As long as I can remember, at least since 1990, I have had a friend named Darryl who has always been on the "cutting edge" of technology. I met him working on a CD rom for Apple which would be used to help sell the Macintosh to Ad agencies. The CD rom was called "The Electronic Ad Agency". He introduced me to Photoshop version 1.0. and the job was my first entry into the world of "multimedia". I still think it should have been called "stuff" instead.
Darryl and I and the company we worked for headed by Randy Kennedy got a small write up in "Applied Arts" magazine. Some winter issue. It was a small bit of text but it was the first time I would see my name in a magazine so it was a big deal.
Shortly after that we started doing "multimedia" presentations before it was called multimedia. We programmed cd roms when blank media was a mere $40 for one blank CD. We played around and got sick of html long before everyone and their dog were programming web pages. And most recently we had gotten into doing visual effects while the getting was good.
While none of these things made either of us a bunch of money to be considered rich, we still made money to live and buy into the next technological fad. I have come to ask what the heck drives people like us? What makes us sink more money into the next gadget and better yet why do we always abandon it at some point? Part of it I believe is that we like gadgets and we like new things. But the leaps and bounds in technology seem to be fading. Is windows XP that much more advanced over Windows 2000 as going from DOS to the Amiga or Mac OS was?
Sure it's fatter, takes up more resources and requires newer software but is it truely better? Perhaps when we had those old computers they were meant more for the hobbist. It was more of a fun thing to do than be a chore for most people at work. When is the last time you could get an operating system with a programming language as part of it? A programming language that was part of the manual that you got with the computer? Maybe I'm just jaded but it's been a long time since I've gone to a computer show and something new has "wow"ed me.
I think the last thing that I've seen that truely impressed me was at NAB 2003. There was a company selling monitors with built in lenticular screens. The images seen on them were in 3D! Because the screens had this lenticular technology built into them you didn't have to wear glasses of any kind. The only disadvantage is if you read your screen while lying in bed (the monitor being sideways) that would wreak havok on your eyes and brain.
Before that show the last time I was really impressed was going to my first Commodore convention and the unveiling of the Amiga1000. Seeing color on the screen and the blitter chip work it's magic was just that, magic. Now I'm feeling jaded by the new technology that's introduced these days as it seems we are doing more sidestepping than truely advancing.
For example HDTV - better resolution but how are we transmitting. We're MPEGing the stuff. A compression that's inherently lossy. What happens when you lose part of a digital signal. A bunch of black holes in your video, if you even get video.
What about USB 2? It's still got a slower bandwidth than firewire 1 when transmitting large data packets. Wasn't USB2 made after firewire? Why is it still that much slower? Better yet why are all these computer companies buying into it?
I realize money plays an important role and companys scheming to figure out what technology comes out ahead (VHS versus BETA for example) and maybe that's why I'm getting so bitter. Damn you big companies! Damn you all!
It has just recently (in the last year) donned on me that I really haven't created anything tangable at least not in my opinion. I spend a lot of my time learning the new technology and don't really get around to making any final product. Sure there's work. But that shouldn't be your whole life. Am I right about this?
When I was a kid I would create a different two and a half minute stop motion animated short almost every two weeks. Until creating "Macho Baby!" in october of last year I can safely say I did not produce anything of interest in the last twenty something years since I had my dad's super 8 film camera in my hands as a kid. Oh sure I started a bunch of projects but always became encumbered with the technology. "It's not real enough", "If I use this render engine it'll look better", "That's not the latest video equipment". The amount of roadblocks I created kept on coming and I would leap over each one with a newer technique or technology and in the end forget that I was ever out to create something in the first place.
Now in the year 2005. Darryl has jumped to the next "big" thing. Pod casting. Nothing really new about this despite what some magazines will tell you (they do have to sell issues after all) just a fancy schmancy name for something old on a new delivery platform. It's essentially a radio program that you can download onto your i-Pod. The thing is anyone with recording gear can make a "program" and anyone with the technology can download it. Kind of like an audio blog.
In the picture above, Darryl is taping us having a conversation over eating chinese food. I can't really remember what we were talking about. I think we touched on scanners and the stupid people that don't know their ass from dots per inch. I can't believe how many people that work in print do not know what dpi means or how to distingush between dots per inch and image resolution. It makes my teeth and jaw tighten and my hand clench into a fist when I talk to these not so enlightened people. How are these people employed? Ahhhrg! But that's another blog entry all together.
So here we are on the cusp of yet another fad that will be the next new thing. Hopefully this time we'll learn to not get swallowed by all the details this involves and actually create something.
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