Thursday, June 30, 2011

Musical shorts

Technology simply baffles me. I have a laptop, an iPad, and an iPod Touch, which I commonly carry around in my pocket. The Touch has a nice note-taking app, so when a brilliant idea occurs to me I can tap-tap the screen and record it. That's much better than stuffing my shirt pocket with jottings on scraps of paper napkins from Subway, or forgetting the idea altogether. It also has a little camera that's let me snap images of street signs in case I've forgotten where I left the car. Often, though, I'll place it on my desk and play classical music from my iTunes collection.

All that is very nice, but there is this one little quirk: it doesn't have an Off button. Oh, it has a button to turn off most of its functions, but none for the music. If I've had enough music for one day, there is only the Pause button. And ninety percent of the time, that's just as good as Off.

But then it goes into my shorts pocket, and perhaps I go to a writers' group meeting. It can be handy there, especially to jot down those to-do's that inevitably arise. Then when someone is talking, usually making a serious point, we're all treated to a lovely orchestra playing Brahms's Fourth or The Red Army Choir bellowing out The Volga Boatmen.

My iPod Touch just goes on by itself, perhaps to liven up the meeting, perhaps to embarrass me. Has it bumped against the side of my chair and activated Play? Maybe, but sometimes I could swear I wasn't fidgeting in my seat.

Apple makes terrific gizmos, sleek and efficient, without a smidgen of superfluity. It even goes on without prompting.

Who needs a button for the sound?

11 comments:

Julie Flanders said...

How funny to think of the music starting up during your meeting! I got a good laugh imagining that.

I have sometimes put my phone in my pocket, and it has called people without my knowledge. Now I try to remember to lock it, but that doesn't always work either. I love technology but there are definitely some strange quirks that come along with it!

Talli Roland said...

Oh, I hate that! I always need a button for sound.

Su said...

Hee hee-- it must be listening for a good moment to liven things up!

LynNerdKelley said...

Love your sense of humor, Bob, especially how you can take a picture of street signs in case you forgot where you parked! You're way ahead of me as far as technology with the iPad and iTouch. I wonder why in the world they didn't put an "off" button on it. Now, if I bought one, it would probably have taken me forever to figure out that there's no off button. It makes no sense but sure makes for some humorous moments for you when it goes off!

Lynda R Young as Elle Cardy said...

hahaha I try to avoid as much tech as possible -- even though my hubby is an IT professional. I think I drive him nuts some times.

Christopher Hudson said...

Superfluity? Ya stumped with that one ... had to look it up ... which took an excessively large amount of time.

Gabrielle Evelyn said...

I think the technology affects us a lot in our daily life.

karen millen

Alisha said...

Hi, I am a writer of academic papers and I want to share with you the service in which I work https://www.masterpapers.com You can find a lot of useful information for students here.

Mike77 said...

Can't write a good essay? Then contact us, we will help you please click write my essay

write my essay said...

Outstanding work and I will use (moved here) services in the future.

Alisha said...

Thank you for such an interesting and deep article. she helped me understand this topic more. I work as an editor of academic work on the site https://paramountessays.com/write-a-book-review, so I often need to read various articles on such topics in order to understand what students write about