699 lines
20 KiB
Plaintext
699 lines
20 KiB
Plaintext
From slcpi!govt.shearson.com!mjohnsto@uunet.UU.NET Mon Jan 7 18:46:54 1991
|
|
To: wordy@Corp
|
|
Subject: chapter-43
|
|
|
|
GAMBLING, GADGETS, AND GOD
|
|
|
|
#43 in the second online CAA series
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
by
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
|
|
|
|
Louisville, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Columbus, Dayton, Atlanta, etc.
|
|
|
|
May 19, 1988
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
copyright 1988, Steven K. Roberts
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
IN THE AIR, WESTBOUND:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
An unreal sense of detachment strikes me now, after a half-decade of
|
|
|
|
visceral struggle against wind, gravity, motivation, and (most recently)
|
|
|
|
bus-mechanics. It's confusing, oddly serene: the sweat on my forehead is an
|
|
|
|
abstract brew of managerial stress and poor ventilation, not the healthy
|
|
|
|
coolant of a bio-engine at cruising speed. The air, touched with pre-ban
|
|
|
|
cigarette stench, whistles down at me through a nozzle. I need nitrous... or
|
|
|
|
perhaps a martini. Flying is at once a celebration of technology and a descent
|
|
|
|
into madness.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
What else? Cars, like a queue of orderly comets, follow their own
|
|
|
|
incandescent tails. Dallas, jewel-like, is incomprehensibly lovely despite the
|
|
|
|
frenzy of its reality. An old man beside me mutters about airline food,
|
|
|
|
psychiatry, dog-eat-dog, attorneys, and San Diego. I pass, data-like, through
|
|
|
|
a giant multiplexer- demultiplexer, otherwise known as DFW. Odd commentary
|
|
|
|
crackles through the PA system: "Please don't leave carrion baggage in the
|
|
|
|
aisles... please remain seated while we prepare for a rival."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Much has changed since the advent of the mother ship. The business
|
|
|
|
structure -- the very notion of a "universe interface" under remote
|
|
|
|
network/laptop control -- has given way to a communications- concentrator near
|
|
|
|
Louisville (CAABASE online, Ric Manning in person) and a busload of business
|
|
|
|
trappings. And the Wondrous Winnebiko -- once the very infrastructure of my
|
|
|
|
dreams -- is now the showpiece of our act... trucked from show to show, ramped
|
|
|
|
out the rusty old emergency exit at the whim of reporters, wheeled a few miles
|
|
|
|
a week (if that) through crowds, before cameras, and across floodlit stages. A
|
|
|
|
sellout? Moi?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Well, I suppose it had to happen eventually... the nomadic life exhausts,
|
|
|
|
torments, teases with delights just out of reach and comforts unrealized. Yet
|
|
|
|
always I default to a life of change, dreading commitments to place, person,
|
|
|
|
style, culture, career. I have wandered, inhaled the vapors of beginnings, and
|
|
|
|
frolicked in a world of technology and magic, sweat and ecstasy -- knowing that
|
|
|
|
always, somewhere ahead, has been THE BOOK, a seeming fantasy when viewed from
|
|
|
|
the dimly understood trenches of the publishing wars.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Well, now it's real. Suddenly, "Computing Across America" is not just an
|
|
|
|
adventure -- it's a job. It takes many forms: Marketing. Hustling for PR (and
|
|
|
|
PR agents). Restructuring a business flawed by skewed expectations.
