Thursday, July 28, 2011

State Of The Art With A Beating Heart

I think that we too often gloss over the mundane and banal, no matter how amazing it is. Every day, a thousand very impressive technological things quietly operate in the background and periphery without a moment's attention from us. If they should ever fail, our sole reaction is of outrage. I try to be more appreciative on a daily basis for such things as the disposal unit in the sink, among other products on which my happiness and productivity depend.

I got to thinking about this when, once again, I was awed by my little iPod shuffle. It holds hours upon hours of music, yet occupies a fraction of the space that a cassette tape holding maybe one hour ever did, and this does not even take into account the player needed by the tape. Can I really be the only one who holds it in his palm and shakes his head in incredulity, almost angry at this wonderful feat of engineering?

I was syncing mine up with the music on my computer, and reached out to grab it thinking that it had finished. It hadn't, and I felt an astonishing thing. Its little inner workings were just whirring along. It felt like the fluttering heart of a hummingbird. it seemed just like it was alive. I was just stunned. It was rather overwhelming to think of the minute machine going crazy in that little square to update its archive of music, and all on my behalf.

Maybe I seem like some kind of simple-minded yokel to be impressed by something that everyone else accepts. My attitude is that it's sad that people should be so jaded as to not even comment on such a thing. To think of the crude, limited mechanisms that were tolerated when I was just a few years younger than I am now. They were flimsy, inconvenient and performed poorly even the very little that we expected of them by comparison with what we do today's devices. Well, I appreciate you, shuffle. Don't rise up against me for lack of proper respect.

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