I have been declared Emperor of the World. Let us not waste time explaining why or how; let’s all simply accept the fact that we are better off, as a result; hence, my next decree:

Emperor’s Decree No. XXIV: If there is a microphone provided, use it. Enough with the [begin nasal, whiny voice]: “Can you hear me back there? I don’t want to use this thing if I don’t have to…” [end nasal, whiny voice]. It’s 2012. Use the freaking microphone. Luddite. You’re not “warm” for not using it. You’re not “more personal.” You’re not lovably uncomfortable with technology. The only thing you are is “not loud enough,” so snap out of your naturally-acoustic hippie trance and take a courageous leap into the present tense.

The Punishment: The punishment (which shall not be described here, in detail, for fear of shocking those with sensitive constitutions) is, shall we say, one that is inspired by the generally tubular shape of your average microphone. Let it suffice to say that those metal windscreens are not, strictly speaking…comfortable.

The Emperor shall grace the world with a new decree each Tuesday morning

On her birthday, the daughter of a friend of mine came to him in a tizzy. You see, she explained, so-and-so was disrespecting her on Facebook. My friend geared up for the worst as he went with her to view the offending post. And there he saw it. Someone had posted this on her homepage: “happy birthday.”

He peered at the screen, looking I guess for maybe an animated devil or something to leap out at him. But all he saw was this: “happy birthday.” He checked the calendar. Yes, it was her birthday. So what was the problem?

His daughter, reaching exasperation at an emotional speed only achieved by teenage girls interacting with their parents, pointed out that the post “happy birthday” from someone — I forget the complex relationship web of who knew who here, but it was something like a friend’s ex-boyfriend’s sister — in lower case without the exclamation point was not a genuine wishing of goodwill. It was a snub, a dismissive gesture.

Dad, being a good dad, tried to digest this, and then tried to calm her perhaps overreaction (treading lightly in this area, though) by raising what he thought was an excellent point. He pointed out that he, dad, could easily have done the same thing, hastily typing “happy birthday” to her — and meaning every little drop of joy in the word “happy.”

Of course, dad, she said, moving now at warp speed beyond exasperation to disdain, it’s excusable by you, because you’re a, pff, grown up. You don’t know the rules. In other words, you’re just blundering around Facebook anyway, so writing that is the equivalent of broccoli in your teeth or toilet paper on your shoe can be forgiven.

Okay, he got it. So dad left this little encounter, maybe a little wiser, and later told me the story. What struck me about it is not that it’s another marker of the big generational gap with technology or even how extremely sensitive teenage girls are. I’m interested in this because his daughter was probably right: A post like that probably is intentional, designed to achieve the effect it did and doing so with a sly, subtle bit of language play.

With her rightness as the premise, this little incident made me think again about all those people who are so worried that texting and Facebook are destroying kids’ ability to write. Lots of older folks who mash a few words themselves have become vocal linguistic reactionaries, describing the seemingly inevitable decline of language caused by technology. And it’s bad enough that teachers, bakers, and insurance executives are decrying the language skills of children, but in this article, “Hammering grammar in the age of texting,” even some of the kids pile on themselves. As one high school freshman said, “Texting affects us a lot. I get so used to texting that I mess up a lot of easy words.”

Maybe this kid is correct about his own writing behaviors, but my friend’s tale shows how our young Web scribes are often way more clever language-wise than we give them credit for. But I already knew this. I teach writing online, at Drexel, and I have read tens of millions of words written by my students. I see very few glitches, errors, and shortcuts that are clearly connected to their texting habits. Very, very few. Why? The reasons are many, but I can tell you this: I ask them not to, and these sharp Drexel students are quite capable of switching out of that technology coding when they need to.

Of course, students do make some writing errors. They always have, and they always will. That’s why they take writing courses. But when I heard the tale of my friend’s daughter, I’m struck by how far we are from the kind of complete language degradation predicted by alarmists. We might not always like what they’re doing with language, but their errors are not always the result of ignorance, and instead of lazily pecking away, they are making some very savvy rhetorical choices.

Indeed, these kids can be so sophisticated in their writing that “Happy Birthday!” and “happy birthday” mean extraordinarily different things. At the juncture of language and technology, they are creating meaning using differences as small as case and punctuation.

