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!

Libraries lost

The proposed closure of the public libraries across Britain is appalling. In part it is led by local Labour councils looking for a controversial cut to draw attention to the wider assault upon the public services by the coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Playing politics with the community in this way is as destructive and wrong in my view as the political objectives of the government driving the agenda forward.

Others have used the diminishing use of  libraries on account of our access to the internet for information as reason for their decision. I do not deny that I probably do now use the internet more frequently than the library specifically for research. However, I have to hand an array of sophisticated electronic gadgetry from a PC down to a BlackBerry that enables that access - most people do not.

Amazon is now claiming that it sells more e-books than paper - but then there has to be a link here, surely, with their e-book reader, the Kindle! My experience in the past of Amazon as a supplier of books has been good: however I am still awaiting a paper biography of Walt Whitman that I ordered through them in November ... currently not available for technical reasons. You probably recognise where my mind is now going.

I have space to study at home, my own office and desk space in work. Few enjoy those luxuries as the cost of housing continues to rise and the size of spaces within them decreases; offices are becoming hot desks at which to plug in laptops that have been stored in lockers as the cost of providing that work space becomes prohibitive.

My office is usually the node at which I relate to colleagues or members of the public. It is anything but my thinking or research space. The public library - particularly in the miserable British weather - remains however my quiet corner for solitude and study. I seek at least once a week to take my gadgets and note books with me to the reference section of the library off the high street and, when tired of staring at a screen, indulge myself in the pleasure of handling a book, and smelling the foggy atmosphere of polished tables and creaking leather seats.

There is a place for progress in my thinking: I would be 'at a loss' rather than 'lost' without my gadgets and look forward to the BlackBerry Playbook being launchd in the coming months as a more business-orientated tablet than the iPad. However many people with a Kindle or Sony e-book reader have had the unfortunate experience of having not checked the charge status of their reader ahead of a long journey by public transport . . . and wished for a book!

There is a more ominous side as well to the loss of the library as a repository of knowledge. I value change for the good, but cannot help feeling that the justification of falling attendance as being reason to close a library is as fallacious as the same justification for closing a church, a bank or a news agent. Not only do we become over reliant upon the convenience of electronics, but so too do we remove the human contact and perhaps most importantly, ability to continue our lives without reliance upon something that can be turned off in an instant. If I cannot Google or Wikipedia it - where do I turn for knowledge? Without libraries, future generations will be unable to answer that question - just as arguably today, the loss of churches as a moral compass could be the reason for a modern intolerance and amorality that is disturbing.