Thoughts from the Gap

Well the weather I so enjoyed the other week has disappeared, I was going to go for a run but the rain shoved a spanner in that. And so I find myself stuck inside, watching my cat show off his ability to sleep whenever he pleases. So I thought I'd write a blog post.

Most of you probably know my drill by now: search through the BBC's website, maybe the guardian or some other papers, and find a couple of stories I can playfully mock. But today, for some reason, I came up empty. Maybe there is simply nothing interesting, maybe the rain has made me apathetic. Either way I'm doing nothing more productive than spinning round on my chair and looking aimlessly around my clutter-ridden room, with the urge to play The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time becoming more pronounced by the second.

Tthis got me to thinking. Not about Zelda, but about my clutter. The vast majority of the mess in my room is made up of DVDs, books, CDs and video games. Not to mention all the controllers and dust jackets that come with them. Now, technology is becoming more and more sophisticated, that's a given, and this essentially means we are needing less "stuff." e.g. Current gen. consoles allow you to download games directly onto their hard drives, you can download or stream movies directly onto your computer without the need of a hard copy, and tablets like the iPad and the Kindle (does the Kindle count as a tablet?) make buying individual books almost obsolete.

The point I am trying to make is that pretty soon, my clutter wont exist in a physical form, it will all be a part of the ether. Think of it like this. it's 100 years from now, there are flying cars, clothes come in pill form, and everyone has been gene-spliced into atanomical perfection (Except for the poor, they will still be smelly and ugly). What is going to be in their houses? digital picture frames maybe, a pair of sunglasses that allow you to play games and watch television on them. Hell maybe they'll wear those things all the time and it'll be like the matrix whilst everyone is  really asleep in a pod filled with the liquefied dead!

Perhaps the occasional 'eccentric' will own some of the 'quaint' prehistoric technology like an iPod or a mammogram machine. but otherwise, any music they could want can live in an earpiece, movies can live in specs, and, if games involving the future are anything to go by, everything will be white (I'm not being racist by the way, I'm thinking along the lines of Mirror's Edge). So what will make their homes untidy? NickNacks? Dirty plates won't exist because everyone subsists on that Willy Wonka gum that contains a three course meal. All I can think of is furniture. From the meanest beggar to the grandest monarch, everyone enjoys a good sit.

I've forgotten the point of this post but I think it had something to do with the evolution of technology, and how pretty soon, there'll be much more space for me to spin round on my chair without bashing my knee against my chest-of -drawers.

Media Artefact: iPad.

Hello there avid readers! In a slight change of pace I thought I'd put up a post that doesn't have any puns, cheap laughs or sexual innuendo (depending on the filthiness of your mind).

This is a media assignment for which we had to write about 500 words about a media artifact, talking about its context in history, and the relationships that surround it. I chose to do the iPad (since I own one, and am lazy). Hopefully it's not too awful for your standards.

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The iPads were the first line of tablet-style computers made by Apple. The Wi-Fi model, first released worldwide on May 28, 2010 was designed in the same manner as Apple’s iPhone and iPod including touch screens and a plethora of applications that vary from practical functions such as word documents and presentations, to games and various novelty functions.

The 32GB iPad has an RRP of about £600, making it a product that is not generally acceptable to people who do not have disposable income. In my opinion, this suggests it is targeted towards a western market, presumably aimed at younger audiences, either professional, or casual.

As a recently designed item, it follows the current trend of most Apple software, being both aesthetically pleasing as well as practical. In the case of the Apple iMac, it was essentially a monitor that did not have a tower attached for memory, and drive space etc. with iPads, the closest comparison would be any type of laptop, though the smaller size and long battery life of the iPad, as well as being lighter than the majority of conventional laptops, make it more portable and easier to handle.

The iPad has changed the way media content can be viewed, the portability of the iPad allows it to be used effectively as a sharing device. This could be an essential aspect of the iPad as, with the amelioration of technology, and the convenience of the Internet becoming more apparent, many newspapers are beginning the transition to online sites, and tablet PC software is a perfect medium for digital newspapers. Media mogul, Rupert Murdoch has already made a deal with apple and has created the first of these. Designed specifically for the iPad, The Daily has supposedly found a synthesis between the newspaper and the tablet. At this point, the only other possible competition for the iPad in regard to digital papers would be the Kindle, however the difference in design would, at present, favour Apple.

The iPad is by no means the first tablet PC, the earliest being created in the early 1980s and known as ‘Pen Computers’, though these have not survived, most likely because the technology available at the time did not meet the standards needed to run them as effectively as would have been required to be a viable product.

The iPad, however, makes the most of the technology of today and is very likely to last. If not necessarily in its current form. In the vein of many Apple products, a newer version has been released which supersedes the current iPad. The iPad 2 is 33% thinner, and 15% lighter, with a dual-core processor and up to nine times the graphic performance of its predecessor.

This is a technique Apple uses: launching an innovative product, then within a year, or sometimes after just a few months, release an improved version. Generating a huge amount of income for Apple. This means that products can become virtually redundant within a matter of months, forcing consumers to purchase the newer technology if they wish to have the highest spec. products.

This places the iPad in an interesting position, as it is its own company, not superior outside competition, that is threatening to make it obsolete. For the time being.

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Thanks very much for reading, as usual, feel free to be as scathing as you want to be in the comments.

Your hatred feeds baby pandas.