©12-20-02 David Schultz

We all will never forget the terrible images of planes flying into one side of the WTC Towers and exploding in balls of flame on the other side; the images of desperate people jumping to their deaths; the clouds of powderized concrete exploding on the streets as the Towers crumbled and fell; the people running; and the look of FDNY heroes looking back knowing their brothers were in and under that falling city.

Applelust covered it a bit that day, but we knew people were watching, entranced, to their TVs, running home to be with their loved ones in this terrible time. I recall, and I live in the Midwest city the President of the United States flew into that day, the eerie sound of nothing in the skies that day - no planes taking off and landing in the nearby, busy Air Base and Airport. Nothing, until Air Force One landed and took off. I looked up, and saw no planes. The world stopped turning and when it started its rotation again it would never be the same. Nothing would be the same. Applelust closed down for a week, with a 'sign' put up that we are with family and exhorted our readers to do the same. Publishing was not a high priority. In fact, it seemed down right silly to ever publish again.

For, after 9-11, the weight of the once-again-rotating world had greatly increased. Nothing was the same. I, Dave Schultz, Publisher, Professor, Scholar, and Writer, was completely changed. My own writing since that day has dropped dramatically (on the 'Net anyway, most of my creative juices have been directed to writing for my professional career, writing scholarly works and such apart from the Web; for a very small, unpolished look....), and I had shoulder replacement surgery on Feb. 12, 2003, which basically laid me out flat for 7 months. It was horrible, but I feel so much better now (my shoulder spontaneously cracked in five places last January, yeah, ouch man, big time!). But I recall thinking that after 9-11, Applelust's very existence needed to be justified again. Did it make sense for us in the new normal to carry on anyway? It seemed petty and silly, and pettiness and silliness were no longer acceptable in the 'new normal.' I mean people were dying, we were fighting a war, people were dying under the horrid pounding of those C-130 gun ships, flying massacre machines that reduce anything under them to rubble in seconds. Yet we sat here, comfortably away from the horribly noisy carnage that is war. (Just ask any veteran and he, or she, will tell you how noisy war is; as a Classics scholar I can tell you about books [see Hanson below] on Greek soldiers stating how noisy the phallanx was; hoplites, Greek citizen-warriors, reported the loss of hearing later in life.)

Some historians say World War I was the first total war. (I am unsure of this claim myself, thinking there were such wars before 1914, such as Napoleanic wars.) That meant the woman working in the factory back home, making shells or riveting joints on a plane, were a target just as must as any soldier on the field; in total war there are no civilians, just soldiers. That is the way al Qaeda, fanatics full of perfidy, saw those in the Twin Towers - they make no distinction between warrior and civilian, they only make the distinction between infidel and believer.

The Mac Web just seemed petty, small, unimportant after 9-11, and many of my writers stated, in our staff forum, which is a busy and noisy place its own, how 9-11 changed them. One writer simply could not write for two months, and was overjoyed when the creative juices started flowing once again when Expo-time rolled around. Others had to write at least one cathartic column about the attacks before moving on to the Mac. I was down flat, recovering from shoulder replacement surgery. At times I truly wondered if we should continue, or shut down; and I quietly laughed to myself as petty debates started once again on the Mac Web at other sites. "Good God, we didn't get press passes!! How horrible is THAT!!" Frankly, not horrible at all, given the fact that C-130s were pounding caves in Afghanistan, and a CIA agent (a father and son) died in a prison up-rising.

It felt like in my involvement with the Mac Web I was petty, and I like to think of myself (don't we all?) as someone who avoids pettiness in his life. "I'm not a petty person, am I?" I'd ask myself. How could arguing about a computer EVER matter, given the gravity of the world situation and zeitgeist now? I mean really, we (meaning ALL Mac Web Publishers, especially those pointless press release puking ones), write about gripes with motherboards, Expo product releases, small points of interface design with Jaguar, how much we hate any Dell commercial, the fakers who try to rip off Mac design and sell cheap, crappo Mac rips for $400 to unsuspecting consumers who do not realize the piece of junk they have just acquired, a piece of junk when compared to a Mac anyway (and they can't be compared in a CircuitCity, for example, because they don't carry Macs anymore, so PCs look good when they are lined up by themselves but not when a Mac has been added to the displays). Thank God for Apple Stores!!

