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... how your life was before you owned a cell, digital cam, internet connection, ... ?
I got my first cell in 1998 or 99. A large and heavy grey Alcatel with a one line monochrome screen and rubber buttons. It felt like throwing off shackles: finally mobile communication!
Today I own a tiny, feather weight black Samsung D-600 with 2MP camera, MP3 player, organiser and 128MB TransFlash memory. It feels like a ball & chain if you think of it: people can bug you no matter where you are, you're stressy when you forget the damn thing at home and people are pissed when you don't pick up your phone after 10mins auto redialing...
Same with the internet: I remember when I used to write to pen palls and was happy when I got their answer two weeks later. Now it bugs the piss outa me when it takes people 2 days to reply to an e-mail.
Nope, not whining about how everything used to be better in the past. It just made me think of one of Marshall McLuhan's theories: because information travels at the speed of electricity, we can no longer wait. Explains a great deal of the stress most of us experience every day.
On the other hand McLuhan also stated that "the new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village." I never could've guessed when I was 19 that by the time I'd turn 29, I'd be buying a shirt in Bangkok, ordered some books in New York and dropped the corrected version of my girlfriend's paper off in Skopje... And all that in less than 15mins...
The weird thing is that McLuhan wrote the above in the 1960's... I guess that even though technology evolves at an incredible speed, man is still as predictable as 40-50 years ago...
A few other striking McLuhanisms:
Invention is the mother of necessities.
Today each of us lives several hundred years in a decade.
At the speed of light, policies and political parties yield place to charismatic images.
Publication is a self-invasion of privacy.
More info on McLuhan here
More McLuhanisms here
I guess what I'd be doing right now if Al Gore hadn't invented the internet yet
I got my first cell in 1998 or 99. A large and heavy grey Alcatel with a one line monochrome screen and rubber buttons. It felt like throwing off shackles: finally mobile communication!
Today I own a tiny, feather weight black Samsung D-600 with 2MP camera, MP3 player, organiser and 128MB TransFlash memory. It feels like a ball & chain if you think of it: people can bug you no matter where you are, you're stressy when you forget the damn thing at home and people are pissed when you don't pick up your phone after 10mins auto redialing...
Same with the internet: I remember when I used to write to pen palls and was happy when I got their answer two weeks later. Now it bugs the piss outa me when it takes people 2 days to reply to an e-mail.
Nope, not whining about how everything used to be better in the past. It just made me think of one of Marshall McLuhan's theories: because information travels at the speed of electricity, we can no longer wait. Explains a great deal of the stress most of us experience every day.
On the other hand McLuhan also stated that "the new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village." I never could've guessed when I was 19 that by the time I'd turn 29, I'd be buying a shirt in Bangkok, ordered some books in New York and dropped the corrected version of my girlfriend's paper off in Skopje... And all that in less than 15mins...
The weird thing is that McLuhan wrote the above in the 1960's... I guess that even though technology evolves at an incredible speed, man is still as predictable as 40-50 years ago...
A few other striking McLuhanisms:
Invention is the mother of necessities.
Today each of us lives several hundred years in a decade.
At the speed of light, policies and political parties yield place to charismatic images.
Publication is a self-invasion of privacy.
More info on McLuhan here
More McLuhanisms here
I guess what I'd be doing right now if Al Gore hadn't invented the internet yet
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