For all non-techies, there is still hope.
sfgate.com
This Is Your Brain On Tech
With a mind crammed with gizmo jargon, where's the room for sex and love and
deep, earthly knowing?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, January 13, 2006
I now understand how Bluetooth wireless technology integrates with my car. I
am all over which exact Nokia model has the right GPS or SIM card to
communicate with Audi's CSR BlueCore specs. I am, furthermore, increasingly
knowledgeable about the iPod car integration kit, which stereo port it plugs into, how to
navigate the menus with the thumb wheel, the difference between the 47
different mounting kits and which of my car's on-board computer modes I must be in
to speak commands through the steering wheel.
This is your brain. This is your modern 21st century gizmo-addled brain on
everyday technology, baby, and it is only getting worse, more insane, delicious
and weird and wonderful and headachy and impossible to track. But really, what
choice do you have?
I am now (barely) up to speed on what it takes to rip DVDs to my Mac, bit
rates and compression algorithms and fps settings, and how to translate those
into playable vids on either my iPod or my PowerBook or to burn them to another
DVD as, uh, "backup." I know something of why Apple Lossless is better than
Apple AAC which is better than your basic 128K MP3 iTMS downloads, but unless
you're a hard-core audiophile running 25K worth of analog gear with a massive
pre-amp and $15,000 speakers, who the hell can really tell the difference?
I am, strangely, on a first-name basis with my Canon Pixma printer's ink
cartridges, with their price points and page outputs and pixel-coverage ratios,
not to mention why good photo printers need two kinds of black, why certain
photo papers produce a better spectrum of colors and how to calibrate my monitor
to get a better match for my printer's happily schizophrenic personality.
And this is just the tip of the info iceberg.
Can you keep up? Can you process it all? Because if you desire to partake of
the modern world and take full advantage of its manic all-consuming gizmo
joys, you pretty much have to. A functional understanding of such hyperactive tech
data is the modern requirement, the mandatory condition of urban existence.
Participate, or fumble and stumble by the wayside as new possibilities for
communication and invention and frustration race by, and you're stuck standing
there, pining for rotary telephones, pondering a time before digital toasters,
thinkin' 'bout naps.
For some reason, there is a space in my brain that knows how to replace the
tiny battery in my digital car key. I know why it's better to adjust the RGB
levels and work the hue/saturation before you Unsharp Mask in Photoshop. I
understand a shred about Firewire versus USB 2.0., single-processor versus
dual-core, tri-band versus quad-band, RSS versus Movable Type, nonstick versus
hard-anodized, Reidel versus Simon Pearce, cab versus zin, ginjo versus daiginjo,
CDMA and memory sticks and SO-DIMM and VGA and compact flash and microdrives and
click wheels and RAM and XML and H.264 and IEEE 802.11g and about a thousand
more I can't recall at the moment because my brain compresses and whiplashes,
which of course makes me wonder one thing: Am I running out of space?
Is there some sort of threshold? As I gain a working knowledge of 2.1 versus
5.1 surround-sound home-theater systems and pick up a tiny shred of basics
about ohm impedance, sound stage and speaker "floor," am I pushing out dazzling
insights into the human drama? Fond memories of my childhood? The taste of
roast duck with fresh thyme in a red wine/pomegranate reduction?
Verily, as I race through the mad wonderland of modern tech like Mary-Kate
Olsen through a bottle of tequila, am I limiting my ability to learn, once in my
life, the fine art of dendrology? Orchid taxonomies? Whale song? Do I still
have sufficient intellectual space to learn conversational French or to bake
superlative croque monsieurs or build my own fine oak furniture? Is it too late?
Am I frying all my wiring? Or maybe, just maybe, helping it all function
better?
Funny thing is, I'm merely a novice, an amateur at all this, a dedicated
nontechy and yet, even so, were you a guest visiting this decade from, say, 1906,
would you not be utterly and completely stunned by my general aptitude? Would
I not sound a bit like an utter genius, reeling off plasma TV aspect ratios
and streaming media download speeds and flash memory drive capacities? Of course
I would.
But you also might wonder what the hell is happening to my
short-attention-span mind as I learn, as fast as my brain will allow, the 14,000 functions of my
Canon Digital Rebel, or how to process photos in RAW format (which, by the
way, I have zero need to do but oh my God I don't want to not know such a thing
because gosh what if I want to suddenly become a pro photog and start shooting
more than just snapshots of family and dogs and my girlfriend in the shower?
Such is the odd peer-pressure of techdom).
You might wonder whether it's all worthwhile, or if I am, in fact, going
partially insane. But one thing is sure: We would both stand in awe at the power
and range of the human brain, our seemingly infinite capacity to learn and
evolve and fire up new synapses to put it all together into some sort of frantic,
kaleidoscopic tapestry. Hell, the fact that we can still function amid all of
this gorgeous and maddening tech noise, not to mention (in my case) still
think reasonably clearly and write semi-coherent sentences and pay my bills and
have multi-angled sex with my SO and still remain upright, is indeed a testament
to the variegated genius of the human animal. And also, of course, to wine.
But it is not enough. It is never, ever enough. Flipping through the
broadband digital cable TV feed the other night, I caught a random home-remodeling
show, all about how to turn this ugly little room in this upscale little house
into a sexy little den, all recessed ceilings and stone shelving and this
amazing tile flooring with a round ornamental centerpiece in the middle, and oh my
freaking God, the range of knowledge of basic materials and techniques and
tools, just to install some goddamn flooring, was like listening to a docent at
the Louvre explain Matisse to a child. I mean, how can I learn all that? Where
will I possibly put it all? When do I start?
And when, pray tell, do I get to put it all down and take a deep breath and
just go read a damn book? |
