I am writing this post in the library office of my new home.
Surrounding me are over 2,000 vinyl LPs, about 1,000 CDs, two dozen painstakingly-arranged photo albums, and about 2,000 books of all ages, shapes, sizes and values.
While comforting and secure, I realize that this room is more than my new place to contemplate and compose:
It's a pantheon, a museum, of so many things the Internet has rendered obsolete.
Consider the irony. Accompanying me on my writing adventure tonight is new music from Marc Cohn and Brian Wilson (dig the Gershwin take big time) on a Napster subscription delivered through my Sonos multi-room sound system. There goes the need for those CDs and albums (not to mention the DVDs, 45s and cassettes and even 78s I didn't even want to mention).
Plugged in next to me are both my iPad and my Kindle. While my iPad screen gets greasy and needs a buffing more now and then, it's a lot easy to clean than 22 shelves of dusty hardcovers. And while the debate between the two e-reading experiences rages on, all I can think of is the soreness of my muscles from schlepping, opening, dusting and placing dozens of boxes of heavy pulp fiction...and non-fiction...and graphic novels.
A glance up above to the ring of photo albums reminds me that I have to upload some pix I took at the Paul McCartney concert last week to Flickr...and to digitize the 1000-plus photos I have in plastic cases stored in my co-op's locker downstairs.
So what's the lesson this week?
The Internet has eliminated the need for "stuff."
The late George Carlin created a classic routine in which he described a home merely as "a place for my stuff," and the feeling I get after moving from a house to an apartment this week is that I didn't downsize far enough. Forget operating systems and email clients: "the cloud" now contains the type of things people of my generation once held near and dear. I know my kids will find moving way less of a chore than my wife and I ever did; toss the essentials in an overnight bag and new life here I come!
I'm being facetious, but not my much. Just walking around my new place, I'm pondering what the next category of "stuff" the Internet will eliminate.
--Hmmm...the art on my walls can be replicated, purchased a lot cheaper and changed more often via a video screen.
--What about clothes? I have drawers and hangers full. Perhaps technology will provide us with cotton or paper spinner/printers that would turn out single-use garments that can be recycled after use. Goodbye closet space, washing machines and detergent, which will become as obsolete as, uh, washboards (look at up, as anyone who ever used 'em are long dead).
--Or how about all the booze in my liquor cabinet? Who needs heavy, breakable bottles of fine wine or Johnnie Walker Blue (indulge me, my friends!) when I can get the same effect from a tiny pill? Are today's chemistry labs tomorrow's vineyards or distlleries?
Okay, so maybe I'm tired.
Maybe the move has rendered me a touch melancholy.
But if you think my ideas for the future sounds a little nutty, they're no nuttier than what has happened to my beloved--and now obviously extraneous--music, book and photo collections.
Somewhere up above, George Carlin is chuckling.