I'm no Luddite, but....
I'm a big fan of technology, progress and all that. Anything that makes my life easier is fine by me. But there are some things I just don't get, and I fear it means the future is leaving me in the dust.
I don't understand iPods and MP3 players for one thing. If I buy a CD, I own something. Something I can touch and hold on to. Pretty pictures, lyric sheets, liner notes.
If I download a song, I pay a buck for nothing but a series of digitized ones and zeros. Now I suppose I could burn the downloaded material onto a disc, but then I've got more work to do, not less.
My kids don't care about the thing itself, just the sounds, and I think something is lost.
Honest to goodness, I like progress: I hated 8-tracks.
And I don't want to be stuck in the 20th century, but it is where I spent most of my life.
Is there hope for people like me?
I don't understand iPods and MP3 players for one thing. If I buy a CD, I own something. Something I can touch and hold on to. Pretty pictures, lyric sheets, liner notes.
If I download a song, I pay a buck for nothing but a series of digitized ones and zeros. Now I suppose I could burn the downloaded material onto a disc, but then I've got more work to do, not less.
My kids don't care about the thing itself, just the sounds, and I think something is lost.
Honest to goodness, I like progress: I hated 8-tracks.
And I don't want to be stuck in the 20th century, but it is where I spent most of my life.
Is there hope for people like me?
posted by Michael Riley at 3:16 PM
4 Comments:
Imagine being able to store 100+ CDs in an iPod that is the size of a few books of matches. Once in the iPod, you can -- without connecting any new wires, mind you -- then be able to play those songs on any car stereo, any home stereo or just through the earphones that lead to your ears.
The kids love it. If you doubt me, try this experiment: Take your 12 year-old daughter and four of her friends to the mall. (This is what I picture Purgatory to be like, incidentally.) Invariably, one of the kids will ask the others the following question: "Oh my God! Like, have you heard the new Justin Timberlake song?"
Either one of the kids or yourself will not have heard this song that was released, oh, 38 seconds ago. But yet, one of the 12 year-olds will not only have heard that song, they will have downloaded it to their iPod -- which, by the way, is something you are legally obligated to own if you are a 12 year-old girl and live in New Jersey. At this point your beloved daughter will, without so much as a word to you, promptly turn your car stereo from WFAN to 88 point something on your FM dial. Some kid with braces in the back seat of your SUV is then going to whip out her iPod and push a few buttons while aiming the device at the back of your head. Lo and behold, two seconds later Mike and the Mad Dog are but a distant memory and instead you are now listening Justin singing about "My Love" over your car's stereo.
Come to think of it, there is a lot to be said for those Luddites.
Welcome To My Nightmare: Justin Timberlake's "My Love" Video
I just turn on my radio when I want to hear music! Look at Diana F's blog today, she also baffled by technology..maybe the Press needs a refresher course for its employees! (make it an online course for fun!)
"I just turn on my radio when I want to hear music!"
Yeah, but does your radio play only "The Best 100 (Or Even The Best 1,000) Songs of All-Time -- According To DG, That Is?" Does your radio play those songs in precisely the order that you choose? Does it play only those songs, and do so without commercial interruption?
Who says I care about that? I enjoy a variety of random songs and some of us are not so scheduled and impatient, that a few commercials bother us...chill, dude..I also enjoy humming or singing tunes to myself without ipods, cd players or car radios..it's called memorization!
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