Screenworld - Page 4


I used to begin work with a tactile, blank page, making keystrokes on a typewriter whose mechanics I understood. Now I begin with a blank screen on a machine whose technology I can barely comprehend. I don't believe that's changed me as a writer, but I miss the typewriter's clickety-clack, the ding of the margin-bell, the movement of the carriage back and forth, the shudder of my desk under pounded keys. (I blew my first computer keyboard in a matter of weeks, before I learned to type more gently.) The computer, which once seemed alien, is now embedded in the dailiness of my life; but after 12 years, I'm no closer to understanding it. I believe more than ever that a virtual Rome isn't Rome, and is, in fact, nothing like Rome, and I'd rather gaze at the Petrified Forest than photograph it—because, unless one is a photographer of the first rank, there's no way to trap that grandeur in a box. Still, it must mean something that when I look about me, I see screens, screens, screens—everywhere, screens, including right here, in front of me, right now.

At arm's reach are three: the trio of computers accessible from this chair (often I work on two computers at once). Another screen glares across the room—the television. My cell phone, also at arm's reach, has a screen, even though I bought the simplest device possible: it cost 10 bucks, but it can take and transmit photos and movies, and features menus I don't bother to understand.

Now you see screens at checkout counters and laundromats, in restaurants and waiting rooms, and on the dashboards of cars and in their back seats. Millions of regular folks preen for screens on YouTube and Facebook, marketing their image like politicians or starlets. What with Blackberrys, iPhones, and a 10-buck cell, few Americans go anywhere anymore without a screen that connects to every other screen in some way or other, linking to any event or broadcast or data source anywhere, including satellite photos of every address you know, and most you don't.

These screens disconnect us, too. I work where I live, so, theoretically, I need never leave my apartment: I can order shoes, pet food, people food, parts for my car, and lingerie for my girlfriend right here on this screen, and anything purchasable can be delivered right to my door. Now that I think of it, it seems like half the people I know met their present significant others via the screen, and they aren't kids: they're middle-aged and aging.

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