White Whine

As my sidebar says, one of my all-time favorite things is public radio, and one of my favorite things on public radio is John Gordon's Future Tense, which is produced by the Minnesota-based American Public Media. Guess that makes it a favorite favorite or something.

Future Tense is five minute examination each morning at 8:20 central of some current technology issue. You never know what it will be about -- hardware, software, tech magazines, sociological implications of technology, and, of course, websites.


The Monday show was about a website called White Whine, which sounded both funny and poignant in an odd way. As Gordon said on the show, the site is "mostly...poking fun at affluence and people who are privileged, but occasionally lacking in perspective as they gripe about the imperfections of their iPhones and imported mineral water."

It reminded me of my Bad Technology post griping about my Comcast DVR and the dumb way PBS lists its shows. If that wasn't a white whine, I don't know what is.

It's just a symptom of how easy I and many Americans have it, and how little we realize it. We are materially richer today than the richest people in human history (John Jacob Aster may have had caviar, but he didn't have air conditioning) -- but we still come up with complaints like these:

• “Ethos Water?! Nice ‘Bait and Switch,’ Starbucks. I had gotten accustomed to buying Fiji water here and, YES I CAN taste the difference!”

• “No matter how much I mess with the settings, I can’t get the colors on my dual monitors to match up.”

• “What’s wrong with Nintendo that they can’t get enough Wii’s in for Christmas. They had the same problem last year!” (we were just discussing this yesterday. jeez.)

• “I asked for my coffee with room for milk and she filled it all the way to the top. I hate these new baristas.”

• “Ugh, all the good gmails are taken.”

And just today I was thinking, "My laptop weighs too much!"