These kids are, basically, writing so much and practicing becoming skilled rhetoricians. I guess the grammar guardians are fearful that they will put “u” instead of “you” in their college entrance essay and thus spoil their chances of getting into an elite college like EZU — we know those EZUites aren’t going to tolerate this kind of thing — but, as I said, I see them as being quite able, when asked, to shift from texting and Facebook-ese into formal written discourse rapidly, effectively, and fluidly based on their analysis of audience, purpose, and context.

When I think of my friend’s justifiable annoyed daughter, I believe these kids’ immersion in text-based dialogue helps them become skilled users, and perhaps lovers, of language. And even if they don’t always use their powers for good (I’ll pick up that topic later), they are probably better at communicating in writing and certainly way more conscious of written language than the folks of my generation ever were. They can make a comma or exclamation point do an almost poetic amount of work.

But maybe you are sitting back, scoffing. Maybe you don’t agree with me. Well?

then have a nice day

Thank you, Mr President. You put the case fairly and well although if you really want to impress you might find an audience a bit more seasoned and a bit less willing to roll over and have their tummies rubbed. You have split your hand and doubled down on Green Alternative Energy so you must be holding at least twenty. Now it’s time to turn all the cards. I hope the White House searchbots have been comprehensive and found the odd moments when I Hoped to Believe in the Change you have promised but on the big question of how we power our modern world, yes, I have been a detractor. Your well documented expertise in engineering and physics should have given me caution but let my indictment show that I have also been fair, once in a while. Once in a very great while.

One incident that may not be captured since my support came only in a few comments here and there, is on this question of algae. Oh, that Newt had a field day with that one, didn’t he? And I was saddened to see those ignorant, giggling attacks take their toll. You seem to have given up on pond slime and the slime-based community but you did so too quickly, sir. Whatever big-headed adviser slipped that note into your palm with the one scribbled word…. ALGAE! was not a traitor, imbecile or Koch-brother and should be released from confinement immediately. Algae, or aqua-cultured bio-diesel may turn out to be a joke but it has not yet. It at least has the possibility of freeing us from ethanol which burns our food (or the food of Mexicans) to no good effect; is scalable and has the advantages of liquid handling over dry. Gingrich shows an almost Alinskyite joy in his opportunistic mockery but perhaps he is still feeling the sting from when you rubbished his own far-looking but far from absurd proposal for lunar mining and power. Hopefully that bit of blowback and mutual bruising will encourage a more frank discussion on these matters, something, as you say, we need most desperately.

As a pre-teen subscriber to Popular Science and a youthful library lay-about I have been following these developments for many years. When you were in your fine, Hawaiian prep school I languished in the public system but even there we knew the promise of Alternative Power. Solar and wind and a few also-rans would let us thumb our noses at those Ayatollahs good and proper! But forty years of cover stories and massive subsidies have produced barely a trickle of energy that could get one to school (although I walked) or heat my sister’s curling iron. Certainly you have noticed this. Yes, a spike in those subsidies…. a Green Power Surge was a plausible path when you entered office but no one now disputes that those funds and the billions preceding them have produced some impressive growth in the massage industry and top shelf liquor sales but NO conspicuous breakthroughs however generous the terms or promising the technology. And it is the same in the Green paradise of Europe as it is here in the bleak fields of Troglodytic America. The long range forecast has been accurate; no sun, no wind.

But you strike a chord, sir. No, I would not want to go down in history as the man who kept Columbus on the dock, although I find this respect and admiration for Columbus’ accomplishments an odd phenomenon in your constituents. They are generally down on The Admiral, but we are casting away our old prejudices. If a gym full of Occupiers can cheer the discovery of America, what can be called impossible? What follows is no new information or thoughts and the prescriptions are not even mine though I will put them forward without meticulous checking since your declamations on President Hayes show that you did likewise. Let the chips fall where they will and if Secretary Chu is hiring, I am available.

