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Selling The Singularity

Published Date
Author Jack Johnson

If the technological singularity represents a point of no return, one need look no further than my recent attempt to sell an old desktop PC for proof we’re already there.

I say “old desktop” because Moore’s Law is a steep hill—and I use a newer computer these days—but really: this machine I’m selling was, and still is, blazing fast (quad-core i7? Come on).

Processing power wasn’t the problem.

The real challenge was trying to sell a stranger, and in turn myself, on the merits of a medium gone by.

To prep the desktop for sale I’d need to:

  • Wipe down the tower.
  • Blow out any dust that settled after a year of non-use.
  • Reformat it to factory settings.
  • Keep the aftermarket GPU and RAM installed to sweeten the deal.

I staged it in my living room under the recessed lighting and took plenty of well-framed pictures. All about presentation these days, right?

“Aaaaaand post,” I thought as I leaned back in my chair with a confident smile, waiting for the offers to start rolling in. But they didn’t.

…

A week went by and no one responded.

So I lowered the price.

…

Still, nothing.

Lowered the price again, and someone tried to scam me, so I pulled the listing from <Craig’s popular local online marketplace>.

Absorbed in my fruitlessness, I assumed Principal Skinner’s moment of reflection:

Skinner ponders

Here’s what I remember:

In 1995, a technician installed a “modem” in our home so we could connect to Prodigy, a burgeoning Internet Service Provider, in 16 colors at 28.8kbps (that’s slow).

Prodigy Login

Prodigy Login Screen. Yes, that was our real family username.

I was still a kid and only used it to play MadMaze (a choose-your-own adventure game). While the family computer didn’t dominate our living room, it quickly developed into a fixture of my childhood.

MadMaze game

“MadMaze”
Source: vintagecomputing.com

Those early MadMaze adventures evolved into…

  • Interactive CD-ROM trips to the San Diego Zoo
  • City-building simulations (R.I.P. Maxis Software)
  • After-school instant messaging conversations
  • CD-burning summer mixes
  • Online gaming communities

...and so much more.

That primordial machine would eventually become the bill-paying, media-streaming, creative editing suite I use today to wade through the uncertain waters of adulthood.

So with adult responsibilities in mind, I asked my colleagues:

“Well what about budgeting? Don’t you guys use a desktop for maintaining a big spreadsheet of all your finances or something? Don’t you like centralizing your files in your house in a safe place?”

They shrugged it off:

“I don’t know…I just use my laptop for everything at home and the kids use the tablet.”

Nothing wrong with that. Futurist Marshall McLuhan did famously say, “the medium is the message,” and now people “tweet” things instead of “posting them to Twitter.” You can’t even post to Instagram from a desktop.

It makes sense then, that what I valued in a big, stationary PC isn’t as “valuable” today in the face its many portable counterparts.

When the home computer era passed us by, it left behind a factory floor’s worth of great technology, and took with it the reminders of any screen-life balance we used to have. What was once measured in time is now regulated by size alone as we effortlessly move from a ~5” display during the daytime to a larger one at night.

But It’s not like we made some conscious effort to discard the desktop. After all, isn’t a “whoosh” the singularity’s signature sound?

If so, that “whoosh” was the realization that I was no longer selling a perfectly good machine. Only some “Joseph looking for a manger” as Leonard Cohen put it.

Out of local options, I opened up the bidding to a nationwide audience via <popular e-bidding site>.

Just like that, the desktop sold within hours. Imagine that.

I’ll never know what James in Missouri planned to use it for. Maybe he wanted to scrap it for parts. Maybe he wanted his kids to have a clearly-marked area for online activities as they train to be our cultural torchbearers. I’d like to think so.

Either way he sustained my Don Quixote-esque delusion just a little longer: The hope that there will always be a place for a hard-wired workstation. For a moment there, I forgot about the whoosh and got one last unobstructed view of my former self.

I called his name. Of course he didn’t hear me. His back was turned. Lost in the MadMaze but heading toward me at a million miles per hour.

I didn’t realize it was so long ago.

** glances at smartphone **

Guess I was just being dramatic.