Archive for August 10th, 2009

Progress

August 10th, 2009

The odd time in the past, I have moaned about modern society and the way it is going.

There have been some improvements though.

Back in the 60s and 70s I collected quite a few records.  I tended to go for music that was somewhat outside the mainstream of pop in those days.  My collection is therefore very personal and I like it.

LPs
Some of the collection

A few months ago, I started digitising it.  It meant hooking a record deck up to an old PC and then warning everyone [Herself] not to go into the room while the tracks were playing, as I didn’t want the needle to jump.  That was followed by lengthy sessions with a lump of software to remove all the clicks and scratches.  Frankly, I am amazed at the quality of the stuff I produced.

Since the days of records [RIP] I have also built up a nice collection of CDs which look rather attractive in their wooden stack.

For the last few days, I have been transferring a load of my digitised stuff on to Roger, so that I can play my favourite stuff while driving.  Roger is an accommodating bloke as he is quite prepared to beam my music directly into the car sound system.  He also has the ability to play just a selected album, or a selected artist, or if I’m feeling lucky, he will just play random tracks from the entire collection.

I suddenly realised what I had done.

I have transferred the equivalent of 10 LPs onto a yoke that is smaller than a postage stamp.

chip
Ten LPs on this?

If someone told me forty years ago that I could cram all the music from 10 LPs into a tiny piece of plastic the size of a stamp, I would have said they were insane.

So let’s look at the changes in the last forty years.

  • We have lost our freedom, as every aspect of our lives is now monitored, be it by CCTV, computers or databases.
  • We have lost our health service.
  • We have lost the open road, with the proliferation of the car.
  • We have lost respect for those in authority.
  • We have lost the right to determine our own future.

But what have we gained?

  • We have gained the ability to balance ten long playing records on our fingertips.

I think that’s a fair trade?

Don’t you?