From my cave on the flattened earth I denounced solar given it’s triple vulnerability to weather, dust accumulations and that daily bugbear of man, the sun’s rise from its birth as a flaming chariot in the east and its sizzling death in the extinguishing seas of the west. But I did not look far. Is it really, automatically beyond the strength of man to halt the sun at high noon? We should not laugh at that, as you say. The issue may be less the technology of halting Ra at his peak but more a political one as some parts of earth will have full daylight, some will be trapped eternally at four in the afternoon and some unlucky buggers will be cast into eternal night. As the most powerful nation on earth I think it is plain we will settle the sun in the Central Time Zone putting the Maritime Provinces in a jolly, permanent two pm, California at ten and Alaska will thaw in a 24 hour waking time. Surely these adjustments will be tricky but worth it to rid ourselves once and for all of our addiction to foreign fossil fuels. And Russia will just have to throw on a sweater.

Still we deal with weather and dust. Dust is a great problem where solar seems most promising; in deserts where abrasive sand may be driven at high speeds for long periods not just blotting the sun but wrecking these contraptions that are largely glass. We could put solar panels above the dust on mountain tops but the punishing winds will destroy them. If only there were a site beyond dust and weather where there already IS an eternal noon. I recall something in the few books at my young disposal called “orbit“, a concept I never could quite get my head around. It makes no sense unless the earth is a sphere or at least a cube which is balderdash. How could it just hang in the ether? In any case, if there WERE this fantasyland where there is no weight and no storm we can not access it as the President, most wisely, has cancelled the expensive hoax known as the Space Shuttle.

Instead let us harness those buffeting winds. It wouldn’t be the first time. Wind, after Fire, may be our most developed technology. In fourteen-hundred and ninety-two when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, it was not with a trireme galley of slave rowers. No, it was not a quadrarime or septarime though these were the mightiest ships of antiquity. His fleet was wind powered. Its only carbon emissions came from the lungs of its skillful sailors and they would have been breathing on shore anyhow so the net is ZERO! our collective goal. But as I mentioned, wind has issues that turned me like a groundhog who has seen his terrible shadow. There is the titanic expense of erecting these pinwheels with fancy dynamos as their axles. There is the problem that the most reliable winds are far from power consumers and not all that reliable, as it turns out. We return to that near-hero of the Republic, T. Boone Pickens who had a plan to save the nation the way Warren Buffett has saved industry; by dominating a fixed market. Did Pickens claim to bridle the wild winds? Nope, rather he cornered the more tractable natural gas market. The problems of rectifying the power coming from hundreds of finicky turbines and delivering it, on demand, to thousands of capricious homes were to be spackled over with gas driven turbines mated to wind driven generators vastly increasing the price (and market value) of both. Genius indeed. But T. Boone reckoned without the unexpected. He got frakked good and hard, that new technology making his long position on natural gas futures an asset bomb. He lost his shirt, though I think he has another, as gas prices have collapsed throwing a broomstick into the turbine business that cannot be shrugged off like an errant condor. Pickens cancelled his giant order with China for giant rotor blades and even those thousands delivered sit, unprotected, in Texas fields, awaiting someone with a dollar and a fleet of oversized diesel powered haulers to take them to some useful purpose.

I have neither the carriage nor the dollar but I do have a way to make wind power, if not commercially viable, at least able to deliver a bit of  electricity ON DEMAND, which is the only way it is helpful. The hurdles are manifold but largely owing to the peculiarities of the phantom we call electricity. I hear the objections… what the hell do YOU know about it, English-Lit boy? And it is a good question but since the President also lacks a degreed foundation in science I will take my right to speak in ignorance as much as he. The spinning bird-beaters are an impressive sight, those blades being ninety feet or more but the true marvel lies within. It is the hub that is the nub. Each turbine has its own generator at the top of its stalk and this is a high-tech gadget because it must be relatively light to be hoisted up, up, up twenty stories or more, and this in remote and undeveloped regions. To achieve that goal the wind engineers must employ elements that are rare on our flat earth; rare flat-earth elements they call them and they come principally from our frenemy, China. But even with all this high-expense high technology we have a problem. The winds, no less than the sun (for now) are not at our command. We need a medium of storage. The Chevy Volt was considered an answer to that, feeding on current opportunistically that was not being used, buffering the calamitous spikes and troughs from intermittent power; managing the erratic flow into a gentle stream and then carting the family breadwinner to the cabbage fields. That hasn’t worked out and our ancient servant/master, Fire, has in part been the culprit. So here is the solution though it will turn wind on its head.

