Flash Voyager
Two words on the Ebay listing convinced me to buy this thing: “Delightfully speedy.” Not that my USB transfer rates were annoying me those days, but I suppose they kind of were. Also attractive was the rubber casing (to accomodate my rage) and the Starfleet-esque name, Flash Voyager. Obviously, I had to have it.
This item hails from the Epoch of Physical Storage, a time I will struggle to describe to my grandchildren. “What the Hell are Zip drives?” They will ask incredulously. “Go back to your laser tennis,” I’ll say and smoke some future opium out of a crystal.
In any movie about the future they still use physical portable storage. Whether it’s a smooth piece of clear plastic or a glass cube, people walk around with data like a set of keys. Part of me wants to believe that this is Art’s subtle protest against “the cloud”: the collective electronic unconscious that we are careening toward. But it’s probably just ignorance. Who could ever have imagined that in 2012 most of our thoughts, ideas and creations would exist as a pile of ones and zeroes in the hands of, well, no one knows exactly. (The Chinese?)
Maybe the USB Flash Drive is the tin-foil hat of the twenty-first century. And this one can withstand a solid chucking against drywall. I’ve checked.