Systems and stories

There are limits to the appeal of miniaturization. While the trend toward smaller and smaller audio and video recording and playing devices continues, there is still something to be said for the grand gesture, the big screen. As much of the appeal of the new technology is sensory, we will always be drawn to large imagery as well as small.

Our communications tools and devices continue to dazzle. The new pocket video cameras, to cite just one example, are amazing for their ease of use and clarity of image, and they are inexpensive. It is unnecessarily convenient to call up a Van Gogh or a movie in your hand on an iPhone or Blackberry, but it means we are never alone, never apart from a vast and growing encyclopedia. The weather, the sports score, the breaking news, directions, games, and, of course, a network of friends and colleagues, can be available to us anytime, anywhere.

Every new piece of hardware can accommodate more and more applications, whether we need them or not. The delivery systems already in place are breathtaking, and more are on the way. The world flows our way: we barely have to stir from our cars or living rooms.

But we still need to learn how best to use these new devices, and to develop content as rich and sophisticated as the technology that delivers it. It is true that we often cannot conceive of the uses of new tools until we begin using them. But after the initial magic wears off, we still must confront the fact that we exist in real time on a real planet divided into 24-hour days. We still must live meaningful lives filled with activities to justify all of this hardware, unless we become resigned to being passive consumers of a small, elite culture of people who value experience, action and expression over passive consumption. The computer is made by and for real flesh-and-blood people, who may or may not have something to say.

The new iPad is the latest example of technology outracing, and attempting to redefine, need. The early reviews expressed disappointment that the iPad is not more spectacular; people close to these developments wanted to be wowed by it, presented with something they had not yet imagined on their own, that had the power to transform lives. The debate continues, even before the iPad becomes available to the masses, as some maintain that it will, in fact, be revolutionary in its impact.

The larger point is that we didn’t necessarily need or want it. It may bring something new and useful to the table, it may shepherd in a new era of cyber-traffic, it may successfully impart new rules for creating and disseminating content. But it will still depend, as all technologies depend, on the people who animate it, and they in turn must eat, sleep, deal with global warming and a war in Afghanistan, be happy or disappointed, fall in love.

Without the atomic, cellular world, we will have no stories to tell each other in cyberspace.