The high deserts and savanna are NOT well suited to wind power not least because they lack human customers. Rather let us go back to the languishing rustbelt, not because Pennsylvanian ingenuity will develop practical power storage and rectification but because it already has. We pick up the scraps of Pickens’ dream for a song and hike with them off to locales where towns draped in coal tailings and malaise sit comatose. Erect those erections in the vales and on the mountains where below are miles upon miles of abandoned mines. Instead of a weighty, expensive, fragile generator with a brief service life, instead in the hub of every turbine is a simple, single-valve pump attached to the whirling dervish. And what does it pump? Air. Yes, garden variety air will be driven down the pressurized stem of the windmill with the lazy flump of an elephant’s ear; down, down into the ground where the massive useless volumes of obsolete mines will serve as gigantic reservoirs of power; essentially turning the variable winds into a single powerful stream, switched on and off with a tap as power must be. The pressures must be kept low which is why the reservoirs must be gigantic, but these, unlike the technology for wind-farm rectification, already exist. Likewise the customers for that power already exist in place. Leakage? Again that is why it is a low-pressure system but yes there will be unseen leaks in the ancient mining tunnels so part of the installation and maintenance requires injections of radioactive gas of one sort or another, much like isotopes used in radiological medicine. This will expose those troublesome cracks which will be plugged with high pressure injections of very wet concrete until the gieger counter stops ticking. The power will be drawn off by a turbine or several, fed with the flow of stored atmosphere without heat waste. A similar concept can be used with off-shore implacements (if their subsonic noise pollution didn’t harrass the whales, not that I care) where sea water will be pumped into improvised reservoirs in tidal basins and released for hydro-style generation; these necessarily massive constructions will also serve as sea walls, improving ports or even creating new ones. Does that sound grandiose? Well, Mr President, I thought we were admonished to Think Big.

The fringe benefits of the air-reserve system are also intriguing. There could be pressure taps anywhere along the line. You might have your own generator producing power to your own specifications. Would you like to abandon Tesla’s alternating current and go to Edison’s direct current running your laptop off of a plug in the wall? You could well do so. Electric cars, by the way, also charge from DC. Power losses to transmission will be vastly curtailed and they are enormous. In Scranton industrial equipment could be run WITHOUT electricity, drawing rotational power straight from the pneumatic well. Householders could have a direct feed of pneumatic power, silent and unending. Metering? Not a problem. A simple flow meter which, again, is a well-tried technology, does the trick.

I’m sure your experts, Mr President, can tell you if there is worth or not in these projects. I defer to the greater wisdom of your crowd as opposed to mine but please keep in mind, whatever the value or lack is contained in my vapid daydreams, here on the flat earth we also occasionally gaze at the stars inquisitively, and long to see the scaffolding on which they are hung.

In the overall scope of human history, we are a prosperous people, us Americans living right now. Yes, the rich are getting richer, the economy is looking bleak, and there are sit-ins and protests around the country — the world could always stand a few straightenings — but if you take a moment you realize we have more, and more access to, things than anybody else ever has. With apologies to the diehard pessimists and the political gain they hope their pessimism brings about, Americans have it pretty good.

In fact, American children growing up today — no matter whose health care plan we end up with — will have opportunity, health, and safety at levels unimaginable to children born at any other time.

Yet somehow, vast numbers of these children won’t be happy. They aren’t even happy now. No, I’m sugar coating it: Many of them are going to end up depressed, malaise-ridden, suicidal.

It’s disturbing. I look at the vaccinated, vitamin-rich, bully-shielded children around me and wonder why so many will end up this way.

I once wrote a dissertation. If you are like every person in the world save maybe four, you haven’t read it. In that epic work, I looked at what I described as “subtle technology”: My way of thinking about digital tools and devices. It was over-complicated in that classic dissertation style, but I tried to work out our psychology in response to the fact that commonplace digital technologies and the structures and bureaucracies they enable operate at the micro level: We can’t directly interact or fix them.

Perhaps this example will help: While you may not want to change your oil or even change a tire on your car, you could if that was the difference between getting away or being eaten by rampaging zombies. When something digital goes wrong, it breaks at a subsensory level that is hard to get at with screwdrivers and elbow grease. You often need the interface of the computer to fix the computer itself.

