Carpal life

When was the last time you went to a "Rasputins" or the local music store? For me, it’s been about 8 months to-oh-my god-maybe a year. I can to this shameful realization after reading the "The Museum of Me" By Ellen Ullman. She really has some very strong points about how the "intermediaries" in our lives are slowly dissipating. What are intermediaries? They're in a sense are the mediators in our lives, service providers. Stockbrokers, travel agents, record stores; are all considered mediators. Intermediaries; like Expedia, are what the industry likes to call enabling technologies. Technology that’s supposed to convenience our lives: allowing us to conduct our personal business from the comfort of home. While I'm a supporter of such ideas as online banking and booking your travel online. We as a society need to look at the possibility that these sites that help enable our lives, could have repercussion by making our shopping, social lives, and work, really not sociable at all. Even the way we employ people and how we make money could be at risk.
A excellent example of this is iTunes. In the past year a very old and reputable establishment bit the dust. Tower records went out of business after 46 years of selling records. Even though the company still operates online and in foreign countries, all of the U.S. stores liquidated there inventory and closed their doors. One of the reasons, online music stores like iTunes were dominating the market. This caused thousands of smelly stoner's, goth heads and the occasional college student to be unemployed. I like iTunes a lot, I love it some aspects. The idea of buying one song is brilliant to an extent. Not having to waste gas, trees for C.D. covers, or produce waste like plastic for jewel cases are all very noble eco-causes. Having been a long time D.J. though, I miss going to the underground record stores and chatting it up with the clerk about what’s hot and what’s not. I miss flipping through isles of records and actually feeling the vinyl in your hands. Virtually all of the old vinyl stores are out of business or have been replaced by digital record pools and digital mixing programs like "Sorato". Meant to ease our lives by not having huge collections of records. When I was growing up this was a measure of how down you were with the scene. The more records you had, the more of a hardcore D.J. you were. I am not saying this is the end of life as we know it, but even something as sociable as being a D.J., has become less sociable by having our intermediaries taken away.
iTunes will stay here forever, so will the online banking and social networking sites that are meant to "convenience" our social lives. But there is one thing I miss. A sincere thank you and a handshake after purchasing music. Wait I'll take that back, my hand are sore from typing this blog and using the mouse too much. Dammit!!! I hate technology.