On top of all that, we lost one of our most beloved writers in the last year, a casuality of a medical establishment that has cracks large enough for such giant to fall through, someone whose whole life was his art, and he thought that art would save him (as he told me, "I need to write" just days before he put the gun to his head). But his art could not, and did not, save him - art cannot save anyone, (with apologies to Proust and Nietzsche, et al) though art holds a powerful grip on all of us who allow the time to sit with it and let it work its magic on our imaginations and intellects. It's a powerful force, I know, I sit for hours in the Art Institute of Chicago, but it is not life saving, just life enhancing to the highest degree. (In fact for this holiday break, I told all my writers to go and, as well as spending time with loved ones, go buy a grerat piece of literature and get lost in it over the week break at Applelust.)

But can arguing over these things (spoken of a few paragraphs ago) really matter in the 'new normal'? Prima facie, the answer is "No." And the question seems even more important during the holidays when we spend time with loved ones, make connections with others on deeper levels than daily schedules allow. Holidays are times we feel 'at home', feel safe, fetal even, and we love the joy of giving. All this makes the Mac Web small, IMHO.

Yet, given the facts, all of the facts, it seems the answer is "Yes." Mac web sites have almost seen a renaissance since 9-11-02. Some sites (some, many, but not all), have begun to produce higher quality content, by our standards at Applelust anyway; people are coming and reading us more than ever. Applelust has tripled its readership since 9-11-02, and we are up in the 100,000s of pages served a month. We have lost some writers, 'fired' (let go) others, have taken on new ones and are working with aspiring authors in the background (a rigorous, third-degree process any budding writer must pass before he gets published here, I guarantee you).

So what is going on here? The obvious answer seems to be "No," but the opposite looks right once I look at all the facts. (It's either this or the whole Mac Web is full of fools, including us, so I will not allow this to be an option.) Did I misread the situation? The more sensible answer seems to be "Yes."

The answer began to make sense to me 16 days ago. What happened 16 days ago? We went out and bought a new iMac, 17 inch, that's what.

Background...

In January I bought an iBook just before my shoulder replacement surgery; it gave me something to look forward to after surgery; it helped me to want to recover quickly so I could go home and pick up my work on this new machine. (Don't get me wrong, I have much to live for, more than just a new iBook: I have a loving wife, a great family, and fast-paced, intellectually stimulating life I love living; there is scholarship, writing, thinking, being a sort of Kierkegaardian figure in my own way: I enjoy them all - I love life!!) It was great, top-of-the-line, combo drive - beautiful!! I love it. My wife thus inherited the 'Pismo' and she could not be happier. I still did work on the G4 tower in a large room/study upstairs, though my wife and I fought for time on it.

Then I switched rooms with my wife. We have a two bedroom townhouse with a third small room. My wife was in the small room and she was squashed in there; I had outgrown the large room so I moved into the smaller room. (Yes, you read that right, I was intentionally down-sizing.) I worked very hard over the months to make that small room MY room, my long-hoped-for study/library I had been preparing for and wanting for 12 years. With some targeted purchases, like a wooden desk, wooden chair, Tiffany lamps, new living room set with extra chair and ottoman for my room, many, many bookcases (and the fact that books were rolling in like rain, given my academic status and the fact I was helping out in the Classics and Near Eastern Studies Department, just above the Philosophy Department on campus (and my specialty is ancient Greek philosophy, so the Classics Department was a logical place to go hang out and audit classes, like Latin, as my shoulder healed), we need the bookcases). I was taking Latin, helping Latin students, gave a talk in the Classics department about early Greek science in 500 A. D., gave a talk at another university in choosing academics as a career, organized debates on campus about the war with Iraq - the point is, I was busy! All I needed was a place for that new desk, new chair, and bookcases. The new, smaller room was perfect.

