{"id":15,"date":"2008-01-14T00:01:21","date_gmt":"2008-01-14T07:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/14\/digital-desert\/"},"modified":"2008-02-02T11:36:53","modified_gmt":"2008-02-02T18:36:53","slug":"digital-desert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=15","title":{"rendered":"Digital Desert"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to the digital desert. The information ice age. The great throwback. For all our advances and conveniences, we&#8217;re losing a bit of what makes us human. More so, we&#8217;re losing touch with an era we still reference, but which most of those under 30 have no clue about.<\/p>\n<p>For example, consider the term <em>clockwise<\/em>. What is that? A digital clock spins in no partiular direction. Last time I checked, they still had analog clocks in the schools. Perhaps that&#8217;s a good think; let&#8217;s resist any trend the Schools might have converting to digital.<\/p>\n<p>How about <em>dialing<\/em> a phone? I collect dial phones. I have one plugged in just for kicks. It works, but it&#8217;s a pain. Still, think of the irony of &#8220;dialing&#8221; a cell phone. Worse, how does one &#8220;hang up&#8221; a cell phone? Yet the terms persist.<\/p>\n<p>Another one: <em>rolling<\/em> a car window up or down. Yeah, junior&#8217;s first car may not have automatic windows. There will be a little crank there, which he has to twist to make the window go up or down. Even so, today when I&#8217;m out driving and I tell the kids to &#8220;roll up&#8221; their windows, they do know what to do. They just aren&#8217;t aware of how the term came about.<\/p>\n<p>Still, maybe things aren&#8217;t so bad, after all. Everyone uses oddball terms from centuries past: <em>crossing the threashold<\/em> comes to mind as does a <em>carbon copy<\/em> in e-mail. The spot above a car&#8217;s tire is called a <em>fender<\/em>, though it&#8217;s really not a fender any more. And the keys on your computer keyboard are staggered in the same pattern that allowed for a typewriter&#8217;s leavers not to jam.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Oh Noes Dept.<\/strong> The British school system is being told by its owners <a href=\"http:\/\/www.informationweek.com\/news\/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205602879\" target=\"new\"><em>not<\/em> to upgrade to Windows Vista or Office 2007<\/a> or both! No way! Don&#8217;t do it! What a great advertisement that is. For me, any time the government says not to do something then, by golly, I want to do it! And the decision is silly, too: it means the schools will, once again, lag behind the technology curve. Oh no!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Banned for Life Dept.<\/strong> Beware the bloggers! Or so the saying went during last week&#8217;s Comsumer Electronics Show. Actually, the show&#8217;s vendors called them <em>bloggies<\/em>, but that didn&#8217;t help a so-called blogger from the website <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/\" target=\"new\">Gizmodo<\/a>. Using an aptly-named device called TV-B-Gone, the bloggie had some fun turning off a wall of LCD televisions. Ha-ha. But the jokes on the bloggie as he&#8217;s been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.news.com\/8301-10784_3-9849168-7.html?tag=nefd.only\" target=\"new\">banned for life<\/a> from future CES expositions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to the digital desert. The information ice age. The great throwback. For all our advances and conveniences, we&#8217;re losing a bit of what makes us human. More so, we&#8217;re losing touch with an era we still reference, but which most of those under 30 have no clue about. For example, consider the term clockwise. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}