Commercial Therapy
I’m in love with the modern world.
Specifically, the logistic miracle that allows me to say “Hey, I’ve broken my watch band, and also want a USB-3 to USB-C adapter and a bigger power strip” on Monday, and have it show up in my mailbox on Wednesday.
I mean, I know.
Tomorrow, the swing-arms for my monitor and my laptop should be coming, and a hook to hang my backpack off my standing desk will be coming … on a slow boat from China, I think.
Meanwhile, thanks to the inexpensive grey band for my FitBit, I can track how poorly I sleep tonight, as my subconscious mind ponders how I live in a hidden COVID-19 hot-spot, according to Fortune magazine and Dataminr.
Isn’t that great?
Another thing purchased but also not here yet is the next Murderbot book, Network Effect. (For me, e-book.) Tor gave out the four novellas last week, and I just got drawn in. It’ll be here the same day a replacement set of Bluetooth earbuds comes, to replace the same kind, except those stayed in a pocket when I did laundry.
Might just be me, but I’m feelin’ more Islands in the Net by @bruces than Neuromancer by @GreatDismal recently.
This came about because of a few tweets noting that certain aspects of the current day seemed decidedly cyberpunk. As a teen, that was my jam, even if that terminology wasn’t en vogue in my teens, but now, well into middle age, there’s lots in Islands In The Net by Bruce Sterling that remind me of the current day. Looking back, there are many points where 80s Bruce didn’t recognize where tech would go in the 90s and beyond — people seem to largely be doing their data transfer over dialup, for example — but there’s a lot of the first half of the book that looks like modern remote work and Zoom conversations.
And, speaking of cyberpunk, the artist Rob Sheridan released a series of masks from his “Glitchy Goods” threadless shop, which ship from Corona, California.. I’m thinking that this just the thing to make me feel like a cyberpunk protagonist as I don a mask and tell my digital assistant to darken the room behind me.
Maybe I need to get myself a leather trenchcoat.