Feb
09
2012

We Don't Have Flying Deloreans Or Hoverboards, But...

(Add / View Comments) (16)Thursday, February 9, 2012 - 08:25:01 pm
(Posted Under: Music Music, Technology)
At work today, I was flicking my iPhone screen, scrolling through artists for what I was going to listen to next. It's an occurrence that happens every day while spewing out PHP or Rails code. Every 40 minutes to an hour, when an album finishes playing. It's second nature.

But today, while scrolling to the Foo Fighters, then tapping the screen to start playing Wasting Light, the literal process stood out. A process that I take for granted daily. Just not in that moment. How freakin' sci-fi is this? That we flick a glass screen to find an album, tap on it, and music starts playing into your ears.

Evolution of technology numbs you to the amazement of it. Sure, when I got my iPhone last year, I was impressed with how it worked, compared to other mobile devices I've used. There were certain bells and whistles that excited me. But overall, with the proliferation of all the technologies that make up the iPhone in daily life over my entire lifetime (touch screens, mobile phones, digital audio, the internet), the cumulative progression makes for some of the amazement to be lost. Maybe most of it.

But y'know, in 1984, at age 7, fascinated with a mono radio cassette recorder, if you'd have told me I would be listening to music on this small wallet sized thing and flicking and tapping a screen to have any song from my vast music collection play on demand*, I would have laughed at such a concept. It would have blown my 7 year old mind. And sure, it would have sounded like a super sweet concept to that 7 year old. Just not one that was based in any sort of reality. But all these years later, here we are, and a reality it is.

Tomorrow I'll go right back to taking all of this for granted, as something that I'm completely used to and something I just expect and demand, living in 2012. But it doesn't change the fact - this shit is pretty amazing.

* Well, far from my entire music collection is on my piddly 16GB iPhone, which is a constant frustration when you have a 80GB iPod that does have it all. But that's something for another day.
Now Playing: Foo Fighters - Back & Forth

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