Ravings Of A Strange Mind

Obviously, I'm completely into the tech thing to the extent that my budget and time allow. My house is covered by WiFi, all three of my kids have their own computers (my eldest son has two on their own subnet) and everyone has the level of Internet access deemed appropriate to their age and experience.

We have a shared media server with all of our music on it, which we seriously need because my kids have extremely eclectic tastes. As an example: I picked up a CD burnt by one of my kids a few weeks ago which contained tracks by Ramstein, some Bach, a few tracks from "The Secret Garden", and some songs by "Flander and Swan".

As far as TV is concerned, we don't have satellite or cable (I refuse to pay $80 per month for a stack of sports channels I will never use in order to get the few channels I do want). Our family policy is that nobody has TVs in their bedrooms (my wife and I included) and the one TV with an antenna is in the family room where anybody can use it. We watch the few free-to-air programs we like and then get what else we want via BitTorrent. Between us, we watch Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1, Alias, the various elements of the CSI franchise, ER and The West Wing. We've also grabbed TV series that we all like that can't be had on free to air, such as "Scrapheap Challenge" (which we call "Skrothog" because that is the what it is called in Swedish and most of the BitTorrent files for Scrapheap Challenge have Swedish subtitles), Daria and Reboot.

It's very, very easy to get used to being surrounded by this warm glow of technology. So much so, that I was taken by suprise the other day when someone was astonished that I had already seen the latest episodes of just about anything worth watching on Australian free to air TV, even before the series had been advertised (let alone shown).

In that instant, I realised (again) that I am a member of a very small subset of the community that had access to this kind of technology. Most people think they have to wait two years for US TV shows to be shown in Australia. Most people still pay full-price for long distance and international phone calls. Lots of people have iPods, but very few of them realise that devices like this have been around since 1999. Most people see telephones and computers being completely different devices that don't really have anything to do with each other.

Some of you might remember a book from the 70's by Alvin Toffler called "Future Shock". The book title came from the name Toffler gave to the disorientiation felt by people who felt overwhelmed by the relentless arrival of new technologies that they did not understand.

I keep feeling the reverse of this (can we call it "history shock"?) when I hear someone complaining about how there is nothing on TV (why not use BitTorrent and get nearly anything you want?). I get it when someone complains about the cost of international phone calls (international phone calls are cheaper for me than long distance). I get it when someone says they can't find a phone number (why not use one of any number of Internet resources)

I'm not saying that "history shock" is a bad thing. Mostly, it is a reality check for the techno-geek that lets them know that they are living in a world that is detached from the "reality" that most people experience. This can be useful as a prompt to be more understanding of those who are not paid-up members of the digerati. It can also be a pointer to a possible opportunity to make money by converting a hard-to-understand technology into something everyone can use.

It's also good to remember that even uber-geeks can get so wrapped up in their toys that they miss good stuff going on elsewhere. History shock helps me know when to take time off. That, and my kids starting to roll their eyes :)

Time go and sleep.