Fairytale — Low ink.

Bzzzzzz, bzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzz.
Alanna snapped out of a deep sleep upon hearing her cell phone violently buzzing across her nightstand. She squinted at the clock beside her which read 4:30am. "Who the hell would be calling me right now?" She checked the caller ID and saw her friend Jen's name flashing on the screen. "If this is a drunk dial I'm going to kill her," Alanna thought aloud. She picked up the phone and a frantic voice started speaking rapid-fire on the other end:
"Alanna! Oh thank God you picked up! I need help right now! Something is seriously wrong with my laptop!"
"You called me at four thirty in the morning because you're having computer problems?" Alanna growled back at her friend, "I think that's what 24-hour tech support is for."
"You don't understand," said an exasperated Jen, "this isn't normal."
Alanna sat up and rubbed her eyes before responding: "What do you mean?"
"Well, Ruby and I were just talking on iChat, and I started to get a little hungry, so I told Ruby that I wished I had some pretzels."
"And?" Said Alanna curtly, beginning to question the severity of this problem.
"Well, this image popped up on my screen. It was a bowl of pretzels, and it said 'print me' on it. It was strange, and I thought maybe Ruby had sent me something, so I printed it out, and, it... well... it became REAL!"
"Goodnight, Jen." Alanna was about to turn off her phone and go to sleep, dismissing her friend's outlandish claim that her computer had somehow materialized food.
"But Alanna, I promise I'm telling the truth. I'll prove it. Come over and see for yourself."
Alanna thought for a couple of minutes before finally agreeing to go see what Jen was talking about. "I can't believe I'm doing this," she said as she turned the keys in her car's ignition. She drove the few minutes over to Jen's house and was greeted at the door by Jen, who looked tired and a little shocked. They walked upstairs into the computer room. Sure enough, there was a bowl of pretzels sitting on the desk, but that didn't prove anything to Alana. "So you have a bowl of pretzels. I ate some with lunch today but I didn't feel the need to wake you up to tell you about it."
"Just watch," said Jen, obviously annoyed by her friend's lack of faith. She opened up her chat window again and turned on her printer. "What do you want right now? Name anything," prompted Jen.
"Fine, ummm, I want a cup of green tea with honey," Alanna said laughing to herself at the ridiculousness of what she'd just said.
Jen typed the request into the chat window, and just like before, a window popped up with an image of a neat little china teacup with steaming tea inside.
"Ok, that's cool. How did you write the code to make it do that?" asked Alanna.
"Just watch!" said Jen. She pressed the print button, and within seconds, a teacup appeared in front of them, identical to the one that had been on the screen moments before. Alanna just sat there slack-jawed. She slowly reached over to the cup and touched the handle. It was completely real, even hot from the tea inside. She carefully lifted it up and tasted it. It was green tea with honey, just like she'd asked for.
"Jen, do you understand the power that we possess now?" Alanna said without taking her eyes off of the cup.
"I KNOW!" said Jen enthusiastically. "We can have anything we've ever wanted!"
The girls went to work typing endless things into the window and printing out the things they asked for. They started with some simple things like some breakfast and more hot tea for both of them, then moved on to other, more material things.
"I can finally have that new bag I saw at the mall!" shrieked Jen, typing furiously into her computer as objects popped up all over the room. Suddenly, the alarm in Jen's room went off, and the girls had to get to class soon.
"Let's agree not to tell anybody about this," said Alanna picking up the jacket she'd just printed to wear on the way to class. "Agreed," said Jen, "we'll be the only ones able to have anything we want with the push of a button.
The girls finished getting ready and went to class together. Neither of them could concentrate all day, and they spent most of their time writing lists in the back of their notebooks of all of the things they desired. Meanwhile, back on the computer at Jen's house, a different message popped up on the screen. It was a low ink warning for the printer, but since nobody was around to see it, it went unnoticed, and disappeared.
When the girls had both finished class, they met up and hurried back to Jen's. When they got up to the computer, they started again typing in all of the things they'd thought of during the day. Jen had just pushed the button to print out the new cell phone she wanted, when she noticed something was wrong. As she watched the phone materialize, she noticed a couple of buttons were missing from it.
"What's going on?" yelled Jen, "this phone's messed up!" Alanna took it in her hand and inspected it. She noticed the faint outlines of the keys that were missing, and got a concerned look on her face.
"Jen," she said "how much ink was left this morning? I mean, we printed out a lot of stuff."
Jen furiously threw open the lid of the printer and pushed the ink test button. The window popped up on the screen showing almost no ink left.
"We have to go buy some more," said Jen, "I'll drive."
It was getting late, but the girls managed to find an open office supply store. She ran right to the ink section and found the last box of ink for Jen's printer. They bought it and drove home quickly to install it.
Once they got it back in, they both felt relieved, and decided to pick their next item together.
"Let's start by getting some of that sushi from Yoshi's! I'm starving!" suggested Alanna. Jen started typing, but this time nothing popped up on the screen. Jen started panicking and entered her request into the window again and again.
"It, it's not working," Jen said, dejected. The girls sat there for a while staring at the screen trying to figure out what they'd done wrong. They looked all around at the hundreds of objects they'd collected from that morning, and realized it must have been an anomaly. They started out feeling sad and annoyed by the loss of their incredible secret machine, but soon started to just feel guilty about how far they'd taken it.
"We could've done some great things with that," said Alanna.
"You're right," said Jen. "We were just greedy."
They agreed to look over the things they'd made that morning and give some of them to their other friends as gifts.
"I guess I don't REALLY need another green scarf. Lisa would probably like it, anyway," said Alanna.
You know, I feel better now," said Jen. "I'm glad we're at least using a little bit of this for some good. Wanna order a pizza, you know, the old fashioned way?" Jen asked, pointing to her cell phone. The girls laughed and continued to sort through their stuff, feeling glad about everything that had happened to them that day.

Media Dialogue

August 30, 2010


1: Do you ever think what it would be like if there were a sort of “Google” for
real life?
2: Well, I mean, there is. You can use it to find anything you want, really.
1: Well, no, you can’t find real-life objects. You’re limited to what is on the Internet.
2: That’s not a very big limit… just about everything’s available now.
1: But, what I mean is, more the ability to use Google to find things around you, things that are physically near you. For example, I was in Publix grocery shopping yesterday, and I was looking for a specific thing, and I thought, what if Publix had some sort of directory where you could look up the products by brand or category, and it would give you their exact location in the store.
2: You know, they do have people working there who essentially do that same thing.
1: In that situation, yes, but that’s not always the case. What if I lost my car keys
in my room?
2: You’d have to retrace your steps and think where they might be.
1: Or, what if I had a way to search for them with technology. I could input my keys into some sort of device; so that when I couldn’t find them, all I would have to do is recall them on the device and it would locate them for me.
2: That is a good idea. I can see how something like that could have its place, and how it could be useful, but not as much the grocery store thing.
1: And, why not?
2: So many technologies are taking away the need for real people, and thus taking away real interaction. When was the last time you actually picked up the phone to find out the hours of a business?
1: Only when they don’t have a website.
2: Exactly! People of our generation don’t tend to interact with people the same way that people our parents’ age do. What you essentially just suggested was replacing hundreds of jobs by more machines. Add in some self-checkout counters and grocery stores suddenly don’t need employees anymore.
1: Come on, you know how often those self-checkouts don’t work, there’d have to be someone around to help people with that.
2: You know what I mean. I think the mechanized future we are headed for is not going to be as helpful as people think it will. We’re getting rid of the need for people, and therefore getting rid of jobs, and I think in 50 years, people aren’t going to know how to interact with each other.