randombushmonkey

I'm indifferant. There doesn't seem to be anything on.

The donations from the Live Aid concerts obliviously went to buy aid and transportation but what happens to Live Earth? For every thousand pounds raised we can keep a plane out of the sky for a day? Demolish a town to recalim back green belt space? Buy a wind turbine for a family in Newcastle? Or maybe plant some trees along the M6 Corridor...seriously though, I have no idea!

Anything to do with film/TV picture seems to be improving, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are materializing and HD TV is already here but where music is concerned nothing has happened since CD's or SACD (Some people would argue that CD's are worse than Vinyl). At the studio end they're recording at brilliant levels 192Khz, 24-bit etc... but the consumer result seems to be a 128Kb/s MP3? It seems crazy! MP3 is great for portable music but when I'm at home I want to listen to the best that can be offered.

Have they been drinking? Is this all the channel is about? Should we be worried? It's strangely compulsive yet almost disturbing, I can't turn the TV off!!!

For example, our toaster. It used to have a potentiometer (knob) on the side you turned it to a number, pressed the lever to lower the bread and it cooked fine. Now it has an LCD display with separate + and – buttons. Every time you turn it on you have to select ‘Toast’ (not defrost or re-heat) and press + a couple of times to get to the required heat setting. Surely this is going backwards? It uses electricity if it’s left on, doesn’t remember the temperature if you turn it off and the buttons will probably wear out before anything. It’s the same for other things as well: microwaves, phones, Hi-Fi’s, DVD players, TV’s, Cars…

Does anyone else feel sometimes we are cramming so much technology into things that it makes objects harder to use or we are sacrificing quality for convenience and so going backwards?

Bit of a rant I know! Any views would be helpful.