maxbarry.com
Fri 20
Jul
2007

The revolution will be televised in low-resolution

Max One thing that’s always bothered me about sci-fi movies is how bad everybody’s communications technology is. Well, that and the costumes. Seriously, if the future is Spandex, I take back what I said about never wanting to die. But anyway, every brave new vision of the future you see, the phone system has gone to hell. Alien, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, you name it: people are flying around, firing laser guns, and talking through intercoms that make them sound like Stephen Hawking gargling. Even a simple video link spits and fuzzes as if they’re tuning it through a coathanger. Will the future really be filled with technological marvels that enhance every area of our lives but this?

Now I realize: yes. We’re already on the way. I used to listen to music on CD, watch TV on a television, take photos with a camera, and talk to people on a phone with a cord. Now I have internet radio, MP3s, YouTube, VoIP and a cellphone. Even my home landline is a wireless thing that makes people sound as if they’re calling from inside an empty beer can. I don’t yet watch TV on my cellphone, but my phone company wants me to, even though the screen is one inch wide. I do take photos and videos on it, and that’s what I’ll have to look back on: a bunch of 8x6 pixel images and footage so jerky everyone seems to be having a seizure.

You know where this started? Vinyl. Oh yes, we laughed, when the purists said CDs didn’t sound as good. Well, maybe you didn’t, you weren’t born. But ask your Dad. Those long-haired freaks were right.