To be honest, all I really want to do is ride off into the sunset. I'm pushing sixty years of age and have worked for most of those, surely I deserve a little house on the prairie where I can retire in peace. Alas, it looks like I'll have to circle my wagons instead, at least for now, blindly shooting at the war tribes of healthcare and taxation and the rising costs of absolutely everything. It's difficult to avoid getting scalped these days. Fortunately, I have my own cavalry commanded by a fearless captain with a magnificent handlebar mustache and a loyal posse of native guides. They're just over the mountain at the moment, but this cavalry is coming, I can hear their hoofbeats and rebel yells. Then, after we've cut the war tribes to pieces, I'll become a pioneer and discover my own California faster than you can say "Pony Express."