A tiny encomium on gadgetry

My home computer is old. I bought it in Dec. 2000, at the end of my first semester at SIU. It was a reward to myself for my new job there.

So it has no USB ports on the keyboard or monitor. (In fact, I was so habituated to the idea that USB ports are *only* on the back of CPUs that I hadn't noticed my office computer, circa 2004, had ports in both alternate locations until, oh, last week. I had been plugging my jump drive into the back of the CPU, which is, truly, a drag.) I've got an extension cord for plugging in gadgets on my home computer.

And just now, as I was unplugging a jump drive and plugging in my camera (thinking I might blog about my cats because I was feeling bad about my contribution to the quietness of the internets and I had been considering a post about Clyde, who has recently turned 20), I felt the same surge of wonderment and pleasure that I always feel when plugging in some gadget or other to a USB port.

Because, you know, it's just cool. I feel it when I open the little port of my MP3 player (yeah, sorry: I opted for the lesser coolness of a Creative Zen Nano Plus because for the same price as an IPOD Shuffle I could get a player that will display what I'm playing) and transfer audio files. Really. It's like I'm Miranda in The Tempest: O brave new world, that has such gadgets in it.

And the length of the cord that connects my 2000 Dell to my gadgets seems like a nice synecdoche for the technological distance that fuels that wonderment.

So this small encomium is my contribution to a noisier blogosphere. The entry on Clyde will have to wait for another day (I know my readers will hardly be able to contain their anticipation). And since I turn in summer grades tomorrow and won't be teaching again until January, I plan for a more steady stream of noise.

Update: Isn't it strange how I typed iPod in all caps above? It's like a visual throwback to IZOD, the totalizing brand of the 80s.