Then my wife's Pismo went down, and I mean down. That was it. It does not make for happy spousal relations if both are Mac fanatics and only one has a dedicated machine and the other has to share time with a second machine; and yes, I am very protective of my iBook. So we knew we had to do something. We turned to my campus first. A lab of Macs had just been replaced so I got the ball rolling so that we'd get one of the Blueberry DV iMacs they replaced. But they went to others (it was long list), and some just conked out on them. That avenue was lost. I offered to buy my wife an iBook. She refused; she wanted an older iMac just so we could have one. (Someday we will.) She found some on eBay but I cautioned her about buying from eBay (I have had some bad experiences there). She was not happy with my warning - she wanted an iMac and wanted one now! So I asked her if she'd be happy if I gave her the G4 Tower full-time. Obviously, she said yes. But that did leave us with a problem that sometimes I just needed the Tower because my iBook was in the shop (I treated it roughly, traveling back and forth and back and forth to Chicago, so it has taken its punches). We were a one Mac family. Not good. Not good at all.

During this time, from my trip to Chicago this summer to write, from weeks of closing myself away and writing here at home, I had been dutifully saving every extra penny and dollar I was getting, and some extra income I was still receiving was being set aside. I could, in theory, go buy a Mac. But SHOULD I? That was the question. "To be or not to to be!!"

But things spiraled downward at home and we simply couldn't take it anymore. One night, 16 days ago, I stood up, told my wife I'd be back in a few hours, and asked her to prepare helping me to carry things in when I get back. She knew what it meant. I came home two hours later not just with a new iMac, 17 inch, but some other little things for our newly furnished living room, accessories to make the ambiance more pleasing.

We ate supper, then opened the iMac. Two minutes out of the box I had installed a RAM upgrade and an AirPort card (both from my wife's now dead Pismo, BTW); in five minutes out of the box I was registered, had my user account set up and was surfing the 'Net on our Airport network; in ten minutes we were watching a Bladerunner DVD, though we had no time to watch the whole thing; twenty minutes out of the box and the cat was mesmerized by the iTunes visuals as she sat on my lap while I worked on the new iMac (I had a small iTunes window open with visuals on while I worked on other things). It was all just a wonderful experience. It was so simple I felt stupid (a feeling I often have anyway, but not as much as I used to!). I mean really, RAM and Airport upgrade in two minutes out of the box? On the 'Net in five? And not just on the 'Net but part of the local Airport wireless network we have at home.

And then I open the PrintCenter. What did I find? The two printers we have, an old but still-going-strong Epson 740i and a workhorse of a LaserWriter 360 bought nine or so years ago, that's what I found. I didn't even have to set them up. I was floored, and I am the publisher of a Mac Op/Ed site for crying out loud!!

And then I saw the little smooth cloth Apple supplies, a cloth to keep your iMac clean from dust and screen smudges everyday. The little things. I loved it; I loved every bit of it. Even the white keyboard seemed to have been tweaked a bit, and it feels better under my fingers. Can't explain, but it's just more comfortable, if even just slightly. The little things - a pure joy.

I sat back and just for a moment I wondered, "This is soooo easy, and so beautiful on top of that, how on earth is it that Apple doesn't own this market? I simply could not believe everyone didn't have one of these hot, fast and extraordinarily easy and special machines! I asked myself this question, and pondered it for a while. I asked someone else and he said "Because Apple has a lousy ad campaign." What? The Postmodern non-metanarrative narratives they put out all over the place? They aren't working?

