I just have one question before I start here people... Where's the finish line?!? Where is the end of technological advancements? Are we just gonna keep go on surpassing science fictional properties of what was until we make all those thing and finally catch up to The Jetsons?!? Ok, so that was three questions, but it's all relative. There is no stopping this juggernaut. But in doing such are we negating the old school purists as well as assuming that everyone knows and understand enough to adapt, or is technological evolution going to be the de facto of our existence. Here's my beef on the situation.
In most of my professional work career I've dealt with helping people in a technical level; everything from computers to the Internet to so much other stuff to recall. This isn't a résumé for me bragging, I can do that without a résumé. This is more of a double-edged sword in most cases. It's a gift that I use to understand and help people that don't; but it's also a curse in that when people don't want to learn for themselves or abuse my good nature for their own gain. I feel that as technology evolves, my symbiotic relationship grows more so. And that double-edged sword just keeps impaling me while I slay the obstacle that is in my way. It almost makes me wish for simpler times. Times where there wasn't so much confusion in technology. Just so people could understand shit and not leech on the nerdy on something as simple as finding a button to click on or why it's so hard to type something verbatim in front of them.
Let's take on something light, like the setup of a new television. Before it used to be as simple as unboxing it plug it in and whether you had cable you screwed on the coaxial cable or if you had an antenna connection adjust the rabbit ears. Maybe you had a Nintendo and would have to connect an AV cable to it and thanked God if the TV had stereo. Fast forward to today's modern technology. You get your TV, you immediately want to hook it up to everything in your county. Set it up to your surround sound, your game consoles, your HD cable or satellite, connect wifi to your Internet, position it for the most optimal viewing point for 3-D viewing, all in the fear that you might run out of HDMI ports to plug shit into. For someone like me that's entertainment euphoria, for others it's a claustrophobic clusterfuck of cables and tweaking of settings for multiple devices. And the difference between old and new, not much.
Another example, and probably the most appropriate for this post, just about anything that is computer related. Even back in the day when they were the shit to own and even cooler if you knew how to use one, the Apple II and the Commodore 64 were PC titans among all others. (By the way, just to say that the new iMac and the revamp of the Commodore 64 looks pretty sweet, nothing productive to the post but I had to mention it. It's the nerd in me.) Nowadays, they can't even light a candle to a $.99 app on today's phones. Some people just never learned to adapt and overcome from command lines and all of the archaic crap that those things presented then that they've grown, developed, and passed on a fear to all things gigabytes. If it involves a username and password it's total Greek to them, even after ten minutes after they created it. If it involves finding something in a folder that they didn't create a shortcut for it in their desktop, it might as well never existed. And God help the poor computer tech that come to their aide if they think they have a virus or any other malware on their machine. If they don't bash their machines (or their clients) with a sledgehammer in a fit of frustration or rage, they should be nominated for sainthood. But I've dove into these waters with a previous WTF for those whom need a refresher. Although most people whom I helped said that I have the patience of Job; most people either don't know me very well or just said that instead of me having more restraint than Hannibal Lector's muzzle.
The point to all this is that we as a civilization haven't grown from the era of the flashing 12:00 on our VCR's. It's a pretty damn sad state of affairs. I just have to ask why?!? Why in my 29 years of living haven't we gone past this? Is it laziness or are we to daft to adapt and overcome such adversity of the old saying "teaching a old dog new tricks". Honestly if I think about it more so I'll go mad. It's deafeningly insane that remedial stuff such as the right plug for something, or pushing a button strikes such a high level of danger that a bomb squad is needed to diffuse their worrying.
The fact of the matter is, no matter how simple something might be in the whole schema of the technological spectrum, there will always be the techno-sensei's that are out there helping no matter how remedial or mundane something might be. And if you could turn a profit out of it, that's aces in my book. Now I'm not gonna say that I know everything, but from what I do know, I can hang pretty damn well. (Okay, that last part was a little résumé-ish, but screw it... it's my blog...)
BootLeG sampler.. signing out...