cords

I’m choking in cords. I ride to work, lugging a heavy little laptop on my back; it won’t fit in my rack-sack. On my Collingwood desk is a monitor, keyboard and mouse. I place my laptop on the far right-hand corner of my cubicle and the fun begins.

I plug a blue network cord into the LAN port* and connect my four-port USB hub at the rear of the laptop. I attach the cords from the monitor and the keyboard. I connect the power cord to the wall socket at one end and to the transformer thingy at the other end and connect that to the yellow-rimmed computer socket. A snarl of copulating snakes now occupies the rear of my desk.

I extract more cords from my bag—a USB cord to charge my phone from my computer, and two more USB cords that charge the front and rear lights for my bike, drained after I set off in the dark. And the impossible to control cord for the ear-buds I use when receiving calls to my mobile in a sometimes noisy office.

Interstate travel unleashes another flurry of cordage. There’s a power cord for the camera battery charger, and the connecter for the camera to the laptop because the storage card is incompatible with the slot in the laptop. On trips away I take my private mobile phone which has a recharging cord and head-phone cord.

Cord management is a post-modern art-form, under and on desks, in shoulder-bags and laptop bags, in briefcases, portmanteaux and carry-on luggage. I use small Velcro straps to secure thick power cords and to rope together several cords all headed in the one direction. But some cords defy taming—headphone ear-buds can be neatly rolled but never unroll without needing unknotting.

Some cords I place in small sunglasses bags, a moderately successful strategy. A cord on its lonesome doesn't look like much, but bundle the above lot together and you’ll be hard pressed to beat the weight restriction on the most generous airline. Wifi should simplify things, but doesn’t.

I remember a time before cords, a wondrous age when I wasn’t connected. I knew no better. I dreamed not of pulling a phone from my pocket and dialling Belgrave or Belgrade. I stored questions in my head till I got home and pulled a dictionary or encyclopaedia off the top shelf. I arranged paper-clips and rulers and an old mug of pens on my desk, not my desktop.

What happened to us?

  

Rock on. 

*Pardon me if I get these IT terms wrong.