Moving Parts

How times have changed.

Can you imagine that we used to store our music in tiny wobbly grooves pressed into a flat circular sheet of vinyl? (For the benefit of my younger reader, yes we did). Together with an approximation to the desired music you also got scratches, wow, flutter and a certain muffled quality. If you tapped the record player, it would jump tracks.


After a diversion into the world of tape cassettes that took much of the above but added the possibility of in-car entanglement, we arrived at the fully digital Compact Disk. O what joy! Perfect audio at last. Well, almost perfect, some would say. Also, if you tapped the CD player it could jump tracks.


Now we reach for our iThing and marvel at the creation of music from nothing. It doesn't matter how many songs you download, it doesn't get any bigger and most critically, there are no moving parts.

Where will this end? 

How about this: If you take nano technology, genetic engineering and Quantum computing, then we could have a device grown inside our head shortly after we are born. This already holds all the music there has ever been, and it plays it directly into your brain while you sit blank eyed with your mouth open.

See: 

Progress.


Comments

  1. Jim Huckle6 June 2014 at 19:17

    Someone's really not been looking after their vinyls! ;-)

    Also, MiniDisc. The most under-rated physical media format.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Shenstone6 June 2014 at 20:47

    ooo err... that's modern stuff. If you know someone who's good with old mechanicals that have been over-wound I am looking for someone to repair my 1903 Edison Phonograph - Cylinder player

    ReplyDelete

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