{"id":37,"date":"1998-03-16T14:42:44","date_gmt":"1998-03-16T14:42:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/1998\/03\/16\/im_a_bad_geek\/"},"modified":"2024-11-27T16:53:36","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T21:53:36","slug":"im_a_bad_geek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/1998\/03\/16\/im_a_bad_geek\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m a Bad Geek"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ll be the first to admit that I\u2019m a big nerd.<\/strong> I was a little slow to give myself over to the world of electronics \u2014 I never played video games very much, and I never used a word processor until I was a sophomore in college \u2014 but I sure as hell made up for lost time. At this point I can work a computer like it\u2019s an extension of my hands. Technical glitches are generally little more than a series of logically connected hurdles to me, and I\u2019ve got good intuition for technical matters that helps me make a few bold leaps along the way. Software makes sense to me, and I love the speedy efficiency of digital technology. I have no fear of it.<\/p>\n

This level of comfort with modern technology extends far beyond the workaday world of computers. Let’s be realistic: even though I may take to computers more easily than others, if I didn’t have some degree of comfort with them I wouldn’t really be able to hold down a job at this point, would I? No, I really like almost all things electronic. I like having an alarm clock that I can set by pushing a couple of buttons while I\u2019m half asleep. I like having voice-mail and managing it without the use of clunky machines and crappy Radio Shack<\/a> tapes. My six-disk CD player is like having a shrine to music inside my apartment. I pride myself on having not spoken to a bank teller in six years except to open an account or purchase foreign currency. And don\u2019t even get me started on how much e-mail has kept my family and friends together as we\u2019ve scattered across the globe.<\/p>\n

A friend once told me that he thought I\u2019d be happiest if I could manage my life while strapped to my computer all day being fed Skittles<\/a> through a pneumatic tube. This is not true, and not just because the Skittles would send my blood sugar level soaring out of control.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m very critical of the media trend \u2014spearheaded by technology pundits,
\nthe advertising efforts of hi-tech companies, and everyone connected to
\nWired<\/a><\/i> magazine \u2014that would have us believe that a better world awaits us in which we can fuse the Internet to our television programming, solve problems at work from the beach, and satisfy all our consumer needs without ever leaving home. I like leaving home and think people should get out more often. You don\u2019t have to live in a cramped New York studio to know that there’s plenty more going on in the outside world to amuse people.<\/p>\n

I worry about the death of printed matter that techno-doomsayers keep threatening. I worry about becoming more isolated from people on a daily basis than I already am. I worry about homogenization of the things I touch and the things I see and the things I read. While I support technology and the convenience, efficiency, and new opportunities it can offer our culture, I worry about what it\u2019s doing to our critical standards and our self-reliance.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a bad geek, because I also believe in lo-tech.<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This attachment to the world of the analog and the physical is not such a mystery to me. For all my enthusiasm for technology, I\u2019ve still learned to view the world around me from the perspective of a craftsman. I\u2019ve spent my whole life trying to understand how things work, how they look, and how they feel. And I\u2019ve tried to understand how to use my eyes, my head, and my own two hands to make things. In the process, I\u2019ve learned how to appreciate the simple efficiency of a sturdy mechanical device, and the appeal of an object that shows the signs of the wear and tear from its past, or simply the process of how it was made.<\/p>\n

Don’t Be Afraid!<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I was just a tyke, I followed in the footsteps of generations of children before me and took apart anything I could once I learned how to use a screwdriver. No appliance, toy, or device was safe from my nimble hand and my inquisitive eye. Of course, the natural consequence to all this was that I also had to figure out how to put everything back together before Mom got home. I grew to love the way things moved and fit together, too, not just the ways in which I could take them apart. Take a good look at the inner workings of a mechanical clock sometime: that\u2019s some pretty cool stuff. Yes, it\u2019s true that these experiences in covering up my tracks taught me certain means of methodical problem-solving that help me deal with computer problems, but they also taught me that most stuff isn’t as hard to fix as most people believe.<\/p>\n