And speaking of which: we placed the iMac on a desk. It will be a communal machine (one of the 'our' things in the marriage) in a communal area of the house, downstairs on the dinning room desk next to the living room, and my wife will take the G4 for her very own (she loves it), and I have my trusty iBook. The iMac is sitting under a poster from the Macworld San Francisco 2002 we got when they introduced the iMac. That day they lead the 'press' back to meet none other than Jonathan Ives (I really blew a chance to ask him THE question, "Some say these (gesturing to the iMac) are works of 'art'. Do YOU think they are art in any sense?" but I didn't ask him that, though we talked for a small time). So it sits underneath its own birth announcement poster, as it were.

To continue the thought.... Once we had it up, I could stand and use it or sit and use it, it did not matter; I could move the screen to any position I needed from whatever angle I was at. The screen, with the clear plastic around it, like a frame that doubles as a handle, begged to be touched and moved, and on that screen, the 'Desktop' (sometimes I run with the Finder off, have you tried it yet?) sat there, asked for me to jump in (to Aqua, a water metaphor you see), and there was not one single place to start or end, you just jump in and start using it. There seemed to be no foundation to the OS, just a glimmering surface (you don't even need your drives on the desktop). And whatever it was, I made it: my desktop, my window views, everything; I had my own account, and it reflected me, as self-creator. It was as almost there was nothing there before I started using it (which explains many if not all the debates we have on the Mac Web). Anti-foundationalism, nihilism - these are the things of Postmodernism. Yes, all these confirmed what I, and others (in print), have argued - the Mac is the first Postmodern computer.

Oh, the joys, the absolute joys of owning a Mac. It was wonderful and it is wonderful. Actually, we don't use the iMac as much (yet!), as I thought we would, but it is the holidays and we're busy. It also hints that maybe we didn't need this machine, we just wanted it; applelust (the syndrome not the site) had been high and unsatisfied for some time (it had been 11 months since I bought a Mac); and to tell you the truth, we almost treat it more like an important piece of furniture than a computer, and it is definitely a showoff accessory in the house. It's gorgeous. And the freedom, the absolute freedom I feel when using this thing (unlike the ball-and-chain experience of using a Wintel), is one of the simple, free joys of life for me. The darn thing is so aesthetically pleasing it's hard to work on it - I just sit and admire it, like I did a van Gogh in the art Institute in Chicago this summer. Sitting in front of this, it was not hard to be inspired at to write.

I have not been writing on the Web much. Yet, I have been involved in Applelust everyday as Publisher and top PR person (on the phone all day, answering tons of emails everyday). I have turned my attention to writing in another professional setting, academically that is, trying to get published, working with publishers like Oxford University Press, reading my brains out to (1) get inspiration by reading masterpieces in philosophy and literature (2) read the philosophical literature in the area I am working in, which increases every day. But sitting here in front of this iMac, this wonderful looking and feeling and beautiful machine with its white keyboard and its light to the touch rhythms - man, if you can't get inspired to write something in front of an iMac, surrounded (as I am anyway) with the great books and minds of the Western Canon... then you're brain dead my friend.

This all reminded me...

Freedom.

Friendships.

Creativity.

Pursuit.

Happiness.

Holidays.

Silliness.

Pettiness.

Being serious.

Pure enjoyment.

Simple pleasures in life that are free.

Simple pleasures in life that are not free.

Improving our lives because based on our hard work and history.

Enjoying the like-mindedness of other scholars (or whomever your peers are).

Friendships (like the staff/family at Applelust, and we really are all very close, even though half of us have never me).

Back to my question...

Yes, these are the reasons the Mac Web did not crumble with the WTC Towers after 9-11. We need the Mac Web, now more than ever. We need it for free commerce. We may not need it at times, but we certainly use it for the freedom of expressing our opinions and our views (we can do that many places, nit just the Web), arguments that at times seems silly about a computer company. We can break our Macs and go to MacFixIt and solve our problems. We can knock heads with others at a comfortable distance on the Web. The Web is a great democratizing technology in our lives. Hey even "blogs' could only be created in complete freedom, not under any kind of oppression or fascism. We have the freedom to blog!! Understood?

