If you're like me you are a shade under 6-foot-1; about 160 pounds; live in Lancaster with a wife and two kids; like to drink coffee and run a lot; and spend about 13 hours a day on your laptop. I suppose the last one of that long list is an occupational hazard of working in the Internets business. Until they move the Internets to another medium, I'm going to remain handcuffed to this machine I have (literally) on my lap.
Still, even if I didn't work on web sites and the like, I'm not sure if it would limit my participation in things World Wide Web-related. Frankly, everything is on the web nowadays and it doesn't look like that fact is going to change any time soon. Look, I take crap all the time about being a web writer as if that's any different than other types of writers. Either no one wants to hear it or no one is listening, but the fact is everyone writes for the web now. Book it... or code it with the proper HTML codes, please.
Anyway, I believe that advancements in technology should make things like newspapers and television better. I also believe that advancements in technology should heighten our level of discourse in these here United States, but I don't think I'm smart enough to know if any of this stuff is true. I do know that newspapers should just stop printing paper versions already. Seriously, just stop... it's cluttering up the Starbucks and waiting rooms across the country. Someone has to pick that stuff up, stack it in a pile and put it in the proper recycling receptacle.
So stop with the paper already.
Another fact to be is that television seems to be headed to the same neighborhood where newspapers live right now. One hand washes the other or something like that. Besides, people like portability, they like to talk about things like WiFi and they like being able to be connected anywhere at any time. That means if I want to watch, oh let's say something like The Wire, a Major League Baseball game or the NCAA Tournament, I don't have to sit on the couch in front of the teevee like Jaba the Hut. Instead I can reach into my backpack, whip out the ol' HP and dial it up even if I'm negotiating myself through cross-town traffic.
Yes, it's a brave new world we're living in, folks.
How brave? So brave that newspapers, radio and TV stations are dabbling in exclusive content just for its web viewers. Actually, it's gotten to the point where media outlets have to put its programming on the web, too, thus broadening the reach beyond it small locality. World Wide Web... get it? Actually, Major League Baseball has (read the next few words as if you were Scotty[1] from Star Trek) embraced the technology to the point where its entire Extra Innings package is available on the web via video and audio.
Yeah, that's old news. MLB seemed to be waaay out in front when it came to the so-called "new media." Actually, they are so out in front on the web and whatnot that the development of its own cable TV network seems kind of quaint these days.
"Oh, how cute. Baseball is going to start its own channel. That's nice... can I get it on my iPhone?"
But check this out: the NCAA and CBS are putting every game of the NCAA Basketball Tournament online. Yep, that's right... all of ‘em. That means if you're like me and stuck with your nose in a laptop all day, you don't have to sit in front of a television to watch another one of those ubiquitous last-second "look-ins" that personify the coverage of the Tournament. You know, if there isn't an upset or a buzzer-beater it didn't really happen...
Until now.
So just to be different I might search out a first-round game where a No. 4 seed beats a No. 13 seed by 15 points. Let's hope the walk-on sitting at the end of the bench gets in for the last minute.
*** Famous actor/comedian Billy Crystal signed one of those celebrity deals to be a player for the Yankees for a couple of days during spring training. You know, kind of like fantasy camp for the guys with the real cache.
Meanwhile, the Phillies countered with human car wreck/professional golfer, John Daly. Looks like the Yankees win again, though from the correct angle Daly almost looks like Brett Myers from the chin down.
Billy Crystal just looks like Billy Crystal in a Yankees shirt.
[1] Scotty was a Scotsman... go figure.