It's nine o'clock on a Saturday. The regular crowd shuffles in.
Come to think of it, this isn't the regular crowd at all. Who are these bored-looking people? I've never seen any of them before. Aha. They must all have come to hear the sardonic and insouciant new piano player, Emmy Levant.
As I occasionally do (for the tips, you know), I'm mixing drinks at Foo Bar, the late-night haunt of Silicon Valley executives and programmers and journalists. Emmy, after stingily doling out the last measures of a draggy rendition of "Blame it on My Youth," is taking a break, chatting with me.
"I love this crowd," Emmy says as she sprawls languidly at the bar. "They're almost narcoleptic in their nonchalance."
"They seem to like your music," I say as I mix her a drink, "although it's a little hard to tell. They seem kind of bored. Are all your audiences like that?"
"Now that you mention it, they are." She eyes the peanut dish through purple eyelids at half-mast as though considering whether peanuts are worth the effort of chewing. "At least, they're too jaded to talk loudly during my playing. When they do bestir themselves to speak, it's to brag about their pathetic accomplishments. The twittering patter of little feats." She sips at the Tanqueray Ten and Tonic I slide in front of her. "Do you think they all have mono? Maybe you should call this place 'Epstein Bar'."
I glance across the room apprehensively, but nobody seems to be listening to our conversation. "Speaking of twittering," I say, hoping to turn the conversation in a more promising direction, "do you know about Twitter?"
"The technology behind tweets, those 'I just noticed I have gum on my shoe' short text messages that are supposed to be all the rage. Of course, I know about Twitter, Michael. I'm not a philistine."
This is more like it. When I say I work at Foo Bar for the tips, I mean tips on technology and trendy ideas. I press this Twitter topic, hoping to get something I can use in my column. "What the company claims is that tweets are a new layer of information, that they connect people in ways they didn't connect before."
She grins. "You do realize that the company's name is Obvious, don't you? There's a thin line between irony and travesty, and Twitter erases it."
"I get the sense that you're not a Twitterer."
"Au contraire. If we don't all tweet incessantly, the terrorists will have won."
"That's sarcasm, I can tell. But you have to realize what Twitter is about. It's part of the new Web 2.0, the social web, pundits say. There are a lot of them, and it seems like there's a hot new social website every day. Hitwise, a traffic analysis site, predicts that Yelp, StumbleUpon, Veoh, WeeWorld, and Piczo will become the new YouTube, Wikipedia, or Flickr."
"Like sixty is the new forty, nearshore is the new offshore, and fake is the new real. I love the smell of hype in the evening. I visited Yelp. I learned that Paley's Place is the 206th best restaurant in Portland. Oh, and don't forget Del. Icio. Us. Worst. Name. Ever."
"You shouldn't be so dismissive. These sites are operating in a different cybernetic ecology, one built on the currency of cred."
"Currency of cred. That's brilliant."
"But you're not buying it."
"Let's say I don't want any of it in my tip jar. There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's money."
I refill the peanut bowl, which she seems to have cleaned out while I wasn't looking, and shake my head. "But these social websites are really attracting an audience. There's no denying that they are catching on."
She raises her hands skyward. "I, for one, welcome our new social web overlords."
"Okay, here's something interesting," I say, sensing that I am not going to win her over to the social web cause. "A recent E-week story said that Florida might be on the way to being technology's next big hub. The story reported that Florida has climbed to fourth highest among states in the number of tech jobs."
"Fascinating," she drawls, "what passes for journalism today. Since Florida is the fourth largest state in population, I guess we should congratulate it on reaching per-capita parity with other states. Too bad tech salaries in Florida rank 29th in the nation."
"Not so interesting, then. Right. Well, maybe you should get back to the piano," I suggest. "Some of your fans are starting to nod off."
Michael Swaine
Editor-at-Large
