Mr. Blackwood has once again insisted I abandon the comforting certainty of this week’s crossword puzzle (14 down, “A sensible writing instrument,” seven letters, begins with ‘P’) to instead report on the latest heresies from the high priests of Silicon Valley. The company named after a piece of fruit has, I am told, unveiled a new form of digital sorcery they have the temerity to call “Liquid Glass.”
Let us be clear. Glass is a solid. It is a decent, respectable material from which one makes windows to keep the weather out, or a sturdy tumbler for one’s prune juice. Liquid is what is in the tumbler. To combine the two is an act of such profound linguistic and physical perversion that it can only have been conceived by a committee of addled young men who have never known the simple joy of a well-darned sock.
They claim this “Liquid Glass” will make the little pictures on your pocket telephone “translucent” and “refractive.” I have read the press release. It seems the primary function of this technological menace is to allow you to vaguely see a blurry version of what is behind the picture you are currently trying to look at. This is not innovation; it is a deliberate and malicious attempt to induce headaches. In my day, if you wanted to see what was behind something, you simply moved it. One did not require a team of engineers and a billion-dollar budget to solve the problem of object permanence.
I was provided with a “demonstration” on one of the office’s glowing rectangles. An icon, I believe it was for the ‘chattering’ application, wobbled with the consistency of a disturbed aspic. It reflected the light with a sort of oily, spectral sheen. It was not beautiful. It was unnerving. It looked like a ghost had spilled something on the screen.
These people, in their infinite arrogance, believe they have created a new material. They have not. They have created a new anxiety. It is the anxiety of a smudge you cannot wipe away, a shimmer that serves no purpose, a solution to a problem that never existed. They have taken the simple, honest clarity of a printed page and replaced it with a gaudy, shimmering, haunted pane of digital nonsense.
This is the state of modern invention: creating new and more elaborate ways to be distracting. They have abandoned the noble pursuit of sturdier paperweights and more reliable inkwells for this… this shimmering abomination. Mark my words, when your telephone begins to drip, do not come crying to me.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, 23 across, “A state of utter confusion,” nine letters. I believe the answer is ‘Cupertino.’
