A bit about digital evolution, and how it's not always absolutely perfect; in fact it's not even too great..few things I've cared to notice in the past few month/days and they've awed me, confused, perplexed and annoyed at times.
This isn't about one of those godforsaken social media inflicted nostalgia for a 90's life, and how things were better then..it's none of that. (heck, I don't even remember the 90's)
_______________________
Incident 1:
It happened early November last year, when I was trying to fix a Dj for the cocktail, mehndi and sangeet events that were to take place a couple days before my brothers wedding.
I'd found a 16 year old kid, too young for a Dj, but he came recommended so why not.
He sat in our living room as I generally asked him the basic stuff about speakers, bass, treble, mhz, sound quality, lighting, electronic plugs, how many sockets, how many extension chords..sort of a pre wedding Dj rider, just to ensure everything went smoothly and no one was running around because some items were amiss.
He knew the drill, and had supplied me with all the wants and needs, and the requirements were few.
Then we came to the songs, and I made it clear that all the songs he played were up to him, since I knew nothing about the marriage music scene, and what the kids generally preferred, because really, it's all about the kid cousins and what they want to listen to, considering they're the ones preparing dances and what not for months. So, well, I let him take the wheel, and he briefed me with all the fantastical songs that were all the rage, and ones that must religiously be played at weddings.
"Alright" I'd said, and then he sweetly asked me to let him have some songs in particular that I liked. That was rather nice I thought, I laughed and joked that the only songs I like are probably in cassettes and hardly the marriage types
He looked at me puzzled and didn't understand what I meant by "cassettes"?
"Cassettes, you know, cassettes" I said.
"No idea", he said, and asked me if I actually meant a CD.
I looked at him gobsmacked, showed him a cassette and he fumbled at it like he was in a museum.
I let it go, gave him an advance for his Dj services and booked him for marriage events.
I mean, he saw a cassette for the first time.
_________________________________
Incident 2:
This happened a few days after my brothers wedding, last week of November. As a custom to all weddings, we had hired a professional wedding photographer/videographer to record and click all the pre wedding and wedding events. It was a four day job. Three days of assorted events that unchangingly take place before the wedding and the of course the D-Day, that is the wedding.
True to their form, the photographers and videographers would come home each day during breakfast hours and leave much after dinner time, and they ensured to click every trivial happening, and record any facial expression that had even a smidgen of smile. That's their job and they did it well.
They'd amassed thousands of photographs and almost over a hundred hours of video footage.
This whole song and dance affair, sees itself end rather sweetly in glossy pages of a wedding album, one that weighs more than the groom itself. But before the collection of photographs is put into an album, the photographers usually expect you to pick out the ones you like best, so they can use just the approved one.
In light of this, we were summoned to the photography studio and handed over a DVD, with thousands of wedding pictures, that we were expected to sift through and select. Fine, that's not so difficult, and the few remaining guests in the house were eager to see those pictures.
The only problem that ever happened, was well, no one's laptop had a DVD player. In fact there wasn't a single slot to shove a DVD in. Only usb ports, and well, the DVD went unseen.
We asked the photographer to select his favourite ones to put in an album.
________________________________
Incident 3:
This incident was narrated to me by my brother, and he was as puzzled as one might expect to be.
This happened sometime last month (December) , when he'd met my littlest cousin, all of 12 years at his home. A supposedly boy genius, and rather high in the IQ department, he was gifted a rather elaborate desktop by his father (my uncle).
We've all worked on desktops at some point in our lives, much before we let our laptops turn into desktops that is, and the one thing we all ever did was fiddle with it before working on it. A way to sort of acclimatize oneself with the whole keyboard, monitor, CPU gear.
This is exactly what my brother was doing, when he pushed a button to eject the CD tray, and that's when it happened.
Our little cousin saw it for the first time ever, and couldn't understand what it was? "what did you do to my computer" he asked my brother. "what has come out"
Now it was my brother's turn to look at him gobsmacked, and he quizzed him why he didn't know his computer had a CD player as well.
"What's a CD player", and well, that was the end of their conversation.
"We started talking about cartoons and stuff" my brother told me.
My littlest genius cousin had only ever seen and worked with a USB.
_____________________________________
None of these incidents are remarkably different from what one would expect to see in normal daily life, specially when encountered with someone who was born on a different winding staircase of digital evolution.
