Electronic Life 5.0

So more and more I’m not jes gettin old, but that I’m glad I’m getting old ’cause…I mean, I know I use a computer and, even more an Xbox to download movies, instant streaming and Netflix, heck Lil Mouse and I haven’t had cable TV now fer over four years now, so it’s not like I am not engaging  this new electronic world…I jes don’t much like it…

I think it all starts out innocent and enough and helpful and all, but then soon, like the promise of cable as commercial free TV lasted about a year or so, then we were paying for TV and gettin commercials, and it was more of the same crap but worse.

I think that’s what we’re doin all over again.

And yea Xbox I’m talkin to you…Lets say I buy a movie and ya know there this floaty cloud like storage area where they encourage me to store my movie and I like that because who wants to fill up their hard drive with the movies when I have all that cloud space.

So yea I may buy a movie now and then and say here ya go Xbox hold this for me till I wanna watch it again. They keep it up in a cloud so I figure its gotta be pretty safe only…

I went to watch one of the movies I’d bought the other day, I think it was Ghost Dad with Bill Cosby and lo and behold all that I got was a message saying that my movie was unavailable right now, but as soon as it was available I could watch it again free of charge.

Okay, I mean, I bought the movie you were jes holding it for me. Did you borrow it out to someone else? If so did they leave an ID? And jes how did they get into my cloud? Haven’t they heard the old song “Hey You Get out of My Cloud”.  And what’ya mean I can watch it again “free of charge”, is that you doin me a favor?

It’d be just like if I went to the bank and then the teller said…”Oooo Jeez we’re sorry Mr Unit, We don’t have yer money right now but when we get it back you can have some of your own money free of charge”

Oh really can I? I feel so deeply indebted to you for letting me access something that belonged to me in the first place!

Maybe keeping my valuable media and computer files in a a visible mass of condensed water vapor floating in the atmosphere is not the best long term storage solution. I mean is there even a way to somehow lock the damn thing when I’m not using it?

See okay all joking aside the thing is, like the promise of cable TV with it’s better service, programming, access and commercial free-ism it won’t belong before this information is harder to get and costs more.

We used to get our TV for free now we pay for it.

We used to get our radio for free, slowly but surely they’re gonna get us to pay for that.

We still get information relatively freely…

Complaining ’bout the cloud might seem like I’m jes blowin smoke,  but used dvd and  book stores are already feeling the pinch. As the conversion from hard copies to digital cloud storage continues will my copy of Ghost Dad be there forever, or will as some critics suggest, they edit the movie to remove the blatant reference to the afterlife or to suit some other nefarious future purpose as yet unseeable by man.And if every copy of Ghost Dad is updated in the cloud at the exact same time. Would any of us ever know.? I mean once Bill’s gone. Then, Would any of us ever know?