The Amplified World of Apps

Excerpt from a poem posted yesterday by Linh Dinh over at his Detainees blog.

            To Fisher-Price, a newborn can now be strapped
            To a seat, and forced, his head tilted up, to stare
            At a relentless screen, with its bright and anxiety-ridden,
            Sped-up world, so that his eyes will cloud over and roll
            Away from this mind rape. Drooling, he will utter a series
            Of terrified near-words, which his iPad-hooked parents
            Will interpret as pleasure. Raised in apptivity, kids
            Will eschew walking, talking or eating while looking
            At their food, or sex that isn’t on demand. Like now.
            Hooked on porn and apps, we will not rebel.

The pervasive encroachment of technology from Day One of our lives, and into our language as well. Who doesn't know nowadays what "googling" means?  Google seems to have the monopoly on instant google product name recognition here.  You don't often hear anyone refer to searching for information on the Internets [sic] as "yahooing" [it just plain sounds funny, and possibly derogatory to yahoos everywhere]--though "scroogling" and "binging" are catching up. The big thing now seems to be apps. You show me your apps, I'll show you mine.  Betcha I got more'n you.  A not infrequent, non-imaginary conversation.  Just sayin'.

I'm a word junkie and the continuing evolution of language that reflects how we relate to trends that morph into obsessives, fascinates me.  Being a dinosaur that doesn't even own a cell phone, I'm often chuckled at because I mis-say the terminology.  An emerging SpoofLexis tumbles to mind.

[Not to take away from the import of Linh's poem.  Writer, poet, photographer, political analyst, he has an acute understanding of what's imploding in our society, culture, environment, economy, and government. He travels the country documenting the "downslide", talking to people the Powers-That-Be have forgotten, sharing their stories on his blog and  State of the Union photo series.  But he also often 'pokes fun at', and his word "apptivity" in the referenced poem got me thinking about words we shorten or slangify to describe our now times].  So, a few suggested new app words, of an app-lexistical nature:

A Mini AppLexicon

 Apptivity – the act of apping

 Appify – what you can do once your appinstall gets apptivated

Appadiction – when there’s no app you don't already have

Appalicious – recipes in your Appicubby

Appaholic – one who suffers from extreme appadiction

Appnoxious –  physical aversion to the overappopulation of appaholics

Appless – what you become when your appholder falls down the toilet

Appageddon – when you discover one of your apps has been secretly monitoring you

Appfullness – when you have so many apps you can’t keep track of them all
Applack -- when you can't find the app you really really want

Appapt – able to app in your sleep

Appfickle – unable to decide which app to appload

Applode –  it happens, when your  appware malfunctions

Appatune – appifying a musical appjingle in your apparchive

Appkeep - as opposed to the ones you appchuck

Appalingo –  another name for appspeak

Appalistic – appaddicts who compulsively collect applisties

Appcitis – a condition that sometimes afflicts appaholics

Appicide – when an app self destructs

Appmapnegate – app maps that purposely mislead

Appmobile – the opposite of appinertized

Okay, enough    Apologies to avidappers everywhere, from an unappologetic appnisaurus antiquus.

Readers flock to 1984

"George Orwell's dystopian fiction Nineteen Eighty-Four is enjoying a renaissance. . .  sales of the classic novel's  2003 reprint have spiked 3,100% over the past 24 hours as coverage has widened of the fresh reports (and new confusion) about the National Security Agency's data gathering programs and the 29-year-old Booz Allen Hamilton ex-employee,  Edward Snowden, who leaked details about them last week."  [Source]

One commenter comments:  "My first reaction was:  'Oh, at least people are reading the classics again.'"

So forward looking, we see nothing
But a dystopian future . . .

From "Zigzagging Forward",  a new poem by  poet/writer/photographer Linh Dinh,  here.

In the early morning write

Gordon Lightfoot has a song that begins "In the early morning rain ..."    Was up by 6:00 A.M. as usual.  No rain this morning, only clouds, and a bit of sun pushing through.  I stopped by some fellow bloggers' blogs and saw that a few more "morning people" had already posted the day's words.

Check out this haunting Armenian melody played on the duduk by Djivan Gasparyan over at Bob Arnold's July 31st Longhouse Birdhouse  (posted at 6:22 A.M.).   (Mornin', Bob!   :)

and Tom (The Middlewesterner)  Montag's latest "Three from the Old Poet",  posted at 4:37 A.M.   (An excerpt:

As if I've
worked my whole life
becoming someone

I can admire.

Or poet/writer/blogger Linh Dinh, whose political essays, astute comments and ongoing State of the Union photo documentation of America in decline; the homeless, disenfranchised, tent cities, urban blight, etc. telling you far more than you'll ever get from CNN. (He posted today at 1:57 A.M.     I'm guessing that's not when he got up and that he's really more a "night" person.)

Another morning person, up by 5 A.M. with a new poem, is William Michaelian, reminding me that thought-out poems that don't get writ remain just that: words in transit, not yet extracted, much less parked.

Today we have the annual family picnic, again this year out in St. Louis-de-France.  Last year, about 40 people came, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, cousins, in-laws, significant others, and friends, and it lasted from early afternoon until nearly midnight, the evening spent on the patio to the sounds of guitar and keyboard, everyone singing along to old, familiar tunes.  It poured rain pretty much the entire day but nobody left, and when the downpour subsided, the mosquitoes came out. 

This year the weather promises to behave and allow a more pleasant time of it, the barbeque taking place outdoors (instead of in the garage) and dips in the pool.  Last time people brought about 8 different salads, and of course a big pot of Michel's famous baked beans and the usual grilled delights (even salmon burgers  for the semi-vegetarians).  (Our local supermarket last week carried imported frozen fish-kebobs from China--something I'd not seen there before.  Why this particular local market offers only imported Chinese garlic and not the fresher, more readily available and less-expensive-to-transport garlic from neighboring farms, is a mystery.)

Back to the writing thing again. This, of course, is no excuse--activities in general, social obligations, daily tasks, etc.--for not writing. It's perhaps cyclical, or so it seems at times--more time spent this summer on reading than writing, more hours internally absorbing, mentally archiving, "saving up", almost, for when the time is right, which for me is Fall and Winter. But this is absurd, the writer self argues. Sounds more like an excuse, chimes the neglected pen.

They may be right, and it's not a question of season, or intervening activities, or habitual proscrastinaton but something more baldly basic: simple discipline. I envy poets who can come up with a new poem every single day and offer it, in finished form. And then there're those naggy fictional characters nagging, nagging, nagging at you to finish their story, the one you've been working on for months--YEARS--and have put aside, like unfinished paintings waiting for the most conducive lighting, the right color mix, the optimal circumstance, the perfect conditions. This has got to change, scoldy self says to lazy self. I mean, really. Why are you blogging, instead of writing?!!!

My fingers have no answer. It's like being stuck in ... the Waiting Box--waiting. But for what?