The plan was after getting my packet at Super Jock 'N Jill's I would get on the #48 bus and then get off on the east side of Capitol Hill and walk due west over to 15th Avenue East. I would order some Thai take-out and while I waited I would inspect the new local music offerings at Sonic Boom Records.
It was a good plan but it got off to a rocky start. There was a fundraiser at the local for "Yes! for Seatac," the living wage initiative campaign on the ballot next month that received a write-up in the New York Times last Monday, and I ended up working the door. I got out of work a half hour later than anticipated. So the bus schedule I had printed out was no longer accurate.
Fortunately a couple of old union friends who had been Green Party activists back in the day and who were at the fundraiser saw me waiting at the bus stop, pulled over and offered me a ride into the city.
By the time they dropped me off downtown and I made my way to the University Street Station I was back on schedule.
Once I got settled on the northbound #76 bus I took a look around. The bus was filled with students, young office workers and a few older folks like myself. Two things jumped out at me, which I would guess broadly apply to public transit in most large U.S. cities today: 1) there are just as many if not more Asians, Latinos and blacks as there are whites, and 2) everyone -- and if not everyone, let's say, at least 80% -- has his or her face buried in a smartphone or a handheld video gaming device.
Pretty much the same held true on the bus ride from Green Lake to Capitol Hill after I picked up my race packet. The only difference was the racial composition was more heavily weighted to Caucasian. There were a lot of college students heading out on Friday night to get laid, and they were all texting and staring at their phones. The vibe this creates is definitely a new phenomenon -- a public sphere filled with digitally mesmerized people.
I got off the bus and trudged over the hill to 15th; found the Thai restaurant I had gone to with my last girlfriend; ordered some Pad See Ew; went out the door and down the street to where Sonic Boom Records was located, and lo and behold! It was gone. A bar was there instead.
Add the local record store along with the neighborhood book shop and video store to the Internet's list of victims. A couple weeks back I noticed that the Capitol Hill Half Price Books is gone.
I was surprised. Amazon is just wiping out stuff left and right. But the more I think about it, I suppose I am as guilty as anyone. I stopped going regularly to Sonic Boom and Half Price Books years ago. It's much easier to purchase music via MP3 download and to find an inexpensive used copy of a book you want online. But what is being lost by destroying these neighborhood repositories of culture? What is being lost by being forever transfixed by the screen? Technology seems to be demanding more of our attention than ever before.
Apropos this sentiment, here is a cautionary tale from Where Monsters Dwell #22 about man-made machine intelligence that gains sentience and seeks domination of humanity. Like "Fin Fang Foom!" from Where Monsters Dwell #21, the lesser-known "Elektro!" is an elegant story, but it is more economically told. We shouldn't ignore its conclusion:
For to create a machine that can out-think man, is to create the instrument of our own destruction!
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