Tag Digital

Just Because You Can

Michael 5 Comments

This morning Best Buy announced they will no longer sell CDs in their stores. Vinyl yes, polycarbonate no. Apparently those who had normally opted for the shiny discs are now more likely to download or stream music to their hand held devices.

Last week the local paper announced that in August they will be dropping the print version of the paper from seven days a week to five. Apparently everybody wants their news electronically. This particular paper has not only its news website but two different apps for reading on mobile devices.

When Apple told us they had just the thing for that (with their trademarked and copywrited slogan (copywrit? copywrote?)), did they know they would release an app to reduce mobile dependency 9 years later? In fact, their app for that is only the latest in a string of such aids to reduce our electronic jonesing.

No, I’m not going to embark on a rampage decrying the ever presence of mobile devices in people’s hands. For the most part, I personally would rather hold a paper in my hands for perusal, especially now that they’ve resolved the inky finger problem, and though I never really got the hang of transferring a song from “somewhere out there” to what I still call “the phone,” I think we’ve done well in miniaturizing and availing technology to the masses. Even I am more likely to read the morning paper on my tablet out on the patio and I actually have a collection of favorites in my music folder in “the phone” (thanks to the daughter’s doing). Still, there are some things that shouldn’t completely replace the older hard copy iterations.

TriptikFor example, if you have a cell phone any less than say six years old you likely have a GPS mapping program at your fingertips. When I was traveling for work I appreciated my locating and traffic apps. I’d step out of an airport that looked quite like the airport I departed from, got into a rental car that look quite like the one I returned in a city earlier, and navigate to a hospital that looked suspiciously like one I visited the previous day on roads that held no resemblance to anywhere I’d even been. Yet I never got lost. My “phone” always knew where I was and which way to go.

But even knowing exactly where I was I never had a sense of roughly where I was. Years ago I’d use AAA “Triptiks” to navigate to a specific place. They were flip chart looking collections of mini-maps that specified your travel along highlighted roads. But I also always had my guidebooks and atlas so that at stops I could get a feel for what lay beyond the margins of the designated route. How else could you know that the world’s largest ball of twine was just 50 miles around the next bend, a drop in the mileage bucket when you’re already 1800 miles from home? You don’t get that from GPS.

So although I hope atlases never go away and that I’ll always have a CD player in my car so I have something to listen to while I search for the second largest cactus shaped like a tea pot, I can still appreciate the electronic versions. Now if only the proponents of those would please leave my paper and plastic alone we can live together in peace.

 

Get the Picture?

Michael Leave a comment

Last week I was digging under the bed to see what I could pull out of there. I try to clean out the “underbed storage” about every ten or fifteen years. I found a duffel bag that I was looking for just a few months ago. There were coin wrappers and bill straps; unfortunately they were all empty. I saw a shoe box with no shoes in it. And there was a camera bag. Not the big bag that had the big camera, lenses, flash and such. That was in the office. Not the little case that held the palm size digital camera that goes on vacation if I ever go on vacation again. This was a forgotten camera bag with a roll of film (actually a cartridge of film), a strange sized battery, and a claim check from an airline that has since gone out of business. No camera.

I don’t remember the last time I used a film camera. I do remember it was a 35mm camera and not one that used the 110 cartridge. I remember a camera that used that cartridge but I remember it from something like thirty or forty years ago. (I know I cleaned out under the bed since then. I know that because I’ve moved a few times since then.)

I might not remember that camera – and it’s a good thing the camera wasn‘t there because nobody probably still processes those little film cartridges – but I do remember that I used to take quite a few pictures and actually displayed them. I had pictures on walls, on end tables, in bookcases, on desks, even stuck to the front of the refrigerator in magnetic picture frames. Still do. I’ve slowed down in picture taking. Lots of people today take many more pictures than I ever did. But how many of those pictures ever end up as photographs.

So many pictures get taken and are posted somewhere electronically. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But I’ve always thought of a picture as an opportunity to remember someone or something. At work I had pictures on my desk, file cabinets, and walls. They were of my daughter, of She and me, of people from work doing fun things. They were snapshots of things to make me smile usually when I most needed a smile. I remember only three other managers in my building who had personal pictures somewhere in their offices.

Print a picture, pop a stick or chip in a printer at a drugstore, or download a few shots to a digital frame. Don’t make all of your future memories “images.” Take a photo every now and then.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?