Digital Daze

I was a late convert to the digital revolution. For almost five years after CDs first came on the market, I steadfastly clung on to my precious – and ageing – collection of vinyl LP records; all 528 of them. In those halcyon days of narcissistic narcolepsy, I was one of the few bravehearts – during one of my ritual pilgrimages to Tower Records in New York – capable of ignoring the glittering displays of the new fangled CDs and head straight for the shrinking shelves of LP records. I have just heard the tragic news that Tower Records has closed down. I would request you all to join me in two minutes of silence.

Lost in my own nostalgic netherworld, I tried hard to convince myself that the sound quality – hisses and clicks notwithstanding – produced by my dowager LPs could not possibly be matched by those tiny, upstart silver discs. Even when the scratches threatened to overpower the music, I stubbornly persevered. And, for one brief, shining moment, salvation was at hand. A company called Fintel had developed a record player where the diamond stylus was replaces by a laser beam. The makers claimed that the laser would pick up only pure sound, even from scratched records – analog nirvana - leaving behind all extraneous noises behind. Alas, like so many things in our lives too good to be true, it was. Reality soon descended with a thud. Only a few dozen of the revolutionary players were ever produced – and they cost $3000 a pop. I reluctantly admitted defeat.

Like many late converts, I became a devoted disciple (boy, can I alliterate or what?). I am now a certified digital junkie. I draw the line at Playstation and Xbox 360, but I lap up every new gadget they throw at me – or, at least, whatever my wife allows me to catch. For example, a cell phone with a camera is a no no. She says it’s an unnecessary expense and expense ("you have a digital camera, don’t you? Phones are for talking"). But I suspect, she’s wary of my slipping the palm sized wonder under women’s skirts. Me, a perfect gentleman, go figure. I did put up a token resistance, but deflated when she flung the Lord’s Prayer in my face; you know, ‘lead us not into temptation’.

My current project (whenever I can tear myself away from Gather) is converting my old LP records to CDs. I am fascinated by the technology. Not only can I transfer them to my computer, I can eliminate hisses and clicks, boost frequencies and mould the sound to my preference. I feel like frigging Mozart.

I also came late to the wonderful world of computers, but here I have a valid excuse; my advancing years. I belong to that prehistoric generation that had not even heard of pocket calculators, let alone computers. Complex calculations were done using logarithm tables (look it up on Wikipedia) and later, in college, a slide rule. I had my first brush with a computer during my postgraduate years at college. The monstrous machine occupied a whole room and comprised a series of glass fronted cabinets with spools of rapidly rotating magnetic tape. It all seemed wonderfully mysterious and even a little surreal. Windows were still the things you found on house walls and a mouse was a furry, disgusting rodent. If you wanted to solve a problem, you had to write your own code in an archaic language called Fortran and then transfer it to hundreds of undecipherable punch cards. One’s worst nightmare was spending two hours punching out 300 cards and accidentally dropping them. No quick retrieval system in those days. All you could do was groan and curse and start all over again.

Truth be told, it took me a very long time to get comfortable with computers. When the first IBM PC arrived on my office desk, I was terrified that pressing a wrong key would cause a catastrophic failure; maybe even blow up the electronic wonder. This was still before anyone had heard of Bill Gates. The operating system was something called DOS and the clunky black and white monitor displayed only text; images were still a distant dream and videos belonged to the realm of Star Trek. Still it was magic. A software called WordStar did away with whiteners and correction ribbons. It allowed you to play around with words and sentences. I could move them around, delete them and, best of all, it all got typed out automatically at the touch of a button. Awesome. F Scott Fitzgerald had nothing on me.

By the time Microsoft unleashed Windows on a bemused world, it was too late. I was too old, too set in my ways. I was part of the detritus of the computer revolution. I’ve been striving, of course, and am proud to say that I have worked my way up from computer-challenged to computer-mediocre. I can hold my own with Word and Excel; but I still have to make excuses every time my nephew challenges me to some slash and banger on his Xbox 360. It would be humiliating to lose to a six year-old.