These things happen, and you only ever notice them when you notice them, and there's nothing wrong with these evolutions except that they can sometimes leave you in frustration deadlocks.
-------
This incident took place yesterday.
I had earlier commented on how touch screen has rapidly replaced buttons, and levers and how their shining blue black interfaces no matter how sleek are pretty unreliable.
Case in point my kitchen chimney:-
I'd finished with preparing lunch, and I had to switch off the kitchen chimney, because no matter how sleek and shiny they are, they tend to make horrible end of the world noise, that pretty much drowns your sobs.
As I gently touched the glowing 'switch off' sign, well, surprise surprise, it didn't turn off, and continued with its careless raucous din of expelling smoke and sanity.
I touched a little harder, the cacophony continued. I pressed my finger on it to stop the electronic braying, but to no avail. It persevered with the unharmonious noise, and kept expelling air, and roared right into my face.
Visibly upset, I pushed at it harder, harder and begged it in binary to stop..except it didn't. Fine, I decided to pull the plug and shut it the hell up..but whaddya know..these new fangled kitchen chimneys were not plugged into an outside source. They were built in through the walls, and well the plug could have been anywhere. The chimney literally looks like it grew out of my kitchen wall.
After fifteen minutes of tinkering around the house and following non existent wires, I was pretty much stonewalled, and the turbulent blast of disquieting chimney roar continued.
It frustrated me so much that I thought giving it the silent treatment would work, and soon resigned myself in a quiet corner of the house with my lunch. After an hour, I decided to tinker around with its touch screen again, and as fate would have it..it didn't work. I pushed, and pressed and touched hard..but nope! arghh!! It had annoyed me so, this chimney pestilence, I punched at with the full force of an impatient heart and frustrated soul, and voilà, it stopped. Oh the silence that followed.
_______________
I know for a fact, that this wouldn't have happened, if it had a button or a lever. Things that have buttons, well, you can get around to working on them. You can open those panels, unscrew it from places, check the internal wiring and more or less figure it out yourself. Even if you can't, you at least know whats wrong, and how this system works.
With touch screen, you're pretty much lost. The entire thing looks boxed. If there's ever a problem, then you know you've to call a specialist, or take it to the store, there's no other way.
During the cassette era, anytime that a cassette didn't play too clear in the vcr, all we ever did was eject it, pull open the panel that protected the reel and simply blow on it, and that was that. Cleaner picture. If ever a reel got loose in a music or video cassette, tightening it was the work of mere moments with just a handy pencil. You can't work that around things that've reached such digital sophistication that even a drop of water renders them useless.
I mean come on. It took just one drop of stray tea to ruin my iPhone. I had to take it to the center to get it repaired..seriously?
One might counter that this is a strictly iPhone grievance..fine. Then how about using some other touch screen phone/tab of average existence, and trying to scroll or slide to view images. It almost feels like the frame freezes for a fraction of a second before sliding, in fact sometimes it just freezes, and you've to develop special skills in sliding, tilting your fingers at a certain angle, or just repeating strokes until you've scrolled or slid. Just give a button for heavens sake.
------------------------------
I have touched on this point earlier, and forgive me if I'm repeating it again, but these digital evolutions aren't really evolutions but mere tinkering around with existing technology.
How is plugging an iPhone/iPod into next level expensive speakers better than Dolby digital surround? It doesn't even sound that great, it's more like specialized development for mediocre sound. Come on, it's just an iPod, that tiny gadget meant for recreational listening, that's been amplified through speakers so everyone can listen. What's the fun in that? It doesn't have that same thrum, hum, bass, whoosh and spectacular stereophonics that were developed specifically to make sounds sound better.
It's just about sound for self now, sounds you can conveniently listen to anytime, anywhere, alone.. oh and also added to that is the somehow harsh crispness that has come to replace the warm mellow timbre that earlier existed.
It's like you can almost hear the bacterial purr of a singer's esophagus. Who wants that?
___________
These could by all means be ravings of a frustrated self, discontent and annoyed with how nothing ground breaking or spectacular seems to happen anymore..how everything is spruced and dusted over and over again to make everything pretty, glitzy.
I don't know why I feel like Steve jobs is responsible for this.
