Yearly statistics for the Accordion Guy blog, courtesy of StatCounter.
StatCounter says that sometime within the half-hour before I wrote this, The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century got its 2 millionth page view for 2008. My thanks to all of you for making this possible!
Hint, Hint…
Hey, web advertisers! I get 100K pageviews/month and in the Technorati 5K. I can get you clicks! Email me at joey@joeydevilla.com and let’s see what I can do for you!
Hey, tech companies! Looking for a Guy Kawasaki or Robert Scoble, but who can also code? Think of me as the budget version of those guys. Or better yet, think of Guy Kawasaki and Robert Scoble as overpriced Joey deVillas. Once again, email me at joey@joeydevilla.com and let’s see what I can do to put you on top!
When the news is filled with talk of credit crunches, bank bailouts and poorly-thought-out metaphors, you can be certain that every business is adjusting their plans to ensure that it doesn’t go under. Cutting spending is one of the most important of these adjustments, and since employee salaries are expenses, companies are laying off the employees they believe they can do without and slowing down (if not stopping) their hiring.
This is not a good time to look for a job nor lose one.
What to Do?
Losing your job is a shaming, stress-inducing, heart-rending, and even frightening experience at the best of times. Losing your job at the start of what some people in the media are calling the New Great Depression is far worse, even if you think they’re exaggerating for effect.
In the time since I posted the article in which I announced that I had been let go, I’ve received about a dozen emails from people who’ve said that they’re in the same situation. They have no idea what to do and asked me what I was doing and if I had any advice.
I have some observations and suggestions, some of it from my layoff experience back in 2002 and some of it from the past few days’ experiences, and I’ve written them below.
You Will Know When You’re Called in for “The Meeting”
I knew I was being brought in for the “your services are no longer required” meeting the moment I was invited to it.
Many people dismiss intuition, but in experience, I have found that a well-trained intuitive sense will often serve you well in those situations where the situation is murky or when rationality is following the wrong path. I susbscribe to the theory that intiuition is your brain doing some massively parallel processing, subconsciously “filling in the missing pieces” when you are presented with incomplete information. That’s why Poincare said “It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.”
It might have been something in the Director of Tech’s voice or his body language. Perhaps it was that there’d been little for me to do in the past little while because of the overlap between our jobs. Maybe the fact that the meeting had been called up out of the blue with no explanation as to what it was about was the tip-off. All these hints would be clear to a detached observer, but to someone right in the middle of the situation, they might not be so apparent. Thanks (or no thanks, perhaps?) to a flash of intuition, I had a pretty good idea of what I was in for.
A quick aside: I believe that intuition is not independent of learning and experience, but enhanced by it. When intuition “fills in the missing pieces”, it has to get those pieces from somewhere. Without learning, and even more importantly, the regular application of that learning, intuition is no better than flipping a coin.
You Have Moments to Get a Grip
Armed with that intuitive flash, I had the twenty or so seconds’ travel time between my desk and the meeting room to collect myself. At this point, I only had a vague sense that this was my termination meeting; intuition isn’t a straight-forward thing like a warning light on your car’s dashboard or a pop-up window on your computer:
Do whatever it takes to steel yourself for the bad news. Whether it’s deep breathing, couting to ten, reciting your own personal mantra or firing up your “poker face”, you want to get ready to conduct yourself at the meeting with as much grace, aplomb and professionalism as you can muster.
The Second Most Important Meeting You Might Ever Have with Your Employer
I’ll admit that my termination meeting wasn’t as uncomfortable as this one.
(In case you were wondering, the most important one is the job interview.)
I used to work as a DJ at a popular campus pub at Crazy Go Nuts University. Both the atmosphere and the vantage point offered by the DJ booth gave me the opportunities to witness many breakups from a detached third-party point of view, whether I want to see them or not. Even at their best, breakups are pretty rough; when they get ugly, you can’t help but feel shame for the couple.
No matter what you’re feeling at the meeting, you want your termination to be as good a breakup as possible. This means that you must handle the meeting professionally. The way you behave at this meeting will set the tone for your termination. If it is full of freak-outs and acrimony, they won’t be inclined to do you any favors. On the other hand, if you conduct yourself in a professional manner, you may gain some goodies such as extra negotiating leverage and a willingness on their part to do what they can for you.
If you can remember these questions through the stress of the meeting, you should ask questions like:
When is my last day?
What is my severance package?
How long will my company insurance coverage last?