|
|
|
|
Consulting. Flirting with joint-venture opportunities. Flying to Vegas to
|
|
|
|
share a trade show with a client -- only to fly back in day, write two
|
|
|
|
articles, dash to the Dayton Hamfest for a speech and a display, drive to
|
|
|
|
Louisville to address a computer club, share a booth at Spring COMDEX in
|
|
|
|
Atlanta... well, you get the idea. It's been crazy like this since my last
|
|
|
|
update, with a whole new kind of overload the norm and the cycling life a sort
|
|
|
|
of gauzy Harlequin memory of new romances and sunsets.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In a sense, especially compared to the American Dream, this bus life
|
|
|
|
(complete with bus-cat Venus Biscuit Snow) is still a wild life of
|
|
|
|
nomadness.... of strange excesses and uncertain futures. Yet it now has the
|
|
|
|
tame flavor of stability -- a regimented diet of freeway foods after years of
|
|
|
|
eccentric back-roads cuisine. This is as close to settling down as I can get
|
|
|
|
without recoiling in panic and hitting the road all over again. But I feel on
|
|
|
|
the edge nevertheless... the bike looks more and more inviting... and change is
|
|
|
|
in the air.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
* * *
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Culture shock. I wake, too early, stretch and reach for the phone in my
|
|
|
|
14th-floor Las Vegas suite, larger than many houses. Maggie's 2,500 miles away,
|
|
|
|
on an Ohio farm. Stumbling to the window, I gaze over a city already teeming
|
|
|
|
at 6:30 -- and beyond it, snow- dusted peaks ablaze in morning sun. The
|
|
|
|
mountains... I stare at them in shock, recalling in a sudden rush the violent
|
|
|
|
speed, the granny grades, the kind of experiences that led me to comment in the
|
|
|
|
book: "This is bicycle touring at its best. Sweat your ass off for hours in
|
|
|
|
rugged alpine beauty, then give it all back in one glorious, insane orgasm of
|
|
|
|
speed and ecstasy." There's a tear in my eye.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
But not today. Today I'm in a renegade variant of yuppie-garb, not a
|
|
|
|
sweat-soaked T-shirt. I WUSSSEL, lift downstairs, and blink bedazzled through
|
|
|
|
a gaudy forest of slot machines toward the coffee shop. I stop, obbligato, and
|
|
|
|
discard my pocket change; I pause to marvel at the hopefuls already encamped
|
|
|
|
with bins of clinking quarters while most of the world commutes.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I move on. The trade show that drew me here is the annual Expo of the
|
|
|
|
land mobile radio industry, including everything from pocket cellular phones to
|
|
|
|
radio tower flashers. Footpounding, arms leaden with literature, I trudge the
|
|
|
|
exhibits, probing for clues to the components of a client's future product.
|
|
|
|
Where's my bike? I fight to keep it out of conversation as I interview
|
|
|
|
manufacturers about radio interfacing and battery characteristics.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Vegas night. The colors on all levels are dazzling, from a cream-blazing
|
|
|
|
sky of backlit thunderheads and complex reflections to the frenetic madness of
|
|
|
|
the casinos. My companions and I find our way to Caesar's Palace, buy rolls of
|
|
|
|
quarters, and begin the statistically inevitable slide to zero, punctuated by
|
|
|
|
moments of anomalous fortune recognized as peaks only in depressed retrospect.
|
|
|
|
Expensive dinner. The heart-pounding sight of an elevator-borne miniskirt.
|
|
|
|
Opulence to the point of absurdity. The humbling presence of hundred-dollar
|
|
|
|
slot machines, roped-off from us penny-ante riffraff. Smoky tables of green
|
|
|
|
felt, hundreds of them, fortunes riding on roulette wheels, cards, and the
|
|
|
|
random fall of dice. A vast room of sports video screens and
|
|
|
|
computer-generated displays where you can bet your net worth (and then some) on
|
|
|
|
anything from tennis to dog races. And strangest of all, the serious faces of
|
|
|
|
those who aren't, like us, just dropping in for a night of weirdness: a man,
|
|
|
|
unsmiling, raking in $800 in chips only to slide them back onto the table a
|
|
|
|
moment later; another, unperturbed, losing $300 at a turn of a card only to
|
|
|
|
light another cigarette and hand over his credit card for more chances. At the
|
|
|
|
slots, the SERIOUS players show no emotion at a triple-bar -- they just pause
|
|
|
|
while coins cascade noisily into a stainless-steel bin, ignore the stares of
|
|
|
|
the tourists, and resume their rhythm in the hope that tonight will be the
|
|
|
|
night of the million-dollar jackpot.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Three A.M. Street life has thinned, but in the casinos the din continues.