I am no technophobe, especially in my professional sphere, where I am a big advocate of teaching technologies. But like those thinking about “digital depression,” I wonder if our continuing slide into the digital can leave us with a sense of being out-of-control, a daily, simmering frustration about all the things we can’t easily and tangibly handle.

I thought this during a recent unlucky run I had with the digital bureaucracies my life orbits. This may sound familiar to you:

• Like most, I manage my benefits and insurance on the Web. With a keystroke, my dental insurance changed. I never realized that my current dentist was now off my provider list. In fact, I never knew this until after a routine visit, I was sent a bill.
• I paid for parking in Philadelphia with a credit card. The machine spit out a receipt prematurely — but the receipt was measured in end time, not amount paid. I bought another block of time, and I placed both receipts side by side so the parking officer could see I bought two of them. No surprise here, I guess, to those familiar with Philadelphia parking: Ticket. However, bless the PPA’s  heart, I did get the ticket dismissed, but only after writing a careful letter and sending it with copies of the receipts. And waiting — pensively.
• My health care insurer had my primary care physician’s office address wrong so I got hit with an out-of-network fee after a well visit. I called the insurer and spoke with a helpful person who got to the bottom of my problem. But two weeks later, I got another bill.
• At work, I get paid via Direct Deposit. However, in an accounting glitch, I was paid by a real, live check. This paper check sat in a bursar’s office, unknown to me. I wrote a personal check against money that wasn’t in my bank account and of course got hit with a bounced check fee. After one of those menu-heavy phone calls, my bank graciously removed the fee. My next bank statement, though, included a mystery service charge.
• Then I had to call the people I wrote the check to, trying to assure them I wasn’t a scofflaw. I slogged through their voice menu; the real person I ended up talking to (said she) believed me.
• My relatively new computer suddenly decided it needs broadband authentication when I power up. Then it decides I’m okay after all. I don’t know why.

Again, I enjoy many aspects of the digital part of my life (I mean, I’m writing a blog), but this list of troubles in the land of digital bureaucracy took me hours to resolve, and even in my moments of triumph, I felt that creeping helplessness. You know the feeling: You want to yell. But at who? The voice-activated menu? “I’m sorry, but ‘Arghhh’” is not an option.”

Where is the problem? In the little blips of life that are my accounts, my records, my life?

I wonder if our digital natives are running themselves headlong into a world cloaked in the guise of digital user-friendliness, which makes it even more shocking when they discover their lack of control. And I wonder if that looming, intangible pressure sets them up to be collectively more frustrated, withdrawn, and perhaps even depressed.

Millenia ago, when a sabre-toothed tiger came bounding after you, there was no time for self-loathing or poetic neuroses. The brilliant machine in our skulls said, “It’s time to move.” Now, our antagonists float, subtle, ephemeral bytes that can often jump the digital boundary, destabilizing our atoms, that real stuff we’re made of.

When Steve Jobs died, among the many words of praise and thanks for him on my friends’ Facebook status updates, there were a few people upset at the attention his death was getting in the media. Maybe you saw similar sentiments from a friend or two. One friend dismissively wondered why we were “making a martyr out of the guy who created the iPhone.” At least one other passed judgment on Jobs, on the day of his death, for not giving more money to charity. He was selfish and rich and why were we treating him like some great guy when he hadn’t devoted his life to helping people but kept his money for himself? Certainly there are others out there who feel the same way. I wonder how many of them have done a fraction of what Jobs did to improve the lives of people. Tonight’s 60 Minutes featured ways the iPad is helping people with autism communicate and learn.

Like many people I enjoy the music of Kraftwerk and think that their reputation as musical pioneers is entirely justified. Indeed I would choose to listen to Trans Europe Express or The Man Machine over anything by The Beatles any day. Come to think of it, I’d listen to their 2003 album about riding bicycles over anything by The Beatles any day, but that’s another matter. I enjoy their dry humour, their minimalist, retro-futurist aesthetic, their decades-long dedication to pretending they are robots… and of course, their music.

And yet, there is a problem. And if you know Kraftwerk then you will know its name: Electric Cafe.

Electric Café’s tormented 5 year production is a thing of legend. Following the excellent Computer World, the electronic pioneers had become victims of their own success. Synths were in; Gary Numan had had a hit about driving a car; and the austere, Teutonic fathers of electronic music feared they were about to lose their eminent position to a bunch of pimply upstarts.