When do I have to return the company laptop and Blackberry?
How long do I have to collect my stuff from the office?
What do you want me to do with my current projects and files?
Can I get a letter of recommendation and use you as a reference? (Naturally, if you’re being fired rather than laid off, don’t bother asking this question.)
Don’t worry about memorizing these questions — just remember that you should leave the meeting with a clear idea of what they expect from you and what you can expect from them.
If they’ve given you papers to sign, do not sign them yet. Ask for some time to “look them over”.
Take a Walk as Soon as Possible
This is going to sound terribly touchy-feely new-agey, but I’m going to say it because it’s an important step: at your first opportunity, take a break, get out of the office and go for a walk.
When this first opportunity comes depends on the sort of place where you were and the conditions under which you’re being let go. In some cases, you’ll be asked to pack your things and leave immediately, sometimes with a minder assigned to you so that you don’t go pilfering office supplies. In my case, I was asked to say on for a few days to be debriefed and help with the transfer of responsibilities.
Since I was at the office for a few more days and since it was the sort of place where they’re pretty cool about going out for a break, I went for that walk at the first opportunity. (Besides, what were they going to do, fire me?)
The walk is important because it gets you away from the office and to clear your head. Regular readers of this blog know that I’m usually an easy-going, “go with the flow” kind of guy who’s seen and done some pretty crazy things, and even I needed that walk. I felt twitchy and drained at the same time.
The walk gives you a chance to come down from one of the most stressful experiences you’ll ever face in your working life and come to terms with what’s happened. It is not the time for figuring out what your immediate next steps are; it is the time to collect yourself for figuring out what your next steps are.
Don’t do the walk in a fugue state. Take note of your surroundings. Chances are you’ll see things that you passed by every day but never noticed before. This is good, because it’s preparation for what you’re going to be doing for the next little while: seeing things differently.
Deal with the Shame
No matter how good a job your were doing or how well you served the company, being let go will make you feel like thie cat pictured below:
It will feel as if you had been weighed in the balance and found wanting. In fact, that’s what probably happened. Perhaps you weren’t found wanting as a person or an employee, but when the bean-counters did the books, either you went or the company did.
Thanks to evolution, being let go feels terrible. It feels like getting dumped, which feels terrible because it means that you are failing your biological imperative to keep the species going. Without this feeling, we don’t have the drive to reproduce and thrive, and it’s “goodbye species”.
You deal with the shame, using whatever constructive coping mechanisms work best for you. In my case, I hit the gym, did a little writing, played a little music on the ol’ squeezebox and got involved in some very severe rocket-launcher-assisted altercations in Grand Theft Auto IV.
If you must, have a drink or two but don’t go beyond that. You want to take the edge off, not go on a binge.
You Must Come to this Realization
Crank up your computer’s speakers and enjoy the video below. It’s the Soup Dragons’ 1990 cover of the Rolling Stones’ I’m Free. Don’t be afraid to shake your booty if you feel the urge:
If you need to, play the video a couple of times just to make sure the song’s point soaks in: you’re free.
Once the initial shock of losing your job has worn off, consider this: the future has suddenly become a blank slate. That may sound scary, but you should think of it as liberating.
Think about it. That end-of-the-week progress report that management expects? Not your problem anymore! Getting a response from that contractor for the 50-page spec for that increasingly complicated e-commerce website that you’re responsible for? Somebody else has to deal with it now! Hunting down the bug in the credit card payment gateway? Rubbing an irate client’s belly? Putting new covers on the TPS reports? You’re free of all those responsibilities.
All the day-to-day stuff that you’ve been doing at work has just vanished. This frees you to stop worrying about the doing things for the company and start doing things for you. Without those things taking up your time and thoughts, both your calendar and your mind are free to concentrate on “You, Incorporated”.
In the Next Installment
The next steps, including what you can do with all that spare time.
Brian Jepson forwarded me an email with the preface “Couldn’t let this sit in my inbox without sending it to Accordion Guy!” The email announced some bands coming to his home area (he’s deep in Family Guy country), including an intriguing one called Accordion Death Squad. How could I not like a band with a name like that and a description like this?
Accordian Death Squad come from Ratsylvania, where we would dance, play music, fight, strip off all our clothes, blacksmith, and generally carry on without work of a mundane sort. A few of us decided to venture away from our past haven and found ourselves traveling dusty freight cars through a strange God-soaked place called the U.$.A.. Our instruments: accordions, cello, fiddle, mandolin, toy piano, guitar, tenor banjo.