|
|
|
|
I walk into a smut store -- all garbage, quarter admission, a seedy employee
|
|
|
|
swabbing down the movie booths with antiseptic. I gag, turn down a side
|
|
|
|
street, and sense the change in clientele by the ratio of nickel, quarter, and
|
|
|
|
dollar slots. My $16 investment in Lady Luck, at one point hitting over $40,
|
|
|
|
is now down to a single quarter. I save it for a phone call and trudge to the
|
|
|
|
hotel.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
From my 14th-floor window, the desert night seems poignant -- silent and
|
|
|
|
vast above the stragglers stumbling home in numb drunken regret, the megawatts
|
|
|
|
of animated signage, the 24-hour "adult" book store inviting the sleazy from
|
|
|
|
the shadows. Heavy-lidded, I stare out the window till 5 -- staying up far too
|
|
|
|
late for a jet-lagged 35-year- old with a 7 A.M. flight...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
* * *
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
...which they oversold. I sit jammed in the American Airlines waiting
|
|
|
|
lounge and watch the ticket agent grow more and more stressed by the reactions
|
|
|
|
of would-be passengers (you know the scene: grumbles, moans, pleas, rolled
|
|
|
|
eyes, threats, righteous indignation, confusion, curses, protestations about
|
|
|
|
stupid goddam airline policies, and the slumped shoulders of total defeat). I
|
|
|
|
have a confirmed seat, but catch her eye. "Hey, I'm on a flexible schedule
|
|
|
|
today. Need a volunteer?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Oh yes, yes!" she cries -- and within a half hour I find myself with a
|
|
|
|
first-class ticket to Ohio as well as a $300 "travel voucher" good for any
|
|
|
|
American flight in the next year. Feeling lucky and tired at the same time, I
|
|
|
|
take my leftover quarter over to a slot machine and receive 24 in return. Ah.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I wander to the airport coffee shop for an overpriced, hyper- sweet
|
|
|
|
cinnamon roll and a liter of coffee... and feel a chin on my shoulder and
|
|
|
|
breath in my ear as I try to write. "Hey, what kind of laptop is that?" The
|
|
|
|
guy wants to carry a searchable 11-megabyte concordance of the Bible for easy
|
|
|
|
reference, so I put him in touch with some vendors and sell him a copy of
|
|
|
|
Computing Across America as an antidote to theology.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
But now I have both time and caffiene to kill. I haul the 24 quarters
|
|
|
|
back over to the bandits and lose them all so quickly that I hardly feel the
|
|
|
|
pain... but the very last one gets stuck in the slot. I almost write it off,
|
|
|
|
but welcoming the excuse to talk to Kathy the adorable attendant I casually
|
|
|
|
mention the problem. She hands me a quarter. "This is lucky," she says with a
|
|
|
|
wink.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Then I'll let you tell me where to insert it," I reply with a smile,
|
|
|
|
looking her up and down with obvious appreciation. "Here?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"No! Not this one... that one over there. I think it's ready to pay off
|
|
|
|
-- a woman just lost about $50 in it."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I drop the lucky coin into the indicated machine and immediately receive
|
|
|
|
20 in return. "Should I quit now?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"I wouldn't. It's READY..." (This in a sort of cooing voice that has me
|
|
|
|
doing lightning calculations about departure times.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I drop in three quarters and am rewarded with a shower of silver,
|
|
|
|
clattering into the stainless steel bin with an industrial din. Short-lived,
|
|
|
|
but sweet: I cash in $16 worth, realizing that with the exception of odd bits
|
|
|
|
of pocket change I am exactly where I started the night before.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I hand her a book, suitably inscribed, and sit back with my $300 airline
|
|
|
|
winnings to await first-class passage on the great silver slot machine in the
|
|
|
|
sky. I feel better already.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
* * *
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Back east. The Las Vegas trip stands out as a sort of mini- adventure
|
|
|
|
against a uniform backdrop of bus travel. We've fallen into the rhythm now,
|
|
|
|
hassling with places to park, dealing with mechanics of varying skill,
|
|
|
|
acquiring far too much junk and spending hours figuring out where in the bus to
|
|
|
|
cram it. If anything, 3,000 miles of motorized movement has convinced me that
|
|
|
|
this is not the way to do it -- despite the smooth allure of that seductive
|
|
|
|
$225,000 Custom Coach I test-drove a few weeks ago in Ohio...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Yes, it's been over 3,000 miles since my last GEnie update. This is
|
|
|
|
embarrassing. From Key West we returned to Orlando for the "Hamcation" and
|
|
|
|
some visiting -- then drove to Tallahassee to demo the bike for the capitol
|
|
|
|
press corps and flirt with a PBS crew. In Valdosta, we slept in SAFT's
|
|
|
|
backyard and toured their NiCad battery plant -- then a hard drive landed us in
|
|
|
|
Charlotte for another hamfest, as well as a consulting gig. Then off to
|
|
|
|
Greensboro and Raleigh, up to Richmond, across hilly West Virginia to
|
|
|
|
Louisville -- doing shows, media, visits at every stop. Frenzy! We camped in
|
|
|
|
my parents' field for a while, then rolled up to Columbus to dismantle the
|
|
|
|
incompetent accounting office and relax on a farm east of Marion. Then a big
|
|
|
|
one: the Dayton Hamvention. After that: Louisville again for a computer club