Sleek things are my new enemy..gimme the bulky, coarse efficience over the polished, suave ineffectual.
This isn't about one of those godforsaken social media inflicted nostalgia for a 90's life, and how things were better then..it's none of that. (heck, I don't even remember the 90's)
_______________________
Incident 1:
It happened early November last year, when I was trying to fix a Dj for the cocktail, mehndi and sangeet events that were to take place a couple days before my brothers wedding.
I'd found a 16 year old kid, too young for a Dj, but he came recommended so why not.
He sat in our living room as I generally asked him the basic stuff about speakers, bass, treble, mhz, sound quality, lighting, electronic plugs, how many sockets, how many extension chords..sort of a pre wedding Dj rider, just to ensure everything went smoothly and no one was running around because some items were amiss.
He knew the drill, and had supplied me with all the wants and needs, and the requirements were few.
Then we came to the songs, and I made it clear that all the songs he played were up to him, since I knew nothing about the marriage music scene, and what the kids generally preferred, because really, it's all about the kid cousins and what they want to listen to, considering they're the ones preparing dances and what not for months. So, well, I let him take the wheel, and he briefed me with all the fantastical songs that were all the rage, and ones that must religiously be played at weddings.
"Alright" I'd said, and then he sweetly asked me to let him have some songs in particular that I liked. That was rather nice I thought, I laughed and joked that the only songs I like are probably in cassettes and hardly the marriage types
He looked at me puzzled and didn't understand what I meant by "cassettes"?
"Cassettes, you know, cassettes" I said.
"No idea", he said, and asked me if I actually meant a CD.
I looked at him gobsmacked, showed him a cassette and he fumbled at it like he was in a museum.
I let it go, gave him an advance for his Dj services and booked him for marriage events.
I mean, he saw a cassette for the first time.
_________________________________
Incident 2:
This happened a few days after my brothers wedding, last week of November. As a custom to all weddings, we had hired a professional wedding photographer/videographer to record and click all the pre wedding and wedding events. It was a four day job. Three days of assorted events that unchangingly take place before the wedding and the of course the D-Day, that is the wedding.
True to their form, the photographers and videographers would come home each day during breakfast hours and leave much after dinner time, and they ensured to click every trivial happening, and record any facial expression that had even a smidgen of smile. That's their job and they did it well.
They'd amassed thousands of photographs and almost over a hundred hours of video footage.
This whole song and dance affair, sees itself end rather sweetly in glossy pages of a wedding album, one that weighs more than the groom itself. But before the collection of photographs is put into an album, the photographers usually expect you to pick out the ones you like best, so they can use just the approved one.
In light of this, we were summoned to the photography studio and handed over a DVD, with thousands of wedding pictures, that we were expected to sift through and select. Fine, that's not so difficult, and the few remaining guests in the house were eager to see those pictures.
The only problem that ever happened, was well, no one's laptop had a DVD player. In fact there wasn't a single slot to shove a DVD in. Only usb ports, and well, the DVD went unseen.
We asked the photographer to select his favourite ones to put in an album.
________________________________
Incident 3:
This incident was narrated to me by my brother, and he was as puzzled as one might expect to be.
This happened sometime last month (December) , when he'd met my littlest cousin, all of 12 years at his home. A supposedly boy genius, and rather high in the IQ department, he was gifted a rather elaborate desktop by his father (my uncle).
We've all worked on desktops at some point in our lives, much before we let our laptops turn into desktops that is, and the one thing we all ever did was fiddle with it before working on it. A way to sort of acclimatize oneself with the whole keyboard, monitor, CPU gear.
This is exactly what my brother was doing, when he pushed a button to eject the CD tray, and that's when it happened.
Our little cousin saw it for the first time ever, and couldn't understand what it was? "what did you do to my computer" he asked my brother. "what has come out"
Now it was my brother's turn to look at him gobsmacked, and he quizzed him why he didn't know his computer had a CD player as well.
"What's a CD player", and well, that was the end of their conversation.
"We started talking about cartoons and stuff" my brother told me.
My littlest genius cousin had only ever seen and worked with a USB.
_____________________________________
None of these incidents are remarkably different from what one would expect to see in normal daily life, specially when encountered with someone who was born on a different winding staircase of digital evolution.