America’s Got Talent Doesn’t Like Accordions
Here’s a clip from America’s Got Talent in which an accordion-playing duo get rejected simply for their instrument of choice. It’s a pity, because their technique is excellent:
I try to avoid watching reality TV because it usually just makes me angry. For example, take this clip from the latest episode of America’s Got Talent in which Branson accordionists Dan and Kim Christian get the boot simply because they play the accordion.
[Club organizer Peter Lapira] said the goal is to get as many different groups together to see how many they can perfect including jazz, tango and rock ‘n’ roll accordion groups.
“For people who think the accordion is goofy, they are so wrong. It is a wonderful instrument,” he said. “You really become a one-man band. We are the only country that doesn’t have young people playing the accordion.”
Squeezin’ in Montana
The Five Valley Accordion Association has been carrying the accordion torch for 22 years in the area of Missoula, Montana, and their annual jam took place this weekend:
It was a freestyle jam on an old porch under a blue sky, with young and old squeezing out some classic tunes – age 17 to age Reineohl. The only thing missing was an old bloodhound cuddled up next to someone’s feet, but the chorus of stringed and aerophone instruments kept young and old dancing and clapping.
With more than 200 dues-paying members, the FVAA is filled with accordionists and accordion fans across western Montana. Most, said FVAA secretary Nancy Kopszywa, are folks who just love to show up and dance. In fact, there are only about 20 or so members of the FVAA who actually play the accordion, though all play an instrument of some sort.
Mike Jones, of Victor, serves as this year’s FVAA president. The group gets together a couple of times a month, but the annual picnic and weekend jam is the most important gathering of the year.
“We get together twice a month, but this is definitely the highlight,” he said.
Reineohl, who was born in 1914, picked up the accordion and the banjo at a young age.
Though the average age of those at Friday’s jam session was probably approaching 65, Reineohl said the accordion is definitely making a comeback.
“It’s coming back to life fast,” he said. “A lot of country western bands around are using them. They’re a good lead instrument.”
Notably absent at Friday’s performance was any hint of a polka. And that’s just fine with Reineohl.
“The main thing with the accordion is that you think polka,” he said. “But you can play anything on an accordion.”
BlackBerry + Accordion = Any Tune, Any Time, Anywhere
Dorian Logan assists me at a Kickass Karaoke back in 2003. I have no idea what’s up with my eyes — I’m either looking at the screen or in some kind of accordion trance.
Last night, I was at the 9th anniversary of Carson T. Foster’s karaoke night, Kickass Karaoke. Although I haven’t been making it to Kickass Karaoke as often as I used to, I still consider myself part of the Kickass Karaoke family of regulars who’ve been belting out the tunes with Carson. I’d like to thank Carson for the music and all his support, and especially for making my mother-in-law feel at home when she came to a karaoke night while I was out of town.
One of the tricky things about bringing an instrument to karaoke is that it adds another constraint to what you can play: not only do you need to be familiar with the song, you also have to know its chords. Sometimes you get a hint when the karaoke disc announces which key the song is in at the start, but most of the time, you’re on your own.
I used to prep for Kickass Karaoke by Googling for chord charts for songs I wanted to perform on my computer at home, but last night I realized that the BlackBerry provided to me by my work could perform the same function right there at the bar! (Yes, b5media allow some personal use as long as we’re not downloading giant files like movies on it, and I might be the person in the office who uses our phone data plan the least.) I wish I’d had something like this long ago.
When I finally get an iPhone — and that’ll happen when (or perhaps I should say “if”) the data plan pricing here in Canada becomes a little more reasonable — I’ll have to build some kind of rig that’ll let me attach it to the accordion so I can quickly look up chords and lyrics.
A large, thick bubble-wrap-padded envelope arrived for me at the b5media office. As you can see in the photo of the label below, it’s from HarperCollins publishers:
I opened the envelope to my surprise, here’s what was inside:
I was stunned: it’s the much-anticipated Anathem, the upcoming book by T3H DR4K PR1NC3 0F H4X0R F1C7I0N (that’s “1337-speak” for “the dark prince of hacker fiction”), Neal Stephenson. Stephenson has been rather quiet about this one, saying little about the book beyond this oft-bandied-about hint in Gretta Cook’s LiveJournal:
It’s set on another planet and has aliens and so on. It’s really about Platonic mathematics, but he needed the aliens and space opera-ish elements to spice it up a little bit, just like the pirates kept people engaged in the Baroque books.
