Technology without limits

I am at severe risk of saying the same things again about the incredible advances in technology that I have seen during the brief course of my working life (circa 40 years). However today I splashed out on a small Jawbone Jambox speaker with which to amplify my iPod .... and all the while going through my head was that what I really wanted was an amplifier to play the music from the cloud rather than any particular music player.

Fast forward two hours of extremely impressive amplified music from the iPod - and I decide to pair the Jawbone Jambox with my iPad (which has no music stored physically on it) to see if I could access the music from the cloud.

Of course I could! That is such a blindingly obvious use of it that none of the Apple assistants I spoke to thought it important enough to mention ... and it being such a preposterous idea anyway I naturally didn't dare to ask!

So now from the comfort of my 19th century campaign desk I can access the internet, listen to music playing from the cloud and when finished, put the tiny little ghetto blaster that the Jawbone most certainly is, iPad and remote keyboard away in one of the drawers: much as a general might have had his staff do in the field before breaking camp - though then it would have been charts, a field log, nib pen and bottle of Indian ink. And of course because all this is operated either over the internet by wifi or Bluetooth ... there isn't a cable in site!

Forty years ago I recall planning to spend the money I had saved while on National Service (Rhodesian Army) on a portable cassette tape recorder and player, that I would eventually build a huge library of classical music and hold musical soirees in my rooms (I was always a little camp in my ideas ...). I did buy that tape machine and over the years it has been replaced with others - a Sony Walkman, a portable CD player, a mini CD player and at least two iPods. Jeff and I got rid of our vinyl record collections some years ago but do still have an impressive collection of CDs to play on the Bang and Olufsen (another great British invention by the way!) that is 'plumbed' into the house.

Of course we don't know where it will end ... and I hope it never does. Future generations will look back on our current technology and wonder how on earth we managed with it; however I am starting to wonder how on earth we managed without it!