A
good friend of mine, David, just moved into a new place and he told me he
didn’t get phone service. The cell phone
is just fine. He also didn’t get cable
service. He will download stuff from
online and watch it on his TV set. He
doesn’t buy printed books, thanks to his e-reading device, and he gets
newspapers digitally on his iPad. He
reflects the new generation except he’s not 20.
He just turned 46.
He
made choices that save him money and will be just fine for his needs, but he may
be lacking in certain areas. For
instance, without a landline, in emergencies, his cell phone may lose power,
get overloaded, or run out of juice. For cable-less TV, he can’t see certain live events, such as sports or news. Certainly, there’s a trade-off to everything.
Truth is, there’s no end to how far we may go to live in a digital world to the point we will ive on in a digital box.
Some
people no longer collect physical things and instead look to capture things
online. I don’t just mean movies, music,
or entertainment, but things like coins, stamps, cards, magazines or even
art. It seems like people spend more
time amassing photos of their lives and archiving and sharing them. We collect time on social media
platforms. Our national hobby is Facebooking,
Tweeting and Instagramming.
One
day we will live in a world of holograms and projecting images. We’ll mask our bodies, cars, and homes with
digitized visuals that will hide our real selves. We’ve begun by hiding who we are and talking with an online persona. We text more than
we talk. We e-mail more than we meet
people in person. We blog and connect
with strangers and bond over filtered pieces of our fragmented lives.
Am
I guilty of this too? Writers have
always lived dual lives – a world of the imagination and a world of
reality. Life on paper or a screen is
often more ideal than the world of death, disease, crime, loss, and pain. But we don’t really get to choose whether to
avoid life or not – it goes on without our permission or involvement.
But
it seems every aspect of our lives has a technology component, both good and
bad. For the coming decades, it seems we
will be confronted over how we coexist with or exist for our technology.
I recently went to visit some potential sleep-away camps for my son. They all had a no e-mail rule. Kids could have a camera, but no other
devices were allowed at one place; another ruled out Internet-dependent devices. None of them had televisions. My son was shocked. He must think such an Amish existence is
unthinkable.
But
when I was a kid, save for a Jetsons episode, his world today was
unthinkable. What will tomorrow bring?
We’re
an ever-expanding world living amongst the zeroes and ones of a computer
analog. Maybe we are living inside The
Matrix or are on the brink of a Terminator-like war with Robots. But the Revolution today seems little
opposed. We literally have opened our
homes, wallets, and minds to let technology be a part of us, like air, water,
and blood.
I just hope we don’t become what we consume, where we become less human as a result of all this synthetic life around us.
I
feel like the Wicked Witch of the West in The
Wizard of Oz, only instead of saying “I’m melting, I’m melting,”
I will be crying, “I’m deleting, I’m deleting.”
What type of books do you write? Somewhere between mysteries and thrillers. My heros and heroines often have to solve major problems in their lives that involve threats to their existence. My female lead characters are all self-starters and take very little crap from people, not a wilting violet amongst them
What is your newest book about? I have just started a follow-up to 'Desperation'. I'm not sure where it's going right now beyond Kate and Vickie getting into trouble with the 'lurking menace' left over from the first book. I have just completed a section on Kate's media interviews. I did many of those myself back in the back and had some fun with it.
What is the writing process like for you? I think through scenarios in the broadest sense then sit down at the keyboard. I do most of my development work while I'm typing. I tend to work every day unless some member of the family tells me to stop.
What did you do before you became an author? I was a mental health community counselor in East London, working for a charity. We tended to see those who didn't fit into what was available on the health service so my 'take' on mental health is a little different from most.
How does it feel to be a published author? Nothing special really. I used to write self-help books for my
employers and they sold very well without me taking much notice so it has been a fairly painless transition.
Any advice for struggling writers? Put time aside to do the work whether this is a few hours a week or
every day and be ready for rejections - lots of rejections
Where do you see book publishing heading? E-books are big business and I don't see that changing. I think most publishers will end up with a hard copy and e-copy section to their output.
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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog
are his alone and not that of his employer, the nation’s largest book promoter.
You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He
feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by
BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2013
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