Band leader Ralf Hutter’s initial response was to get into cycling. Following that, the other members also bought bikes. Out of this came the highly enjoyable single Tour de France. Then Ralf Hutter fell off his bike. As Herr Hutter was convalescing the world of music continued to evolve, and increasingly Kraftwerk felt they needed to make a big statement to prove that they were still the most futuristic sound around.

Precise details are thin on the ground, but it seems that the band spent several years toiling on an album called Techno Pop and pretty much had it in the can when Ralf Hutter decided it was insufficiently “cutting edge”. So he flew to New York to sit in with dance producer Francois Kevorkian, whose solution appears to have been the judicious application of electronic slap bass and loud, tinny drums- popular sounds in the mid-1980s, as older readers will recall. The album was renamed after a café that was electric and, perhaps unsurprisingly given the weakness of the concept, released to no acclaim and very poor sales. Kraftwerk disappeared from sight, its two junior members quit, and since then new material has been exceedingly scarce to say the least.

Was this critical and commercial rejection justified? Well, for many years, I too struggled with Electric Café, although at times I could appreciate what the band was trying to achieve. The first three tracks- Boing Boom Tschak, Techno Pop and Musique Non-stop constitute an extended suite built out of clicks, beeps, beats, fragments of robotic and human vocal sounds and repeated, largely meaningless, phrases . Quite radical, and yet at the same time somewhat reminiscent of the type of mid 80s 12” remixes Mr. Kervorkian excelled in, as if there were other, original versions of these songs which the band had kept secret. The Telephone Call makes entertaining use of telephone sounds and is OK, I suppose. Electric Café, in spite of the terrible name, has some nice rippling bleeps and bloops in it. But Sex Object, the centrepiece of the more song-oriented side 2 is simply bizarre, as Ralf Hutter sings in flat emotionless tones: I don’t want to be your Sex Object.

Ah yes, Ralf Hutter. That’ll be the German bank manager type wearing red lipstick on the cover of The Man Machine- a sex object indeed.

Is it possible that Ralf Hutter succumbed to a terrible delirium? Did he fear that the computer- having consumed all his energy and creativity- was now also badgering him for sex?

Is this song a joke? I wondered. Or alternatively, some kind of irony free, Germanic feminist statement? A critique of the dehumanizing effects of pornography on women, perhaps? But if so why have a man pretending to be a robot sing it? It made no sense; and the melody was not up to their usual standards. Even the Stephen Hawking voice that “sings” “Yes/No/Maybe/Perhaps” couldn’t make it better. And so this indigestible, humourless, emotionless, juiceless, funkless atrocity of a song just messed up the whole album for me. Every time I could almost appreciate what Kraftwerk were trying to do, Ralf would complain that I was making him his sex object- or at least that somebody was; but who? No, I mean- really?

For years the mystery remained unsolved. And then last week I found myself watching a Swedish documentary about Kraftwerk on Youtube in which ex-member Karl Bartos frankly admitted that the band had lost their humanity while working on Electric Café. Yes, he said, (I paraphrase), we were often compared to robots and played with the image- but listen to the earlier Trans Europe Express, listen to how warm it is, how human. On Electric Café the band placed technology ahead of the music, and that was their mistake.

The next day I played Electric Café in my car, and as I drove through the Texas landscape while reflecting upon Bartos’ critique, experienced an epiphany. It came to me during Sex Objekt, (I was playing the German edition). As Ralf intoned Ich bin nicht dein Sex Objekt I realized that he was not talking to a woman, but rather the machine he had fetishized for far too long.

The image was clear in my mind- slumped in a chair in Francis Kevorkian’s NYC studio, the exhausted synth pioneer from Dusseldorf was complaining about the Synclavier II that would not let him rest, moaning at the expensive high end modular synthesizers that wouldn’t permit him to ride his bike, but instead insisted that he coax ever more futuristic sounds from their circuits. Far from home, exhausted, trapped inside his own myth and separated from his beloved bicycle is it possible that Ralf Hutter succumbed to a terrible delirium? Did he fear that the computer- having consumed all his energy and creativity- was now also badgering him for sex?

