Editor's Blog May 07th 2012
Technology
I saw my first real computer at age 25, by age 26 they had me working on it. Hailed as the future, I resisted, as I do most things technological. After transferring all my charges records onto a floppy disk and then some, I realized, hang on, I no longer need to hump a box of files all over the world, I just need to take this disk and a laptop.
Not your ultra slim laptop you see today, like supermodels, silky smooth, light and the batteries go for hours. No, the first laptop I was given weighed in at two kilos without the battery and looked more like Susan Boyle than Rosie Huntington-Whitely.
It was not to be though. You see the technology was just not reliable enough, Windows BC would crash on a regular basis, so we would often end up travelling with a ton of files so we could manually input training results, with the laptop ending up sat forlornly in a corner trying to reboot.
Today things are very different, or are they? Are you sucked in by all the glitzy TV adverts where you see these very smug, entitled looking tight arsed polo neck jumper wearing crackers, sitting around drinking corporate coffee doing everything, from playing on the stock exchange to doodling on a tablet, all looking effortless, connected and in touch with the world.
Yes, I succumbed to the razzmatazz of the adverts. Yes, I wanted to be drinking Latte and wearing a Polo Neck Sweater. I wanted to be popular, I wanted to compose a symphony, and I wanted to write a blockbuster. But these are just dreams, dreams that cannot be fulfilled if you did not have the talent to start with.
If you want connectivity, you have to pay for that too, roaming packages graded in precious metals Platinum, Gold and Silver and costing as much. With an almost uncontested monopoly you tend to pay over the odds for extra smugness.
I have a tablet, it sits by my bedside, and it contains my music, my photos and my books. I subscribe to various apps giving me short-lived joy and a sense of ‘you could have been a contender’, you could have been the next Jimmy Hendrix but alas, screwing around on Garage Band does not make you a musician anymore than sitting in a church makes you holy.
There is no substitute for learning something like guitar without actually picking up a real one and giving it a thrash, yet today we see everything from world grade football managers to special forces operatives doing great deeds for humankind without leaving the comfort of their front room.
Will this be the future for humans, virtual everything? Lets hope not.
Ed.