The Press Release
Here’s what the press release included with the book has to say:
NEAL STEPHENSON WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEWS OUT OF TORONTO OCTOBER 30TH
From the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle comes a new stand-alone novel that marks a return to science fiction — the very genre that is Neal Stephenson.
Stephenson’s first new novel in four years, Anathem, derails a young monk’s quiet life behind the walls of a 3,400 year-old monastery with a world-wide catastrophe.
Since childhood, Raz has lived behind the walls of the monastery — a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians. There, he and his cohorts are sealed off from the illiterate, irrational and unpredictable “saecular” world, an endless landscape of casinos and mega-stores that is plagued by recurring cycles of booms and busts, dark ages and renaissances, world wars and climate change.
Until the day that a higher power, driven by fear, decides it is only these cloistered scholars who have the abilities to avert an impending catastrophe. And, one by one, Raz and his friends, mentors and teachers are sent forth without warning into the unknown.
Anathem confirms Time magazine’s assessment that “Stephenson has a once-in-a-generation gift: he makes complex ideas clear, and he makes them funny, heartbreaking and thrilling.”
The Soundtrack (or: Hey! I know that guy!)
The book comes with an audio CD, whose “liner notes” are on the very first page of the book:
Here’s what the “liner notes” say:
IOLET :: Music from the world of Anathem
Track 1: Approximating Pi (6:53)
Track 2: Thousander Chant (5:29)
Track 3: Proof Using Finite Projective Geometry (4:04)
Track 4: Cellular Automata (5:29)
Track 5: Quantum Spin Network (5:49)
Track 6: Sixteen Color Prime Generating Automation (11:23)
Track 7: Deriving the Quadratic Equation (4:29)
Performers
Jeremy Bornstein – David Krueger
Mark Powell – Adam Steele
David Stutz – Thomas Thompson – James Whetzel
In order to conform to the practices of the avout, this disc contains music composed for and performed by voices alone.
One of the performers’ names jumped at me off the page: David Stutz. I had the pleasure of meeting David first on the Microsoft campus and again at various conferences dedicated to “peer-to-peer” technology. I remember talking not just tech with him, but also about music and our respective arenas musical performance — me with playing with rock bands and as a busker, him with baroque and choral ensembles. A quick check of his personal site confirmed that the David Stutz in the liner notes and the David Stutz I know are one and the same.
The press release says there’s supposed to be one at anathembook.com, but it doesn’t seem to be set up yet.
Am I Going to Ask to Interview Stephenson?
Interviewing authors isn’t normally my thing, but why not? I’ll let you know what happens.
Related Reading
Anathem and the Long Now: “Neal Stephenson’s new novel, ANATHEM, germinated in 01999 when Danny Hillis asked him and several other contributors to sketch out their ideas of what the Millennium Clock might look like. Stephenson tossed off a quick sketch and promptly forgot about it. Five years later however, when he was between projects, the idea came back to him, and he began to explore the possibility of building a novel around it. ANATHEM is the result, and will be released on September 9th, 02008.”
Anathem’s page on Amazon.com: ” Fraa Erasmas is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, protected from the corrupting influences of the outside “saecular” world by ancient stone, honored traditions, and complex rituals. Over the centuries, cities and governments have risen and fallen beyond the concent’s walls. Three times during history’s darkest epochs violence born of superstition and ignorance has invaded and devastated the cloistered mathic community. Yet the avout have always managed to adapt in the wake of catastrophe, becoming out of necessity even more austere and less dependent on technology and material things. And Erasmas has no fear of the outside—the Extramuros—for the last of the terrible times was long, long ago.
Now, in celebration of the week-long, once-in-a-decade rite of Apert, the fraas and suurs prepare to venture beyond the concent’s gates—at the same time opening them wide to welcome the curious “extras” in. During his first Apert as a fraa, Erasmas eagerly anticipates reconnecting with the landmarks and family he hasn’t seen since he was “collected.” But before the week is out, both the existence he abandoned and the one he embraced will stand poised on the brink of cataclysmic change.
