Man vs. Technology

I did it from the keyboard; first guess.

AND! It makes the tickety-tick sounds of an old fashioned typewriter!

I was sitting on the couch. And to bring up the foucuswriter program, I would normally have to lean over to the laptop and use the mouse; but I was feeling too lazy to do that, and the keyboard was in my lap.

I knew there had to be a way to do every darned thing on a computer without a mouse.

And, sure enough, I pressed the Window logo key, and up popped a screen inviting me to search "tags."

Well, I had nothing to lose, and typed in the first couple letters of focuswriter, and then appeared icons for all the applications that's names started with "f," with focuswriter being right there.

Then, I intuitively pressed the tab key and, presto, the highlight jumped from one to the next before landing on focuswriter, to which hitting "enter" was a no-brainer.

I think this was an example of the "hundredth monkey" phenomenon. I somehow knew which keys to press to from the keyboard because so many millenials have taken to their screens who have kind of known from birth how to navigate them -almost everything they try works; "you gotta hold this button down while you drag the other one" -that I have somehow acquired the knowledge, like the hundredth monkey in the parable did.

That phenomenon demonstrates that, once a hundred (in this case) monkeys learn how to do something -to rinse sand off of coconuts in the ocean, for example- then monkeys everywhere will acquire the same knowledge, and will be seen rinsing coconuts off a half a world away.

“Man vs. Technology” had not been appended to the list of catalogued “conflicts” that can complicate a story when I learned about them in 7th grade.

They were something like 7 in number, like the seas, and like the seas, the sum of them were once thought to have been discovered.

Man vs. Nature was always an interesting one, to me.

Ernest Hemmingway once said something like, it’s impossible to have a bad day on a deserted island.

The imagination soon supplies his eyes being gouged out by a huge island bird of some kind, or a volcano erupting and Earnest being boiled to death in the ocean as he tries to flee. What kind of day would that be?

But, Man. vs. Machine was, I believe, on the supposedly finite list of classic conflicts that are found in stories, I wonder if the novel Christine, by Stephen King would fall into that category. Not quite going up against technology.

But, the original “Dewey Decimal System” in the library has been modified to include such things that Dewey had never heard of such as books on UFO’s and aliens (isn’t it funny that, not until Man invented flying machines of his own did he start to see unidentified ones in the sky. Before that it was chariots in the sky. Actually wooden, huge ass, I guess, chariots, lit up for the occasion, but I digress) and topics like how to use asynchronous requests to a server to update a webpage like Google Maps, without having to refresh the page?

Dewey didn’t even leave any room for expansion, should anything come along that didn't fit in his ready made universe. He had it covered from Philosophy at the beginning, because man needs to know “Who am I?” as a prerequisite for everything else, all the way up to the fine arts; man's crowning achievement.  Until computers came along, that is.

The placing of books on theology second is a concession to the second question being: “Who made me?”

But, the new conflict, that 7th grade English teachers will be dealing with will be that of "man vs. technology."

It is Thursday morning.

I went out to busk last night, and was going to set up at the Lilly Pad.

I am thinking that I might have to be arrested and then have the charges dropped by the court, which would hopefully put me in a double jeopardy situation whereby they would decline to arrest me for something they already did but couldn’t make stick.

I don’t know if Lilly would tell them that she has adopted me and that I do indeed live there at 929 Bourbon Street, or what.

But, if she can’t get the individual cop to leave me alone, then maybe he would have to call the local police in order to transfer custody of me to them, who might tell him that I’ve been playing there for years and that they leave me alone.

But, I saw the same white State Police SUV cruising the mostly empty streets of the Quarter, looking suitably bored enough to probably mess with me.

So, I went down to Decatur Street, where I was reminded how lucky I was to be at the Lilly Pad near a bar that stays open until 4 AM and attracts rich people, rather than on Decatur Street where, after the beer and wine store closes, it becomes less busy.

Lilly said that she was going to go to the police station and “see what their problem is with someone playing music.”

She wanted me to text her.

That was at about 1:45 AM, and she had woken up and seen my message, telling her that I didn’t want to play because there weren’t enough tourists out to jeopardize my freedom over, and that the cop might make me put my hands behind my back and never allow me to call her; and that the guy might take it personally as if I had disobeyed a direct order, type of thing.

So, it was good that I went to Decatur Street, because Lilly didn’t see that message until she woke up 3 hours later.

But, I am supposed to text her to ask her how it went at the police station, I assume.

Hopefully, whatever she said last time will work again. But, then again, what would make me change up my life a bit and try new and interesting things, if not something like this?