Category: Anti-Tech
Riverboat Sam: “Our President is Singing Like a Canary”
By Riverboat Sam, technical specialist/digital skeptic If brevity is the soul of wit, Twitter is the home of witlessness. The problem as it strikes a very old guy like me is as stated: Twitter is to publication like spitting is to art. OK, I’ll spell it out for you. Not many people are good at off -the-cuff stuff. Sometimes you get lucky, but generally you … Read More Riverboat Sam: “Our President is Singing Like a Canary”
Putting the Internet in its Place
(By Hartsook Photo [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. “Mary Pickford writing at desk.”) By John Kaufman To celebrate the 200th post on this website, I thought I’d try to put this Internet thing in the proper perspective, comparing it to all that is not the Internet, which is just about all of life and living. We tend to make a big deal of living … Read More Putting the Internet in its Place
Riverboat Sam: To “Blog” is to Vomit
By Riverboat Sam, The Pacific’s “technical specialist” I am not against the newfangled on principle; typewriting seemed to me a great improvement over my wayward handwriting and having the means I got one of those machines right away. Still got it, in fact. Still use it, too. When I told the editor of this electrical rag that I’d be submitting my columns on paper, he complained … Read More Riverboat Sam: To “Blog” is to Vomit
“What We Must Preserve”
(This poem of mine first appeared in the last issue of Verse Wisconsin, Issue 113, in April 2014.) What We Must Preserve by John Kaufman To hear each other, what we must preserve is the dignity of trees, obstinacy of rock, the patient way a book occupies space, its voice less than a whisper, its light as dim or bright as … Read More “What We Must Preserve”
Facebook, Twitter no match for Local Reality
No, “local reality” is not some new social media term. To find it, turn away from your screen. No app for real faces, real books and real birds. Or a real dream.
How UW can go all D2P with QE1 and CO2
By John Frederick Kaufman Rumor has it that the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison is looking to fill three high profile positions in keeping with its new mission: “the ideas factory and innovation center for the state,” as Chancellor Rebecca Blank puts it. It appears that UW-Madison is no longer a traditional university where faculty and students converse disinterestedly upon the various arts and sciences, so there is little … Read More How UW can go all D2P with QE1 and CO2