No sooner had I asked that last question than suddenly Electric Café opened up to me, becoming a magical album about dehumanisation, isolation and a loss of identity, as the broken up robotic speech and skittering beats on the first three tracks express the terror a man feels when he has listened to sound for so long that it has all been reduced to a jumble of sonic particles. Sex Objekt, as I have said, is about the fear of a computer demanding sex from you. Telephone Call- or Der Telefon Anruf in German - is about the technology you once relied upon resisting your increasingly desperate attempts to connect with an actual human body. And Electric Café is about a café which is electric.

In 2009 Kraftwerk re-released Electric Café under its original working title of Techno Pop. But this attempt at re-branding the most unloved release in their catalogue is unnecessary, at least if my new interpretation is on target. For if I am correct then Electric Café is a timeless masterpiece. Its themes are cyber-fear and techno-dread; its music the soundtrack of a man’s descent into madness as his soul and even his flesh is consumed by machines. It was thus highly prescient of the coming age of technological over dependence, and is more relevant than ever, especially now that we all spend far too much time on the Internet.

I must warn you, however- this interpretation only works if you listen to the record in German.

Also posted hither and yon

Sir John Keegan’s modest, mighty book contains five chapters, each describing a separate age of human warfare. The first is a primitive state where monkeys who threw their shite at one another have descended and stood straight(er) to hurl spears and stones. This has its roots in predation and animalistic defense of territory. The Age of Stone begins when a few of these hominids, sick of being attacked or doing the attacking, begin to lay one stone on another and another and another and another proto-man comes and another and also lay stones until there is a wall. Fortification was the great weapon in the Age of Stone. This continued until the Age of Flesh; that would mean horseflesh mostly but also the Age of Flesh involves the invention of something you could call an army. Warriors at the command of a chief would include far more than his cousins. With hordes of this size and mobility the siege became possible, starving out the fortress masters or breaching their walls in massed attacks. Fourthly comes the Age of Iron, not meaning iron weapons although the era is about right. Rather this is the coming of iron discipline; think Greece, the Macedonians and Rome. The modernization of fighting comes naturally with the modernization of life. The art of fortification is mated to iron-willed and stone-hearted defense, counter-attack and long-ranging strategic forces executing sophisticated political solutions to domestic problems, often involving wealth and power being in the wrong hands. The Fifth Age, the one we inhabit now, is the closest they come to being well yclept. The Fifth Age is The Age of Fire.

You notice a good bit of overlap, there. Yes, very early man had fire and many a burning log was swung at many a head over the eons. Natural flammables like naphtha and pitch were used in war as soon as they were discovered, no doubt. But it wasn’t until the power of fire was concentrated down into a form where it could be stored, transported and then suddenly released in a targeted burst that fire took its place at the head and heart of warfare. That was gunpowder. First it was used to demolish forts, gear and men. Grenade charges were thrown at and tucked under the enemy. Then came the gun. The huge brass bombard cast by Mehmet to take down the walls of Constantinople announced the coronation. The gun has been the king of warfare ever since. That twenty-seven foot long cannon was scaled down and down until it could be put on a ship. Then it was trimmed until it could fit on a carriage. Then on a pole. Then it was shrunk until it could be held in two hands; then one hand. It became more reliable in wet conditions. It became more accurate and then able to fire quickly. Only now has the full maturity of Fire-based warfare really arrived in the appearance of the XM 25. That X will drop off once this thing goes into general use.

Read it and weep with gratitude that this dog is on our side! It is a grenade rifle shooting high-tech rounds that detonate from advanced miniaturized fuzes. The idea is that a wall will not be protection from fire because this will shoot over your little fort and pop above your head. That is a big, big leap and according to Michael Yon, Austin Bay and other writers with muddy boots, the boys who shoot and get shot at for a living think it is the cat’s meow. It fires a variety of ammo that let it do duty as a rifle, shotgun and riot weapon as well earning its name of The Punisher. Of course it uses an advanced computerized sighting system and puts practical fire power equal to a mortar squad into the hands of a single man. And with one variety of ordinance we step a toe over a line that we have been skirting for a long time. Also available for the XM 25 are thermobaric rounds.