Powerful unforeseen forces jeopardize the peaceful stability of mathic life and the established ennui of the Extramuros—a threat that only an unsteady alliance of saecular and avout can oppose—as, one by one, Erasmas and his colleagues, teachers, and friends are summoned forth from the safety of the concent in hopes of warding off global disaster. Suddenly burdened with a staggering responsibility, Erasmas finds himself a major player in a drama that will determine the future of his world—as he sets out on an extraordinary odyssey that will carry him to the most dangerous, inhospitable corners of the planet . . . and beyond.”
Ask Neal Stephenson questions about Anathem: A Boing Boing article that says: “For a limited time only, fans have the chance to ask Neal Stephenson questions about his upcoming novel ANATHEM (though, of course, he may or may not answer…). Questions and answers will be on an online video that will be released before ANATHEM goes on-sale September 9, 2008.” It links to this blog for Eos Books, the sci-fi imprint of HarperCollins.
Last night’s storm, in which the sky turned a greenish colour, was a pretty impressive if brief one. The wall of rain that came down reminded me monsoon/typhoon weather in southeast Asia. Although the storm lasted just over an hour, we got 52 millimetres (2 inches) of rain, 430 lightning strikes and a number of flooded-out roads. One of those lightning strikes killed a man who was taking shelter under a tree, which goes against every bit of thunderstorm safety advice I’ve ever heard.
While biking on the way to work this morning, I saw this felled tree at the corner of Dundas and Golden:
Police cordoned off the street and people from Accordion City’s public works department were working out how to remove the tree without crushing the van pinned under it:
Here’s a closeup of where the branch split from the trunk:
If you’re a reader of the usual sites with links that nerds like, you’ve probably seen the video or read the writeup of Clay Shirky’s presentation at Web 2.0 on “Gin, Television, and Social Surplus”.
In his presentation, he describes a conversation with a TV producer, in which he talked about the effort that people put into the “Pluto” entry in Wikipedia. The producer, hearing this story, rolled her eyes and asked “Where do they find the time?”
Clay suggests that the producer believed that “free time”, which he refers to as “cognitive surplus” or “social surplus”, was TV’s by divine right. He posits that the mental energy once devoted to television watching and other equally passive ways of filling one’s spare time is being better spent — on the internet.
(I’ve always found that saying someone has “too much time on their hands” is an intellectually dishonest way of dismissing someone: see my entry Too Much Spare Time? and Cory Doctorow’s essay, Too Much Time on His Hands.)
If you haven’t seen the video of Clay’s presentation, here it is — it’s 16 minutes of your free time well spent:
The TV producer reminded me of a record executive whom I encountered at my first job out of school. It’s an interesting story about programming work and technology in the mid-90’s, the music industry and how predictions about technology can be way, way off.
My First Job Out of School
A screenshot from the 1991 version of the Mackerel Stack, a HyperCard stack the promoted Mackerel’s design work.
My first job fresh from getting my computer science degree at Crazy Go Nuts University was developing multimedia applications in Director at a little company called Mackerel Interactive Multimedia.
The year was 1995, when Myst still defined the cutting edge of multimedia, CD-ROMs and sound cards were still fairly novel peripherals and the only other opportunities for a wet-behind-the ears developer seemed to be at a bank or insurance company, neither of which seemed to be appealing. While the pay wasn’t great — I used to call us the “hos of technology” and did a Full Metal Jacket-esque routine that ended with me shouting “Me so geeky! Clicky-clicky! Me hack for long time!” — the place wasn’t soul-killing like a bank or insurance company might have been. I could wear whatever I wanted, I could dress up my office space however I pleased, the hours were flexible and the co-workers were great: a hip and cool set of young people, with a near 50:50 gender balance. It seemed like Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs, which had just been published at that time, right down to the ill-advised office romances (one of which was mine).
While the dream at the company was to write the next Myst, we paid the bills by writing multimedia apps for clients — typically interactive advertising or educational pieces that would eventually be distributed on CDs or even multiple floppies.
The company went under after a disastrous merger in 1997. Its story was covered by Cory Doctorow wrote an article for Wired about the Mackerel’s demise; unfortunately, it never got published in the magazine. The Mackerel story is told from a different angle by co-founders Dave Groff and Kevin Steele at the Smackerel site, which is subtitled A Biased History of Interactive Media.
Enter the Record Exec
One of the bands represented by the record exec’s company. You can try to guess who they are, and you should be able to figure out the record company as well.
One day during the summer of 1996, one of the founders came into the area where the developers hung out and told us that we’d landed a contract with an independent record label belonging to a major record company.
“Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?” I asked.
