When I first encountered email in the workplace, I had coworkers in their 40s and 50s who said, “I hate email!” A generation later, I have a coworker who wasn’t even born then who says, “I hate email!”
The people from the past were suspicious of change. My colleague in the present – a good guy, whom I will call WALL-E – is irritated by clicks. You have to click too many things to create and send an email. This, apparently, is an outrage.
WALL-E prefers Slack. You can see all of your fellow Slackers on one screen. You click a name and type your message. I spent my first week on Slack pretending to be a rogue AI. People said I sounded smarter than I usually did.
The only advantage I see to Slack is that it discourages messages of more than a sentence or two. This is an advantage if your attention span collapses under the weight of a paragraph fatter than this one.
At a meeting recently, I was seated beside WALL-E. We were unexpectedly asked to write something on a sheet of paper. WALL-E, who was armed only with his phone, politely asked if he could borrow one of my pencils. He had trouble positioning the pencil among his fingers. He laboriously wrote a line, then said, “That’s the first thing I’ve written in like a year and a half!”
The next day, I gave him one of my father’s unused pencils of the type that helped us defeat the Nazis, plus a crayon of the same vintage that’s thick enough to draw graffiti on trains. Guess what? WALL-E was delighted.
I’m writing this on the eve of my new favorite holiday, Record Store Day. Every record store in Portland is gearing up for massive crowds tomorrow. There will be vinyl. Technology marches on…and, it seems, in a circle.
See you kids on Slack!
Random Pick of the Day
Rihanna, Good Girl Gone Bad (2007)
Rihanna and Lady Gaga have similar voices: not too high, not too wide, not too warm. Rihanna’s voice is more flexible – for example, when she sings a rock song, which the Ga cannot – but her attitude is different. Sometimes she seems to be narrating someone else’s life; sometimes she seems bored. Lady Gaga has her faults, but almost everything she does is about her. She’s never bored.
Good Girl Gone Bad is a solid album (Rihanna’s third) that improves with every listen. You have to learn her quirks, the way you learn a pitcher with a fastball and a sneaky slider. The hit was “Umbrella,” with a guest appearance by Jay-Z. In 2007, you couldn’t record anything without Jay-Z, even if you were recording an audio book of Wuthering Heights. I like “Umbrella” and “Breakin’ Dishes”: “I don’t know who you think I am/But I really don’t give a damn right now.” What the girl groups of the 1960s, white or black, could’ve done with that one!
Random Pan of the Day
Sam Smith, In the Lonely Hour (2014)
The man has a beautiful voice and, on the album cover, exquisite eyelashes. “Stay with Me” was the hit. The first four tracks were as far as I got. If you have trouble sleeping even after you drape black-out curtains over the windows and wear ear plugs and a face mask, apply a layer of In the Lonely Hour.
Run-DMSteve 