Science & Tech Quote by Jimmy Carl Black

There is something disarmingly punk about Jimmy Carl Black praising Windows 98 Second Edition like its a trusty guitar amp: not perfect, not glamorous, but it gets the job done. The charm sits in the plainspoken sincerity. He is not selling a vision of the future; he is confessing a conversion. That matters because it pins the late-90s tech boom to a human scale, where the headline is not bandwidth or innovation but the private shock of suddenly having a portal to everything.

The specific intent feels almost testimonial: reassurance from a working musician that this supposedly finicky, intimidating machine can become ordinary, even essential. Name-checking "98 second edition" reads like a badge of pragmatism, the way fans trade gear specs. It also quietly marks time. Nine months in, he is still new enough to be amazed, but far enough along to feel dependence. The subtext is the speed at which "tool" becomes "infrastructure". "I don't know what I would do without it now" is less enthusiasm than a small surrender: the computer has reorganized his habits, his communication, maybe his music-making, and he can already sense that opting out is no longer a neutral choice.

Contextually, it captures a cultural pivot when artists who built careers in analog worlds began folding digital life into their identities. Coming from Black, a figure associated with irreverent, anti-establishment rock, the line lands as a reminder that even the skeptics got absorbed, not by hype, but by usefulness.