These things happen, and you only ever notice them when you notice them, and there's nothing wrong with these evolutions except that they can sometimes leave you in frustration deadlocks.
-------
This incident took place yesterday.
I had earlier commented on how touch screen has rapidly replaced buttons, and levers and how their shining blue black interfaces no matter how sleek are pretty unreliable.
Case in point my kitchen chimney:-
I'd finished with preparing lunch, and I had to switch off the kitchen chimney, because no matter how sleek and shiny they are, they tend to make horrible end of the world noise, that pretty much drowns your sobs.
As I gently touched the glowing 'switch off' sign, well, surprise surprise, it didn't turn off, and continued with its careless raucous din of expelling smoke and sanity.
I touched a little harder, the cacophony continued. I pressed my finger on it to stop the electronic braying, but to no avail. It persevered with the unharmonious noise, and kept expelling air, and roared right into my face.
Visibly upset, I pushed at it harder, harder and begged it in binary to stop..except it didn't. Fine, I decided to pull the plug and shut it the hell up..but whaddya know..these new fangled kitchen chimneys were not plugged into an outside source. They were built in through the walls, and well the plug could have been anywhere. The chimney literally looks like it grew out of my kitchen wall.
After fifteen minutes of tinkering around the house and following non existent wires, I was pretty much stonewalled, and the turbulent blast of disquieting chimney roar continued.
It frustrated me so much that I thought giving it the silent treatment would work, and soon resigned myself in a quiet corner of the house with my lunch. After an hour, I decided to tinker around with its touch screen again, and as fate would have it..it didn't work. I pushed, and pressed and touched hard..but nope! arghh!! It had annoyed me so, this chimney pestilence, I punched at with the full force of an impatient heart and frustrated soul, and voilà, it stopped. Oh the silence that followed.
_______________
I know for a fact, that this wouldn't have happened, if it had a button or a lever. Things that have buttons, well, you can get around to working on them. You can open those panels, unscrew it from places, check the internal wiring and more or less figure it out yourself. Even if you can't, you at least know whats wrong, and how this system works.
With touch screen, you're pretty much lost. The entire thing looks boxed. If there's ever a problem, then you know you've to call a specialist, or take it to the store, there's no other way.
During the cassette era, anytime that a cassette didn't play too clear in the vcr, all we ever did was eject it, pull open the panel that protected the reel and simply blow on it, and that was that. Cleaner picture. If ever a reel got loose in a music or video cassette, tightening it was the work of mere moments with just a handy pencil. You can't work that around things that've reached such digital sophistication that even a drop of water renders them useless.
I mean come on. It took just one drop of stray tea to ruin my iPhone. I had to take it to the center to get it repaired..seriously?
One might counter that this is a strictly iPhone grievance..fine. Then how about using some other touch screen phone/tab of average existence, and trying to scroll or slide to view images. It almost feels like the frame freezes for a fraction of a second before sliding, in fact sometimes it just freezes, and you've to develop special skills in sliding, tilting your fingers at a certain angle, or just repeating strokes until you've scrolled or slid. Just give a button for heavens sake.
------------------------------
I have touched on this point earlier, and forgive me if I'm repeating it again, but these digital evolutions aren't really evolutions but mere tinkering around with existing technology.
How is plugging an iPhone/iPod into next level expensive speakers better than Dolby digital surround? It doesn't even sound that great, it's more like specialized development for mediocre sound. Come on, it's just an iPod, that tiny gadget meant for recreational listening, that's been amplified through speakers so everyone can listen. What's the fun in that? It doesn't have that same thrum, hum, bass, whoosh and spectacular stereophonics that were developed specifically to make sounds sound better.
It's just about sound for self now, sounds you can conveniently listen to anytime, anywhere, alone.. oh and also added to that is the somehow harsh crispness that has come to replace the warm mellow timbre that earlier existed.
It's like you can almost hear the bacterial purr of a singer's esophagus. Who wants that?
___________
These could by all means be ravings of a frustrated self, discontent and annoyed with how nothing ground breaking or spectacular seems to happen anymore..how everything is spruced and dusted over and over again to make everything pretty, glitzy.
I don't know why I feel like Steve jobs is responsible for this.
Sleek things are my new enemy..gimme the bulky, coarse efficience over the polished, suave ineffectual.
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