iPod
Posted: October 13th, 2005, 3:14 pm
It must just be me. I'm electronically challenged. I just don't get it.
I've taken college courses in electronics and I could do the math just fine and solder the little wires but as far as understanding how these gizmos actually work, I don't have a clue. Call me stupid. I can't see electrons. I've made my living being an electrician, I can wire a house, but when you start talking about the difference or relationship between a coulomb and a farad and a newton and a watt and an ampere and a tesla and a volt, its just over my head. I can manage #12 copper wire and circuit breakers but when we get into semi-conductors and microchips and transistors and capacitance, it's all magic to me.
But there are some people who understand these things very well. And I'm glad they do. It allows me to plug in my new little Mac-mini which is half the size of one volume of the Encyclopedia Brittanica and is packed with a million miles of virtual circuitry and not a millimeter of wasted space and has more storage capacity than a 40 floor office building stuffed with filing cabinets.
One of the little mercies of modern life is that you need not understand something in order to benefit from it. I can drive a Mercedes Benz without having a clue about fuel injection or hydraulic transmissions or electronic ignitions. I don't even need to speak German. I can just hop in and go. You can eat a souffle without knowing how to make a souffle. You can listen to and be moved by Miles Davis' music without the slightest knowledge of the difference between a flatted fifth and a major seventh chord or 3/4 from 7/8 time. You don't need to be schooled in the process of yeast metabolism in order to eat a slice of bread or be versed in the process of fermentation to get drunk or have knowledge of the mechanism of spermatazoa navigating the fallopian tubes in order to knock up your girlfriend. You just need to know the simple principles of in and out.
It is good that some people comprehend these arcane things though. Otherwise how could we have stem cell research and in vitro fertilization and farm bred catfish and trips to the moon and.... and... and.....The New iPod? What a marvel of electronic magic. On this little device which is no bigger than a deck of Pall Malls, you can store and play 15,000 songs or 150 hours of video or twenty-five thousand pornographic photos downloaded from the internet and waiting for your perusal during a subway commute or a visit to a public restroom. With its two and a half inch liquid video screen and headphones, this device will do almost everything but give you a sixty giga-lick head-job.
My guess is that Steve Jobs knows about as much electronics as I do. He needed Wozniak to do the nuts and bolts work on the first Apples and now he employes the best electronic engineers in the world to do this work for him. And they do it well: the iPod is an elegant little machine. But Jobs is not an engineer, he is a promoter and a visionary. He has demonstrated on more than one occasion that he can see into the future enough to develop products that we didn't even know that we wanted yet. Yes, Steve, build it and they will come. Well, we're coming all over ourselves right now.
The era of personal, portable computing and communication is upon us. Anyone who has walked down an urban street or in a mall knows how the cell phone has changed the landscape. Every third person is talking on one while they walk. Just wait until everybody has an iPod in their hand watching the latest episode of Desperate Housewives while driving on the freeway.
Will Rogers was talking about the U.S. Congress. He said, "It's like a guy with a ukulele. You don't know if he can really play the thing, or if he's just monkeying with it." The Poet's Eye sees that this is the general rule with technology. A sixteen year old kid can plug a Korean knock-off of a Stratocaster into a big enough amplifier and seventeen effects boxes and, without even knowing how to make a chord, have you believe that he is playing music.
I still don't understand this ukulele.
"The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh.
My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay."
"My girlfriend always laughs during sex - no matter what she's reading."
---Steve Jobs