RUDIMENTS, pt. 314
Making Cars
One funny thing about life,
or about the living of it, was
that by the end point of the
twentieth century, when most
of the people within ten years
on either side of me - call it
same generation or whatever
you'd like - had carried
forth pretty well and lived
their lives along OK by that
point; amassed the lessons,
caught on to things, etc.; it
all got switched over. By
that time in our lives it all
should have been pretty
much rolling along well
as could be. But then
computers happened. It
may not sound like much,
but the slow drip-drip of the
computer technology and
presence that now essentially
runs most lives (I'm not saying
all), set in, and we had to begin
all over. An entire new schematic
had been dropped down in front
of us, and with it the demands
to learn it and get with the varied
programs in earnest. And quickly.
It was a world-changer, and it
really only happened like that
for those people whose birthdates
were grouped on either side of
1950. Mostly after that it all
began being part of the school
curriculum and then, not so long
after that, by a few years, just
part of the overall, general
consciousness about things.
-
Meanwhile we had to scrape
along both doing and figuring
it out as we did it. To me it came,
first, industrially, in that the two
jobs I worked both soon were
computerized for typsetting and
printing and record-keeping. The
old punch-tape stuff at first, with
floppy disks and the rest. Weird
new languages, COBOL and
the others; bizarre program
names I could never get : Unix,
and all the forgotten other ones.
(Thank goodness. Cleanse the
brain). They were always named
after inconsequential non-sequitor
sorts of things, as if some zany
madman had taken over the
thought-mind that was behind
this new technical world. Plus,
quite frankly, it negated all things
we'd been taught all along through
grade-schools and all that. There
were no 'tangibles.' It bore no
relation to Art either. Creativity
was right down the drain unless
you were one of those willing
to cede your artistic control to
the technical diatribes of processes
run by others, which was never
cool and not, certainly, Art. (At
first, anyway. Now the usual
cranks who do Art of today
often run it mast and sail by the
windy dictates of computerized
means). All that fun which was
once there, in Art, is gone away
if you use those means. It ends
up like doing mathematics
instead of Art. But, whatever;
people are born for all different
sorts of breads and puddings.
-
I just could never connect with
all that. I grew up like a woodsman's
kid - slinking around in the weeds
and the wilds of old Avenel kind
of in a place that's long gone now
and newly spun by the Devil.
Everyone was weird, everyone was
eccentric. Mrs. Evans, 4th grade; Miss
Artym, in 5th grade. They were some
wallopingly weird ladies. 6th grade
turned me right over onto a Mr.
America type guy, Joe Ziccardi,
who was, by contrast, seemingly
a perfect exemplar of 'Merica,'
1959/60 version. All he could
ever talk about was his time in
the Korean War - cold, freezing,
temperatures, battles and skirmishes,
breaks in the battle and skirmishes,
routines, boredom, duty, honor,
and country. I think he left out
how crappy it all really was. He
was about as ordinary as a bowling
ball.To my 6th grade mind, he
was about as ordinary as a bowling
ball.To my 6th grade mind, he
was somebody, boy, I'd not
really want to know. As if I was
supposed to glory in HIS army.
It all seemed as dumb to me then
as does the train station mural
in Woodbridge now, regaling
us with memorialization of each
war fought in the last hundred
years. Nice going high school
art kids. A real zany project
there. This was all pre-computer
stuff I was living in, and now these
knuckleheads were trying to crowd
out my world with still more of their
lugubrious new crap. Poised for
efficiency. Accuracy. Speed. All
I ever saw was the deficiency of
efficiency.
-
What was any of this to me? Not
much. It was like having to go
back to school at age 45, to learn
new structures of everything. For
no real reason within, just external
stuff. I wasn't ready for that alteration,
and didn't want to be. I'd rather have
climbed a tree. Everything I was was
within me, inside my head and self.
I was damned sure not about to go
start accepting the premises of
other, lame-brained, people with
all their distorted conceptions of
everything, starting with why I'm
alive here and what I should be
doing with my life. My brave-
new-world and newly-computerized,
own, life. Yeah, I don't think so. I
knew none of these people had
even a half-wit's intention of
bringing me to my own station
of place, where I wished to be.
I certainly wasn't buying their
emperor's new clothes crap.
-
More time went by, and I managed.
Now I'm fairly adept at the little
things I do on computer - which
is not social junk at all, just more
the archival writing and reading,
photos and words, that I bring for
others to see. And leave it right there.
No magic in any of that for me,
but it's all good enough. I built,
remember, three systems of rocket
propulsion for NASA in thirty-two
years, and re-designed one
nuclear submarine too, all on
a top-secret, very exceptional
government payroll, and I did
it all without computers, even
though they thought I'd used
them. I had my project crew
forge the reports to look as if
they been computer-managed.
See all these younger people
working under me had been
trained and had the real computer
knowledge I'd never gotten; so
they could do that. Essentially, I
guess they learned computers so
they could forge results and
processes. That's pretty cool.
-
Ok, I made all that last stuff up.
But so what; you got my point.
No comments:
Post a Comment