Apparently it wasn’t. The indy label turned out to be merely a new branch of the major record company. It would sign up-and-coming underground and alternative acts and use the major label for distribution. If the major label was pin-striped and buttoned-down, the indy label was its edgier nephew, clad in faux Hot Topic-esque cred. In spite of their trying-too-hard-to-be-cool aspects, we thought they’d make an interesting client.
The record company exec was a woman who was about five years past their twenty-something demographic. She gave off more of a business school vibe than a rock vibe. She peppered her speech with business-school-isms like “target audience” and “units sold”. She used the word “product” several times and didn’t use the word “music” or even “album” once. Everything she knew about music didn’t come from being a fan; it came from what she’d read in her market research reports.
“That’s why they don’t call it show art,” one of us quipped.
The Brainstorming Session
The CD player application from System 7, the version of Mac OS from 1996.
One of the goals of this initial meeting was to brainstorm some ideas for interactive apps that we could build for them. I had been working on an idea that I was rather proud of: CD player apps customized for specific albums. For any CD other than the one for it was customized, it would show a mostly plain interface, plus some promos for the album. However, if you used the player to play the album for which it was customized, it would “come alive” with lyrics, liner notes, album art and so on. It was an attempt to bring back what was lost in the move from LPs to CDs.
“Nice try, kid,” said the exec with great disdain. “We did some market research and we’ve determined that no one will ever listen to music on their computer. People see them as machines for getting work done. We’re aiming for the rec room, the den, the living room and the bedroom, not the home office. You computer guys are aiming for home office.”
“You sure about that?” our production manager asked. “We all use the CD players on our machines. For some of us, our computers are in our bedrooms and living rooms, and they’re also our primary stereos now.”
“That may be true for you,” she replied, “but you guys are the exception. Computers are great, but they’re office equipment. You don’t keep a typewriter or photocopier in your living room, so why would you have a computer there? And that’s where people listen to their music. Office equipment and entertainment: apples and oranges. Trust me – I’ve been in the music industry for a while – no one’s going to listen to music on their computer.”
I listened as a few other people had their ideas shot down in similar fashion. It was a matter of her knowing the music industry better than we did.
The Hail Mary MP3 Play
At some point during the increasingly futile brainstorming session, I remembered something that I’d brought back from the Macromedia User Conference. I reached into my laptop bag and fished out a floppy disc.
“Here, check this out,” I said, slotting the diskette into my laptop. “It’s something called Shockwave, which lets you embed multimedia applications inside web pages.”
“We don’t think there will be much interest in the world wide web outside of technical people. The pictures are tiny, you’re stuck with default fonts, and your customers have to go buy a modem. Too much tech hassle, too little payoff.”
“You should give this a look,” I insisted. “The company that makes the tool we use to write multimedia software is using MPEG layer 3 [the term “MP3″ hadn’t made common parlance yet] compression to squeeze music files into less space. There’s a small multimedia program on this floppy, and a whole three-minute song. It would normally take about 8 floppies to hold this song.”
I put the disk in my laptop and launched the Shockwave application, which started a tune playing.
“Sounds like crap,” she said. “And who’s the band? The Spin Doctors? They’re so over.”
“Ignore the band,” I said, trying to remain patient. “Just think of the possibilities. This three-minute single is only a megabyte in size. It fits on a floppy, which you can hand out, or you’d be able to download it in a reasonable amount of time. The download will be even faster on the new 56K modems.”
“Blah, blah, blah,” she said, making that opening-and-closing hand gesture signifying pointless chatter. “It only means something to you because you’re a techie. I’ve seen the market research, and I will tell you now: people are not going to be getting their entertainment from computers or the internet. It’s going to come from set-top boxes and MiniDisc recharging stations at their record stores.”
At this point, I decided that discretion was the better part of valour. “Well, you seem to have all the market research, so maybe the best thing would be for you to come up with ideas for an interactive application, and then we can hammer out the details with you in a later meeting.”
“I think that would be a good idea,” she said. She rose from her seat to leave the room, shaking her head.
“I don’t know about you,” I said to the others after confirming that she was out of earshot, “but I think the music industry needs to be destroyed.”
![](https://www.joeydevilla.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/neal_stephenson_anathem.jpg "Cover of Neal Stephenson\'s \\"Anathem\\"")
![](https://www.joeydevilla.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/anathem_cd_and_notes.jpg "The audio CD and \\"liner notes\\" for Neal Stephenson\'s \\"Anathem\\"")
