Analogue and Digital

Analogue

Analogue days seemed to have more focus, a more logical structure in the thought process. Each provider offered one specialized service; each worker would concentrate on one job properly, each gadget performed one task well and was made to last.

Now that we all have gone digital, it seems that wasting has become a major problem:

• wasting time to get things setup, to get them working;
• wasting money to replace digital units on a regular basis and far too often;
• wasting resources by throwing away old equipment, batteries, cartridges,etc.;

Governments and authorities come up with half-baked ideas to address the issue, but basically, they do nothing concrete and it is the consumer who will bear the brunt of the problem.
Solutions will be: buy more expensive stuff which is more eco-friendly and be prepared to replace pay an awful lot of money for things that will be inefficient.

Now that we all have gone digital, it seems that lazy, blurry thinking, (or cloudy, woolly thinking) is the order of the day:

• where providers want to offer all services,
  
• where everybody does everything,
  
• where every appliance tries to do it all, very badly and becomes obsolete immediately;
  
• where all is done all of the time everywhere;
  
• where everything is everywhere for everybody all the time.
• where everybody and everything pretend to multitask madly: imagine multitasking headless chickens.
  

Digital Problems

The main culprits are of course the computers

• they need too much time and attention: upgrades, ant-virus, anti-spam, anti-spyware, firewalls;
• they need constant baby sitting;
• they are too clunky: slow to start; slow to shut down; sent idiotic messages; interrupt your work wit "agents": not efficient!

These are some of the solutions to make our lives easier

• operating system needs to be trimmed down; start and switch off fast, like a TV; no interruptions, no agents, just what the user wants;
• internet connections needs to be easier: just plug in, install a 2 min software: you are connected;
• software needs to be less bloated (MS Office) and lower priced.

We can look at various media in terms of

• time spent to create, share, play them
• time spent to get everything going
• managing and archiving, incl. space it requires
• energy spent (moving atoms and kgs)
• what will happen in the future - legacy for the future
• DIY to preserve them for the future

Audio-Visuals

Notice that we can either see > look > read: each is more voluntary, more of a choice; whereas we cannot choose to hear > listen>?

We can close our eyelids and not look, but we cannot close our ears: we have no earlids. We can decide not to look, but cannot refuse to hear.

People are miserable because of the noises that force them to move to a more quiet place. It is rare that "sights" that we hate, even eyesores have such a drastic effect. And yes, smells can be awful too.

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