Cheating Death

I can finish the Time’s Crossword but don’t have a clue how Blockchain works

Some things I simply cannot master, or fathom for that matter.

A JPG file made by Mike Winkelmann, the digital artist known as Beeple, was sold last Thursday by Christie’s in an online auction for $69.3 million. The price was a new high for an artwork that exists only digitally. (I’ll bet you another 69-million that you don’t know what JPG (or .jpeg) stands for? *)

The technology for NFTs has been around since the mid-2010s but hit the mainstream in late 2017 with CryptoKitties, a site that allowed people to buy and “breed” limited-edition, digital cats with cryptocurrency. I read about it in an on-line cat-alog (ba-rump).

As I said, somethings I simply do not “get.”

I can get close to describing the difference between the Keynesian Theory of Money and the Monetarist Theory created by economist Milton Friedman… encouraging consumption versus controlling the money supply (close enough).

But reading an AT&T mailer that compares its fiber 1000Mbps connection to the Xfinity GIF with uploads of 35 Mbps, duh, I have no idea what they are talking about.

Some hurdles simply are too high. The only code I recognize was invented by Samuel Morse. That’s the reality at a time in my life when seven minutes of Qi Jung in the morning is a rousing workout.

But I haven’t waved the white flag. There are drag-and-drop user interfaces I’ve learned to use, and Siri and I talk from time to time. What I have surrendered to is a learning curve that typed stencils for the mimeograph and nursed the furnace to life with a layer of pea coal and coke. I’m giving myself a break and accepting the reality.

When internet tech-speak turns my eyes into pinwheels I remind myself, the computer can’t sew a button on my shirt and iron it so I’ll look sharp when I’m the only one at the table who can carve the turkey. And I do know how to use Google to find the answer to 54 across and 55 down.

*”Joint Photographic Experts Group”, which is the name of the group who created the JPEG standard.

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