I know I've barely made any progress on Climate Change for the Rest of Us but I've started making some notes for a new project which will use folk songs as a way into history. I've been interested in both for yonks, so it doesn't seem all that self-indulgent a thing to do. The trouble is that it's going to be quite a job researching it all. It'll be a much longer job than the climate change book but I can at least start outlining it and making notes for each of the chapters.
One thing I have to do is come up with a working title. Nothing springs to mind. I thought Songlines sounded good. I then realised it sounded good because of the magazine and website of that name, not to mention Bruce Chatwin's book. So at the moment, it's called the History Songbook. Dull, isn't it? I hope a title will present itself as I write the thing.
Just a quickie...
I've been a little stressed of late. My laptop is a dreadful piece of shit which refuses to do much and the little it does, it does very slowly. I have on occasion been reduced to a frustrated, incoherent, blubbering, foul-mouthed wreck. It hasn't been pretty. I have very little technical knowledge so I can't explain what's happening to the people who can help me. And so it continues...
Part of the problem is that I have no form of release other than swearing at it until it decides to work. Obviously, I can't actually get it to work on my own. I drink very little so I can't have a drink and relax. I only smoke occasionally now so I can't nip out for a fag when it all gets too much. My only remaining coping mechanism is to swear more and more loudly until the page loads, or the document opens or saves.
Pathetic, isn't it?
I know I've talked about this before but it hasn't been since my first entry on this blog, so indulge me a little. What we see in the technology around us is the very best we've been able to achieve so far. Well, I say we when all I can do is touch-type poorly but you know what I mean. After all, the England football team hasn't won a World Cup since 1966 but it's almost as if the entire nation is on the pitch every game of every championship. The collective we is emotionally important. Oops. Halfway through the first paragraph and I've digressed already. Moving on...
I'm disappointed in the way things have gone. You'll have read the banner at the top of the blog. I want my jet pack and a robot butler. I want Moon Base Alpha without the dodgy dress sense. I want my computer to read my mind and do all the boring stuff so I don't have to. I want a ray gun. I don't want anyone else to have a ray gun, especially not nutters in cabins in Montana, but having one myself would be fun. Not that nutters in cabins in Montana would be able to find anywhere to plug it in and recharge it, but still. I could set it to stun and use it on the cats when they're being obstreperous. I could set it on kill for wasps. Think of all the newspaper I'd save!
I'm not saying that there is no cool technology around. I could bore for Scotland on how unutterably wonderful my iPhone is. It it has changed the way I listen to audio. I no longer listen to much live radio. Instead I download podcasts and listen to them when I want. I have Friday Night Comedy from Radio 4 on a Tuesday lunchtime. I never thought it would be so liberating. I can Tweet when I'm having a dump and that amuses me an awful lot more than it should.
If there aren't flying cars yet, there are electric and hybrid ones. I'll witter on about them at length in the book if I ever get the bloody thing written. We have access to an awful lot of knowledge and entertainment more or less instantly and we're still not happy. Okay, I'm still not happy. Maybe it's my inner snob but I don't like the way that however many years after the Mr Nicely Double-Barrelled came up with a way of sharing documents over networks at CERN, Simon Cowell is making millions from stupid people with telephone voting. I know I'm conflating technologies and making no sense at all, but I can't be arsed to do the research right now. And it especially irritates me that while I can remember Simon Fucking Cowell's name, I can't remember the names of the scientists or mathematicians whose inventions allow me to rabbit on at you like this.
Technology is used in business to cut costs more than anything else. There was some talk in the dim and distant past of a leisure society where the work would be done by machines and it would all be powered cheaply by nuclear energy too cheap to meter. Bollocks. The biggest cost in most businesses is labour and businesses have to keep costs low partly to make sure that their prices are competitive in the market and partly to give a return to shareholders. The idea of the leisure society was a nonsense but I so wanted it to be true.
I'd love to live in a society where we can have extended breaks to take care of family committments or do stuff which interests us. I have no children, but my colleagues with children can ask for flexible arrangements in order to look after them. I support that. I'd like to take time off to write, but I can't. There is no mechanism outside of universities for sabbaticals of that kind. If anyone knows of such things, please let me know. If I weren't writing, I could study and improve my technical skills. The business could probably use the things I learn, but can't afford to pay me to take time off to do it.
The long and the short of it is that I'm fed up and I'd like a change. I'm frustrated that there isn't a mechanism for people like me to have a short break of three or six months to do something completely different. I like my job and I don't want to leave it. I can't afford to anyway.
This entry was going to be a rant about something else. It was going to be about how we have all this tech and creativity and it's mostly used for pornography and pictures of cats. Instead it's the germ of another idea. Having thought processes which are overly influenced by a form of Brownian motion has its benefits.
