video killed the radio star

Mere words can't express my relief at reading today that some people think that the principal use for mobile phones is to talk on them. Not to make videos; not to play games; not to watch TV, for crying out loud.

I was getting to think that I was the only one who wasn't spending all day staring at their mobile to watch the cricket.

Of course, it's a little more complex than that - as always. Firstly, the applications. As I recall, the massive investment in the 3G technology caused a few companies to go bust because there wasn't the uptake expected. Was it because the downloads were too slow for the truly smitten? Or because watching cricket on a screen 2 cm square really isn't all it's cracked up to be, regardless of download speed? Now we have Telstra's nextG (possibly Nextg or maybe even neXtG, I can't be bothered looking) which promises some new level of experience. But it'll still be a very, very, very small cricket ball on a 2cm square screen.

Taking videos. To my mind, nothing but clever marketing. What would a bunch of pickled 2-somethings do on their nights out? Why, take videos of themselves and send them to groups of friends engaged similarly. Cool? You bet. Vital? Not really. But everyone's doing it? Certainly. Revenue? Come in spinner.

Second, the technology. For those of us whose hair is a little greyer, whose eyesight a little weaker, who digits aren't all that flexible, operating a mobile is bloody torture. I at last got a work-provided mobile a few months ago. Having had a Motorola in the past that I liked (T28), but my last personal phone was a Nokia that I took ages to get used to, I decided to get another Motorola Ericsson (V3). I hate it. You can't read the screen in anything other than interior light. The keys are all over the place. Intuitive, not. Not to mention all the stuff it does that takes up memory (my memory, that is) that I don't use. I watch offspring no2 texting, two thumbs, doesn't have to look at what she's doing... How do people do that? Her phone is a something else, she picked mine up and was instantly quicker at using all its functions than I was at just making a call after reading the bloody handbook and practising for several hours.

Of course, this could just be me. But the article indicates maybe not.

At a broader level - ie technology in general - it's bloody annoying because for a long time I was staying up with technology. We got a Sinclair Spectrum in 1983, we got our first (XT) PC in 1987 and I taught myself relational databases from scratch.

But sometime during the 1990s the pace of technology picked up and got right away. In part, I attribute this to the old man who was a mechanic for much of his life. He taught me about real things - gears, springs, shims, keyways, castellated nuts - that you could see and figure out how they worked. I wasn't all that surprised when we gave him a PC in about 1998 and he just couldn't relate to it. Software, you see. Microsoft. It didn't always do what it what supposed to and, when it didn't, you couldn't just pull it apart and see what was wrong. Despite offpspring no 2's best endeavours, he never got it.

I don't know what the answer is. In part, not letting myself be overwhelmed, just putting in some more effort to understanding stuff.

In other news...I was quite taken aback this morning to see that a couple of vvb posts had been picked up in the Ozpolitics blogfeed. Fame! Because one of the posts was where I had been critical of young Miss Irwin I was expecting some kind of backlash but...nothing. I am drawing no conclusions. Crikey today has some thoughts on that subject that put it in a bit of persepctive and I think there was going to be a media-friendly puff piece on Australian Story tonight. Oops, must have missed it.