The pure fun my wife and I had in making a simple purchase of a simple machine. Sure it cost us two grand, but man, we are having fun and very much enjoying it. We may not have needed it as much as we both, husband and wife, claimed. We did it just because we could.

"No, you can't take that away from me..."

Yes, people want to kill us en masse, and they already did it once and are looking for further opportunities because (not just because, since this conflict goes back many, many centuries), we can do and experience all the things I just explained; but it is louder for me, as an academic who is so aware of freedom of thought and speech and academic freedom, which is consciously acted out everyday on campus, every time I walk into the classroom.

Yes, the Mac Web keeps going even after 9-11, after we all have been brought down to Earth, this rock we dirty with our blood, dig our trenches and climb over parapets, and make splendor with our art, and buildings (such as the WTC, are not skylines works of art in a way?), sticking out of the horizon like, well… as Jim Morrison (and the Doors) once said, "stuck [the Earth] with knives in the side of the dawn." The East, does not like this: they want our lives as flat as their deserts. They want to destroy. We will not allow it. "Never, never, never, never give up." Darn right Winston!! ... even if that means keeping a web site going.

And for God's sake, the war drums are pounding loudly, not just with Iraq (which Catholic Bishops and Cardinals have decided does not meet 'just war' conditions), but North Korea recently said (another nation really said this), it is ready to "bring death" to us, to the US, you and me: Readers, people want to kill us. And not just the North Koreans, but Fundamentalist Islamic fanatics the world over (millions of them, but not all killers, obviously) who see us a decadent (and some of us are), decadent world bullies, 'crusaders' (remember those?). And, we must bare in mind, Islam has always, always advanced at the end of sword ("convert or die" was their call in medieval times, which forced migrations of Christians North thus creating Modern Europe, along with "barbarian" raids), despite the chatter about Islam being a "peace-loving religion," which any historian of Islam would be hard-pressed to prove, perhaps. I can't say...

No, we need the Mac Web. It did not crumble with the Twin Towers because the petty things we bicker about, seek, are freely petty, freely silly, and I'll take free pettiness any day over fascist oppression and dictatorial control of my thoughts. Everything I have said in this article (indeed, the very writing of it, its existence and my site's very existence), the small joys and simple pleasures we have, all show you, my beloved reader, that we treasure them because we treasure bigger things, like freedom, the right to write, the right to be stupid even, if we wish. That's why the 'Mac Web' (a term we coined at Applelust and it has now entered our vocabulary), did not crumble with the Twin Towers - oh, the resilience of the human spirit, it is lovely....

Sometimes we are all petty; the Mac Web is certainly silly at times, unprofessional and error-prone, but at least we can be all these without fear - without fear. We meet, argue and communicate; we develop truly deep relationships on the Web and from our sites. We need to relate. We are headed for war. Frankly, I believe we have been headed for war for the last twenty years, because we are comfortable, prosperous, well-fed, and bored, and as a species we usually look for a fight in those conditions, as a sort of entertainment, a deadly, noisy, stench-filled sport, with human limbs jutting out of the ground like the branches of a half-buried tree.

And the simple, silly pleasuresour new iMac brings, and the kinds of things we talk about on the Mac Web, want to be taken away from me, and you, as well as our lives. No, they will not be taken from me: My life is given for these simple pleasures, which underline so many larger things in my life, and my life I would gladly give for them, should I ever need to. Without these ideals there would be no Apple, no Macintosh, no Applelust, no Mac Web...

Think about it...

Prof. David K. Schultz
Publisher, Applelust.com

PS: A holiday cheer to all of our readers... go spend time with your family, and we'll be here when you get back, rest assured, bigger and better than ever.

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