|
|
|
|
talk... then Atlanta for a week of hardcore COMDEX burnout (exhausting, but
|
|
|
|
worth it). You get the idea. At this moment, we're taking a deep breath in
|
|
|
|
Norcross and getting ready, after new kingpins and a front-end alignment, to
|
|
|
|
hit the road to Charlotte, then to Richmond for a month of consulting, down to
|
|
|
|
New Orleans for a library conference, then out to the west coast to find a
|
|
|
|
Winnebiko III staging area...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
But you see the problem. On the bike, all this mileage would have spawned
|
|
|
|
a dozen spirited chapters -- not to mention a convoluted trail of new friends
|
|
|
|
and old tires. We have traded adventure for business, passion for frenzy,
|
|
|
|
hearth for fire. As such, I've opened a new subdirectory and a notebook
|
|
|
|
entitled "CAA-3."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Yup, I think it was the back-to-back combination of Dayton and COMDEX that
|
|
|
|
triggered it. New technology... new sponsors... new ideas... it all leads
|
|
|
|
inevitably to a serious lust for the road.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
* * *
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Norcross nights. Vibrant Magneplanars and games of rotation atop scarred
|
|
|
|
green felt, white cat-walks and Aquavit-lubed strategizing, new friends Jim and
|
|
|
|
Irish Ellie. What's the restlessness all about? With the myriad temptations of
|
|
|
|
professional lucrativity confronting me in every upscale American suburb, why
|
|
|
|
this continuing obsession with huffing a fragile, expensive contraption along
|
|
|
|
glass-strewn concrete in the company of drunks and myopic Olds ladies?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Must be a blend of technoid addiction, love of change, and the pure
|
|
|
|
selfish desire to enjoy life. Think about it: how much human energy is really
|
|
|
|
dedicated to happiness? How many decisions are guided by intuition... and how
|
|
|
|
many are driven by obligation, rationalization, and the countless "shoulds" and
|
|
|
|
"shouldn'ts" that accompany everything from family birthdays to religion?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Living selfishly is not a bad thing, of course, and if you cringe at the
|
|
|
|
thought, note that doing something special for someone you love can be just as
|
|
|
|
much of a healthy selfish act as curling up pseudo-sick with a book and a
|
|
|
|
brandy when the rest of your family is involved in some kind of ghastly
|
|
|
|
smoke-filled obbligato social event. The point is that YOU are the bottom
|
|
|
|
line... it's YOUR life... it's YOUR happiness at stake. If you don't make it
|
|
|
|
work, nobody will! If adventure calls, go do it; if you lust for a darkroom,
|
|
|
|
clear out the guest room and get busy.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The hard part is sorting out all the choices, for there are a lot of
|
|
|
|
things that make us technoid Americans happy. A killer stereo system or a new
|
|
|
|
motorcycle? A state-of-the art laboratory or a TVRO- equipped cabin in the
|
|
|
|
mountains? A serious library or a starlight- aided Celestron in a leased Ft.
|
|
|
|
Lauderdale high-rise? A Mac II or a closet full of Uzis and FNs? A high-tech
|
|
|
|
big-bucks career... or life on a computerized bicycle?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The emotional choices are even more subtle: Do you do what you want, or
|
|
|
|
sublimate the whole panoply of sweet expensive lusts by dedicating your passing
|
|
|
|
life to a set of commitments... some foisted upon you by circumstance, some
|
|
|
|
expected by society, others made decades before you knew better?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
More and more, we are being taught that personal gratification is wrong --
|
|
|
|
that learning exotic ways to satisfy human desires amounts to a renunciation of
|
|
|
|
Faith, an affront against the Lord, and is antisocial to boot. Ignorance has
|
|
|
|
been canonized, formalized, and packaged with marketing brilliance worthy of
|
|
|
|
Madison Ave, with the result that few people in this otherwise advanced culture
|
|
|
|
can deny the existence of an external God without a twinge of guilt and fear.
|
|
|
|
This is effective programming, for it's not just a product they're selling,
|
|
|
|
it's a world-view -- a set of protocols, a firmware package designed for
|
|
|
|
involuntary implantation PRIOR to the development of self- awareness. By the
|
|
|
|
time a human reaches some measure of sentience, perception has been thoroughly
|
|
|
|
colored by Christian myth and guilt- motivation. Intelligence (which should
|
|
|
|
flourish as naturally as a healthy jungle) appears in neat cultivated rows --
|
|
|
|
shaped, pruned, protected from reality, monitored too closely, weeded
|
|
|
|
mercilessly, and rendered quite incapable of brilliance and surprise.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
If this sort of behavior were part of a commercial enterprise (like
|
|
|
|
selling a brand of beer subliminally), the lawsuits would fly. But it is our
|
|
|
|
very CONTEXT that is being manipulated, the frame of reference with with we
|
|
|
|
view the world. This is below the level of choice. If you feel guilty about
|
|
|
|
not attending Sunday rituals, close your eyes when others pray over dinner, or
|
|
|
|
feel that sex outside the sacred rite of marriage is fundamentally wrong, then
|
|
|
|
your kernel and BIOS have been corrupted by a cultural virus -- a
|
|
|
|
self-replicating piece of code that defends itself with GUILT and propagates
|
|
|
|
itself via the most innocent of psychological downloading sessions
|
|
|
|
(conversation, TV, Reader's Digest, school, church, etcetera).
