The Newspaper Man is Defunct - Part 17

Steve is a handyman, a type of work that is actually growing in popularity. Suddenly, your dishwasher won't work and you call him and he asks you the make and model, and he stops by, fools around with it, works on it a bit and it's fixed. Or your plumbing is on the fritz and he's there in maybe five minutes, then down to a plumber's supply warehouse and your plumbing is fixed within an hour or so. Or your water heater . . .

I could go on. I know Steve is not licensed to do any of these things. But it just so happens he can do all of them, and he carries his own insurance too. Further, he's been working for me for 20 years and hasn't screwed up anything or tried to overcharge me. But the thing about Steve that I really enjoy is that he often brings his father-in-law to the job. His name is Red and he is always funny and good company. I don't know what the "Red" is all about because he hasn't got any hair to speak of so I guess the nickname is a personal history thing.

Last week Red and I were sitting in the living room while Steve was working on a broken thermostat in another room. I always talk to Red because he's about 13 years older than I am, which means he was too old to be a hippie and too young to fight in WWII or Korea. He is one of America's forgotten generations that just fell through history's cracks. For some reason I find them pleasant to talk with, maybe because they don't bring up the usual generation to generation conversations. You know, the ones that have been talked to death.

On this day Red was talking about his new phone, a Verizon iPhone that had just recently been introduced into their product line.

"It comes with a book you gotta read," he tells me, "Or you wouldn't know what you were doing." I ask him if he brought the book with him, because I've been thinking of getting one, but someone had said the phone app was almost like an afterthought when they manufactured it. It can perform games, texting, photography (8mp), and a laundry list of other tricks. But, as a phone, (and it is called an iPhone remember), I guess it can be like talking through strung together tin cans.

He threw it over to me like it didn't mean much to him and I caught it by accident. It was nice all right. All that black stainless steel and rubber bumpers and perfectly circular hard rubber switches with a screen as long but even wider than a Sky Bar. It was a thing of beauty. And I wondered what this man from a lost generation was doing with such an exotic technological beast.

"Think you really need all the things it does," I asked, expecting him to say something like 'What other things does it do?'

"Yeah, I got it more for those other things than as a phone," he responded. I knew his wife had died the year before and maybe he was looking forward to playing some of the games on his new device, or downloading some music. He could be watching porn, what do I know?

I had the flat screen lit up on the wall and Egyptian thug police agents were beating up demonstrators and generally having a good time. "You know Face Book started that war," he told me.

I said. "You mean somone used Face Book to help get the demonstrators riled up."

"Same difference," he replied.

We talked for a while about the role social networking will play from this year forward in nearly every civil war, invasion or donnybrook. We've got Wilileaks diplomacy and Face Book revolution. Red didn't like it at all. I said that technology, specifically the evolution of weapons technology was one of the central themes of war, how it is planned, even who will be the winner. So this phenomenon of technology being a so-called "game changer" in disputes has been around for thousands of years.

We talked about the soldier sitting in the U.S. at what looks just like a video game, while actually, he is flying a drone by remote control into a village half a world away - a drone that will kill maybe 20 or 30 people who may have been good people or bad people.

"Well, it's technology; it's supposed to get better," he said. I tried to imagine how technology was going to inform the drone that it was killing innocent or guilty people, and what difference would it make to a drone . . .

Then I started on the bush. It's a bush maybe three-and-a-half feet tall surrounded by other bushes of its type. And it is planted next to a Barnes and Noble bookstore I frequent. I saw a bush just like this one at the B&N at a nursery for $215. Nice bush. It blooms every year and generally makes the place look better. The place, the B&N, sits on approximately 2 acres of land. It employs perhaps 30 - 35 people, and it contains up wards of 40 thousands books

So you take the bushes (landscaping) and the acreage and the employees and their benefits and the wall-to-wall and the elecric company and other overhead, then you take all the books and add their cost to what we already have. Maybe there is $10 or $20 million tied up here.

Now, let's say the manufacturer of the eBook continues to refine it with each new design generation. It is too big to put in your pocket at the present time, which limits it sales. But ten years from now it will probably be the size of a paperback. And guess what, you will probably be able to put just as many books up onto its screen as B&N can put up onto their shelves. The really strange thing is that this eBook might cost about as much as two of those bushes in front of one of B&N's thousands of stores worldwide.

So now you are walking around with a B&N store in your pocket. No need for the staff, no parking lot acreage, no bills from the electric company, fewer makers of paper books. You are in effect taking a physical location, jobs etc and you're putting it all on a device. Goodbye B&N. And you can do that with virtually all mass media.

"Look at all the newspapers folding", I said, and he nodded. "They will be gone in 30 or so years, maybe less, replaced by the online newspaper. Again, it's a question of cost. With a news print newspaper you have to hire all those pressmen, paper handlers and plate boys. You've got editors editing editors. People delivering the final product all across the state. On the floor of the plant, which can easily occupy 12 acres, sits enormous printing presses that drink expensive inks like my Uncle Fred drinks cheap beer.We're talking millions a year - and that's just what they're losing."

So you put it online. Put up a web page system like the New York Times has done recently. Sure, you still need some employees but less than half of what you needed before. And if the online edition succeeds it will put the newsprint edition out of business, once again taking a location and making it a device. Like DVDs; soon you'll be able to order every movie ever made right up until last week from your television, There goes Red Box. Blockbuster owns a lot of empty buildings. Tell me when is the last time you downloaded a CD? Now tell me when you last time you saw a music store?" Devices in favor of locations.

"It ain't right, said Red. "All those people losing their jobs,

"But this is progress, I argued halfheartedly. Sometimes I wonder myself about how fast we're going.

Just then, Steve poked his head around the corner. It was obvious he had been working on something.

"Think you got a spring somewhere in your junk drawer, He asked. "Like one of those springs on ball point pens.?"

"Maybe," I said being transported right back into mid 20th century technology.

The junk drawer held everything from pliers to screws to hammers to spare parts for nearly the whole house.

"The problem," Steve began is your thermostat spring is busted. And the spring operates the switch so it's not turning on." We found a spring in maybe 15 minutes and Steve fixed the problems moments later.

He's pretty good, isn't he? " said Red.

"This place wouldn't run without him, I replied .

"I think it will take a long time before they can replace him." Red laughed.

"No I don't think that's going to happen soon," I replied, thinking about that computerized thermostat system I had seen just a few weeks ago,