Thermobarics. It is a term the spell checker does not recognize and almost certainly neither do you. There was a nasty thermobaric terrorist attack waged on America, did you know that? Probably not. This was the Time Square Bomber whose attempt turned out to be mistaken for a poorly attended home fireworks display. If you didn’t know that jihadis were doing field experiments with next generation munitions you may read about it here. The Daisy Cutter was the most notorious thermobaric weapon in the US arsenal until now. The Massive Ordinance Air Burst bomb got its nickname from the pattern of crushed flora left by its bite. The flattening effect could turn thick jungle into a dewy meadow if you didn’t look too hard. Now this nasty interaction of blast force mechanics and the air you might want to breath or just lounge in is part of everyday military armaments.

It is hard to conceive that the Age of Fire, that is the age of chemical explosives, could deliver any major innovations after this. What will happen is that this particular gadget, now costing many thousands of dollars to put into the field, will become cheaper with mass production and redesign of the ammo. The gun, after all, is a simple thing; little but a tube blocked at one end. A 25mm bore is something like a 10 gauge shotgun. Couldn’t ingenuity get the diameter down a bit? If so then every 12 gauge shotgun on the planet, and that is a lot, could be a dispenser of mayhem like the advanced experimental weapon, if a bit less accurate. But it all amounts to a refinement of the same old thing; fire as a weapon. Whether you are using it to hurl lead or torch a thatched roof the process is about the same, it’s all just oxidation of one speed or another. The thermobaric works as follows:

First there is a small charge that turns a liquid, gelatin or dust into a cloud. The cloud is then detonated. Instead of a single point source for the blast you get the shape of the cloud explosively expanded. With small payloads like these grenades carry you are probably looking at a diameter of 6 or 10 feet. If you are inside it you will be crushed and burned for good measure. If you are outside it there are some truly horrible effects as well. First off the burning will have consumed all the oxygen around. If you’re outside that will rush back in pretty quickly but that’s not so good either. You see when the thermobaric cloud explodes and expands it only does so for an instant. What is left is a near vacuum so you can enjoy the effects of explosive decompression in the safety and convenience of earth’s atmosphere, which then comes rushing in. That rebounding effect can pull your lungs right through your throat, burst your eyes if you are not close enough for that and burst your ears if you are further still. The reasons these weapons, invented in the Viet Nam era, have hardly been fielded are obvious. These things could leave a wake of hideously disfigured walking wounded that would make the marches of blinded doughboys look like a conga line. And it is indiscriminate to say the least. A competently aimed bullet can take down the Bad Guy and leave his good wife to do the cleaning up. Not so here unless she is out back. The effect on structures is awesome as well. Firing a thermo round into a house of stud wall construction would collapse it in on itself as if it were crushed under a twister. This family of weapons has been considered just too powerful for war! Well, up until lately.

Fire has finally come of age which means its age is rapidly coming to an end. That doesn’t mean guns are out. There is still going to be a great struggle between the dumb gun, epitomized by the AK family, and the smart gun. The modern site you see on every rifle in Iraq or Afghanistan represents a hybrid of high tech and medium tech. With night vision and other targeting equipment, our boys are toting not-too-dumb guns. The XM25 is the pretty smart gun and with its integrated computerized fire control it gives us a hint as to what might replace the greying Age of Fire.

Terminator and Matrix fans won’t be too surprised if the replacement is something like The Age of Thought, where orders are given to machines, or things we couldn’t imagine that will act like machines. Or perhaps The Age of the Atom, such a slow starter, actually will rise to its movie-based reputation. Let us hope not. Genetics also offers a route to a new conception of warfare that we could hardly recognize as such. The Age of Viruses could come to full might without anyone knowing about it. An Age of Energy might bring us lasers with a range only limited by the earth’s curvature. Or perhaps we are already in the new age, in our dimly lit and poorly recorded struggle with jihad, and all warfare exists within a permanent Age of the Spirit. It could be that the fundamental process of war is only now re-asserting itself. Could all man’s struggles really go BACK to the ancient, unmediable issues of whose god sits in the sky? It seems this is so no matter what sort of implement or technique of murdering one’s opponents might be employed. If this is, as Bush was wont to say, a decades long struggle, we might be nearly at the middle or we might be barely at the beginning. With thermobarics it seems certain that we are at the limits to what Fire can do. When it is the common weapon of war we will again see wars true, forgotten face which is exploded, still and burnt.