If you approach it from this angle, you can see that understanding lo-tech is about self-sufficiency. You don\u2019t need to call a plumber because your showerhead is leaking. You don\u2019t need to pay for a new bookcase when you can hang some shelves on the wall. You don’t need to pass up that fabulous thrift store table because it has a bum leg. Hell, you don\u2019t even need to hire a contractor to renovate your house or apartment<\/a>!<\/p>\n

Any man or woman armed with a few tools, a healthy appreciation of lo-tech, and a little knack for investigation can take charge of their lives and take care of common household or automotive problems. It\u2019s not beneath you. Self-sufficiency doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that you\u2019ve built a bunker and are still waiting for a nuclear winter. It doesn\u2019t mean that you’re living like a subsistence farmer. It just means that you can have the satisfaction of knowing why something does what it does, and the satisfaction of knowing that you can make sure it keeps doing it. No need to find a plumber at 2 a.m. or a mechanic open on Labor Day. You probably have already realized that it makes sense to cook at home once in a while instead of paying a fortune in restaurant checks and delivery tips: why not take the same approach to other areas of your life?<\/p>\n

Lo-tech self-sufficiency requires a little common sense, a little more
\nelbow grease, and usually a few tools. It can give you a mighty good feeling about yourself, however. (I\u2019m really trying not to say \u201cit\u2019s empowering,\u201d but it\u2019s hard to ignore.) I can\u2019t impress upon you enough the satisfaction that can be derived from accomplishing something with your own two hands. You don’t need to fancy yourself an \u201cartist\u201d to take a little pride in what you can create or
\nfix or assemble.<\/p>\n

You Are Not Alone!<\/strong><\/p>\n

A crucial aspect of my penchant for lo-tech is the physicality of so much of it: the bulk, the noises of the inner workings, the textures, the flaws, and the fingerprints. You get a sense of idiosyncratic personality from old appliances and other objects, and you can also get a sense of their history.<\/p>\n

When you buy a used book, for example, you can see all the evidence of how the people who read it before you moved through it \u2014 the cracks in the spine, the pages folded as bookmarks, maybe some underlined passages or margin notes \u2014 that you\u2019ll never get from a CD-ROM. If you look in your toolbox, you can find scratches on your hammerhead and chips of paint on your pliers and assorted nails and tacks from certain old projects that all remind you of what has been accomplished with those tools in the past. You leave indelible marks on the lo-tech that you use after a while, marks that give you or other users a more visceral sense of history than you\u2019ll get out of a preferences or log file on your computer.<\/p>\n

And lo-tech is often beautiful \u2014 sculptural, texturally rich, perhaps sophisticated and elegant or perhaps crude and immediate. There can be a sense of lost or forgotten magic in an old appliance with a faded wood finish or opalescent Bakelite dials. Believe it or not, there was a time when mass-production involved a greater sense of aesthetics than now, when sleek line and matte black finish alone are supposed to suggest sophistication. And even with objects that are purely utilitarian \u2014 what many might just dismiss as junk \u2014 I often see as miracles of solid workmanship, or great examples of objects made to last. It\u2019s not such a clich\u00e9 to say that they don’t make them like they used to, because frankly \u2014 for good or bad \u2014 they really don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

So don\u2019t believe the hype. Don\u2019t assume that new and electronic is the shit. Take a look in your basement, attic, or local thrift store and open yourself up to the simple pleasures of life, and learn how to be a more tangible part of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ll be the first to admit that I\u2019m a big nerd. I was a little slow to give myself over to the world of electronics \u2014 I never played video games very much, and I never used a word processor until I was a sophomore in college \u2014 but I sure as hell made up … Continue reading “I\u2019m a Bad Geek”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ultrahistorical","category-ultranerdy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71342,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions\/71342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}