Doc, I think I've got techno droop
It was seven o'clock on Thursday night when I walked past the Apple store in Sydney C.B.D, where details about Apple's new iPhone which had gone on sale three hours earlier – for the bargain price of $599 were being beamed on a flat screen. If you believed the news, Americans were queueing up across the country for this shiny black gizmo.
On eBay, one of the first iPhones had just been resold for $12,500. By the looks of things, however, the hysteria had yet to reach Sydney. Inside the store, I could see a sales assistant sitting alone. "Are you gonna get one, where is your dedication?" "Nah," I concluded, not yet at least.
Now, for as long as I can remember, I have been an "early adopter". I bought a laptop when they were still made out of wood and cost more than a space shuttle. I practically remortgaged my kidney for a high-definition DVD recorder, the model of which was discontinued a fortnight later and replaced by a generic model, which came free with satellite TV subscriptions.
So why not become one of the half a million or so people who became early iPhone adopters on its debut weekend? The problem, I think, is this: I have lost my technology libido. My interaction with the world's most beautiful gadgets has become chilly and dutiful. You could say that I've got an embarrassing case of iPhone dysfunction.
Personally, I blame it on environmentalists. If it wasn't for environmentalists, I wouldn't know that when you plug an iPhone into a power socket in Sydney, it charges up with electricity that has in all likelihood been made by burning coal. And coal, when it comes to gadgets, is the ultimate passion killer. When Apple's founder, Steve Jobs, unveiled the iPhone back in January, do you think he asked Bono to stand in silhouette against a white background, holding an iPhone in one hand and a lump of coal in the other? No, he did not.
And yet, with coal being the world's largest single source of fuel for electricity, the iPhone could barely exist without it. That cool widescreen that changes aspect when you move it from portrait to landscape? It runs on coal. The built-in iPod? Coal-powered. And what about that clever "visual voicemail" function? Made possible by setting fire to black lumps of half-a-billion-year-old plants, thus releasing planet-killing quantities of carbon dioxide and other nasty gases into the air.
Which is why, as we begin yet another cycle of droughts, storms, floods, hurricanes, twisters, heat deaths, famines, species extinctions and so on, there is a limit to my excitement at the prospect of owning a coal-powered device that can display a tiny YouTube video of a skateboarding bulldog. Nothing against Apple, of course. I wish Mr Jobs all the best. But if he needs another product to revolutionise – electricity might not be such a bad idea.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Good TV is now obscured by all this trash
I don't watch much television, though this is not because I am too busy composing operas, or indulging in my passion for quantum physics, or taking part in bikram yoga, or teaching disadvantaged children how to do bikram yoga.
It is because I am always out, along with the 7,999,999 other problem drinkers in the country, and if I do happen to switch on the television, I rarely remember what was on it at the time. This means that the following day distressing images of high-octane people imploring me to phone in for big prize money come flashing into my mind, and I can't work out if I dreamt them, met them, have gone mad, or very possibly all three.
But I digress. Because circumstances - which I mentioned in my earlier blog - had forced me to stay at home quite a lot lately, and tiring of talking to my non-existent house plants, I have had to switch on the television. And if watching television for the past few weeks has taught me anything - and quite frankly, it hasn't taught me much at all - it's that Channel 9 has become even trashier and tackier than its neighbour 10.
Went overseas and watched loads of satellite television. Nothing positive to report over there either. Boring reality televisions shows and pathetic attempts at news broadcasting by Fox and Sky news. Others might suggest that TV died when some "celebrity" Big Brother contestants referred to an Indian woman as a "paki" - which is wrong on so many levels, not least factually - only for the channel to cover it up and deny that she was suffering racist abuse.
And some might argue that it was the night, when a channel aired pictures of a dying mother, despite her sons begging them not to. Diana - The Witnesses in the Tunnel, I haven't seen it. On principle, I won't see it. However, colleagues of mine who have watched previews tell me that it was actually a rare example of quality programming on the channel; what a shame, then, that good programming has been obscured by the station's ever-increasing desire to spark controversy.
Television has always been controversial. It was, after all, set up as an alternative, experimental channel. But now it seems to create controversy for the sake of controversy - of what interest are these pictures to any of us, other than to indulge in some rubber-necking? - and I am struggling to see anything in its schedules that is either alternative or experimental.
Big Brother - when this started eight years ago it was an interesting and innovative piece of television; now it's horribly contrived and full of grasping 18-year-old girls who think going on the show is perfectly normal; who have been taught by the programme - and therefore by Channel 10 - that there is nothing more honourable in life than arguing about hair straighteners on camera. It's enough to make you want to call for the return of public hanging; until, of course, you realise that Channel 10 would probably just try to televise that, too.
I don't watch much television, though this is not because I am too busy composing operas, or indulging in my passion for quantum physics, or taking part in bikram yoga, or teaching disadvantaged children how to do bikram yoga.
It is because I am always out, along with the 7,999,999 other problem drinkers in the country, and if I do happen to switch on the television, I rarely remember what was on it at the time. This means that the following day distressing images of high-octane people imploring me to phone in for big prize money come flashing into my mind, and I can't work out if I dreamt them, met them, have gone mad, or very possibly all three.
But I digress. Because circumstances - which I mentioned in my earlier blog - had forced me to stay at home quite a lot lately, and tiring of talking to my non-existent house plants, I have had to switch on the television. And if watching television for the past few weeks has taught me anything - and quite frankly, it hasn't taught me much at all - it's that Channel 9 has become even trashier and tackier than its neighbour 10.
Went overseas and watched loads of satellite television. Nothing positive to report over there either. Boring reality televisions shows and pathetic attempts at news broadcasting by Fox and Sky news. Others might suggest that TV died when some "celebrity" Big Brother contestants referred to an Indian woman as a "paki" - which is wrong on so many levels, not least factually - only for the channel to cover it up and deny that she was suffering racist abuse.
And some might argue that it was the night, when a channel aired pictures of a dying mother, despite her sons begging them not to. Diana - The Witnesses in the Tunnel, I haven't seen it. On principle, I won't see it. However, colleagues of mine who have watched previews tell me that it was actually a rare example of quality programming on the channel; what a shame, then, that good programming has been obscured by the station's ever-increasing desire to spark controversy.
Television has always been controversial. It was, after all, set up as an alternative, experimental channel. But now it seems to create controversy for the sake of controversy - of what interest are these pictures to any of us, other than to indulge in some rubber-necking? - and I am struggling to see anything in its schedules that is either alternative or experimental.
Big Brother - when this started eight years ago it was an interesting and innovative piece of television; now it's horribly contrived and full of grasping 18-year-old girls who think going on the show is perfectly normal; who have been taught by the programme - and therefore by Channel 10 - that there is nothing more honourable in life than arguing about hair straighteners on camera. It's enough to make you want to call for the return of public hanging; until, of course, you realise that Channel 10 would probably just try to televise that, too.
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