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
So what's it all about, anyway? Why this universal hunger for an
|
|
|
|
obsessive-compulsive neurosis (easily misread as a demonstration of its truth)?
|
|
|
|
There are three simple reasons:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
First, we DON'T know it all, the universe is incomprehensibly complex, and
|
|
|
|
it's very comforting to believe that Someone Is In Charge and It All Means
|
|
|
|
Something. Science chips away at ignorance, but it has a long way to go.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Second, there's a strong need for a behavioral code -- for there are still
|
|
|
|
many in this society too primitive to notice that such things are self-evident.
|
|
|
|
Most of the Ten Commandments make perfect sense, of course, as do the golden
|
|
|
|
rule and various other tenets of good, moral behavior. Easterners add a neat
|
|
|
|
twist with the notion of "karma," which -- unlike the sin-and-do-penance
|
|
|
|
approach of Christianity -- implies that if you're nasty to someone, it's going
|
|
|
|
to come around and whack you up 'side the head someday. (My karma ran over my
|
|
|
|
dogma.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Third, we social humans thrive on mutual support. We like clubs, and we
|
|
|
|
like to feel more advanced than beginners (hence the popularity of ranking and
|
|
|
|
scoring systems). Churches offer a powerful sense of belonging with no demands
|
|
|
|
on skill or intelligence, yielding a stronger community force than anything
|
|
|
|
else in America. They even have a built-in advantage over family, since there
|
|
|
|
is the implication of being nearer to Him... a vague objective which is never
|
|
|
|
seriously questioned.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Given all this, we have a staggering task ahead of us if we're to work on
|
|
|
|
evolving ourselves into an aware, intuitive post-Christian society.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
* * *
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
None of which has much to do with a bicycle trip, except for this: it has
|
|
|
|
everything to do with a bicycle trip. Back when I designed industrial control
|
|
|
|
systems, I worked just as hard for creative solutions but only communicated
|
|
|
|
with one client and a few local friends at a time. Over 16,000 pedaling miles,
|
|
|
|
however, the greatest reward of all has been the dazzling variety of human
|
|
|
|
brains with whom I've come in contact. I have no CHOICE but to be in constant
|
|
|
|
learn-and-teach mode, for you can't roll into town on a blinking Winnebiko and
|
|
|
|
act like an antisocial sonofabitch when almost everyone looks, smiles, waves,
|
|
|
|
asks questions, shares their dreams, and invites you home for dinner. What
|
|
|
|
better way to stay open to the pulse of humanity -- to learn about the world
|
|
|
|
and do what we can to nudge it along? Sure beats the hell out of working in a
|
|
|
|
lab all day and then turning on the evening news...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
And besides, it's fun. COMDEX and the Dayton hamfest gave me that old
|
|
|
|
excited kid-in-a-candy-store feeling, and I now lie awake nights fantasizing
|
|
|
|
about the Geovision CDROM disk, the bike-borne LAN of robust processors, the
|
|
|
|
Oscar satellite station, the Oki cellular phone with fax and voicemail links,
|
|
|
|
the computer-controlled automatic transmission... ah, the toys, the tools, the
|
|
|
|
tales.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
And so the point of this whole convoluted story, from Las Vegas to
|
|
|
|
Paradise, is that despite the sluggishness of these recent stories, our travels
|
|
|
|
shall resume. Bear with me a few months as I kick-start the marketing of the
|
|
|
|
Computing Across America book (SOMEBODY's gotta do it -- and it sure ain't the
|
|
|
|
publisher), finish my consulting gig in the east, and build the Winnebiko III.
|
|
|
|
There's a long, long road ahead.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-- Steve
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
NOTE: Our office has moved! "Computing Across America" book orders ($9.95 +
|
|
|
|
$2 for shipping) and other matter-transfer communication should now be directed
|
|
|
|
to:
|
|
|
|
Computing Across America
|
|
|
|
1306 Ridgeway Ave
|
|
|
|
New Albany, IN 47150
|
|
|
|
812-945-1435
|
|
|
|
|
|
|