10/21/2002

Beware the March of Cords... We are a society bound by cords, wrapped in wire, shrouded in cable. It didn't used to be that way. Once, long ago, the only cords we dealt with were umbilical. Once mother had gnawed through that cord to free us from the bloody afterbirth, we were free, never to be bound again. Well, unless we were captured by the tribe over the hills, strapped onto a spit, and roasted alive. Other than that, we were cord-free. Slowly, that changed. At first it was subtle -- the electric light crept into everyone's life, creating the difficult task of running the cord from the just-installed wall socket, across the carpet, and to Dad's chair, so the Dad could sit in a pool of yellow incandescence and listen to mother jaw about the neighbors and all their ailments. The light splashing from dad's shirt provided just enough illumination for mom to ruin her eyes knitting in the semi-darkness. In the meantime, baby crawled behind daddy's chair, causing mom to drop her knitting as she leapt to prevent the child from a 120V snack. A telephone soon followed. One cord, sometimes two. Not too much, and if you kept it in a corner it was hardly noticeable. A second cord invaded this pastoral scene -- the radio. Now dad could completely ignore mom as he listened to the radio announcer jaw about the politicians and their ailments. Now this was news! Baby had grown; now he waited patiently for the radio broadcast of the Lone Ranger or Buck Rogers, or the Shadow or the Green Hornet, ready to open his mind to the imaginative worlds of the pure audio broadcast. No one really knew what Buck Rogers looked like -- it didn't matter. My Buck Rogers could be the strong, handsome, daring hero I imagined, dark haired and powerful, while the girl down the street could imagine him to be blond and dashing. Who cares! Each child gets his own hero! Later, the cord came in again, this time for the appliances -- electric can opener, vacuum (that one a daring creature, dragging its electrical tail over the living room carpet, catching it beneath the lion's feet of the couch, or entangling itself with the table legs as the hungry vacuum pursued its arch-nemesis and natural prey, the lowly housecat... but I digress), the washing machine (sometimes out in the yard, but with an extension cord, we could make it work!) with its drying press to threaten little fingers, the refrigerator humming merrily in the kitchen. The child now helps with the chores, and the cords make his work expand. The girls vacuum and clean, the boys help in the yard. Soon the cords bring heat to the percolator, and coffee becomes instantly easy to make. The stove goes from gas to electricity, and suddenly the fear of immolation from the burners evaporates. Instead, the phenomenon of the not-red hot burner smacks our fingers. And the cords still came -- Television, the Giant Eye of the living room, with its cord. The Stereo -- now we have three cords -- one for the power, one to each speaker. They trail along the wall like electrical snail slime. Systems became componentized -- no more do we buy a box with the wires all inside, we buy five boxes with the wires all outside. Wires from the wall to each component to power the noisemaker, wires from the noisemakers to the amps to the speakers, dozens of wires, all identical. If you aren't the one who installed it, you can't figure it out. Even if you did install it, it still makes no sense! Then came the Home Computer. I was on the cutting edge, a computer was my Christmas gift at age 17, in 1983, before the Revolution. But it came with more cables. Power to the monitor, power to the CPU, a wire from the CPU to the monitor, a wire from the CPU to the keyboard. Then I got a modem, and I need a wire from the modem to the wall and form the modem to the phone. More cords! And it grew again -- Sound cards, with speakers -- three more wires. A microphone for the onboard telephone utility -- another wire. A mouse; and yet another wire. The TV sprouted a VCR, Cable TV, a DVD player, and surround sound. Six speakers! Six more cords drooling down the back of the TV cabinet and along the walls. Sweet Jiminy Christmas! A miasma of coax running from the wall and through each appliance so we get fully digital sound for each and every application imaginable. Power for five devices (a digital cable box joined the mix), a cable feed from the wall, through the through the digital cable box, thought the DVD/Surround sound, to the VCR and TV. Six speaker wires. A line splitter so I can tape something while I watch a television program. And the computer situation got worse -- a second computer, a line for the Cable modem, a network hub, a drawing pen, a bigger set of speakers, all with at least two wires, usually three, all hooked together in a miasma of plastic, color coded cables. The umbilical had its revenge. We cut the one cord at birth, and now the other cords have come back to tie us down. They are even trying to make us plug in our cars! But there is hope. Cordless phones... wireless networks... wireless speakers... laptops where we can joyously work without a cord, even if it is only for a few hours. If we can find a way to get the power from the wall to the computer without a cord, we could once again be free, completely free... Or will the cords be back to get us again? They waited a long time to get us this far...