My best friend and I often have the discussion about how music has changed from the old days of a search for higher fidelity to a search for convenience. I cannot deny my inability to carry around a great sound system as I walk, but oh the joy of walking, looking at nature, and listening to my mp3 player. As I tried many different headphones, I finally decided on the pair I have now. Oddly, similar to stereo systems (and oddly to C-Span's coverage of the big debate today) much of the problem is in getting good speakers.
I found this article above to be fascinating for a few reasons: 1) my wife wanted me to stop talking politics after the vote in congress today which anyone approaching their senior years not expecting the extra thousands of dollars to pay for their own health care insurance needs should look into carefully, 2) I have had two days off and my mind is in an expansive mode, 3) I have been reading more of The Case for God and am not only in an expansive mood but one of wonder and enduring mystery, and 4) the HuffPost article wasn't bad (actually a rarity, unfortunately.)
I carry around this bag of objects which includes my phone (now with a keyboard for texting), my 2 mp3 players (backups are really absolutely necessary), my camera, my netbook laptop, my ebook reader, and my flip type camcorder. All are the quality I want them. I want no more out of my phone than something to talk with and now text with.... (I have to admit that my computer won't beep me when an email comes in, nor is it constantly online, so, I'll go with the dinky keyboard on the phone for now.)
Electronic gadgets are always transitional things to me. Nothing is ever perfect and while I always seem to have the right ideas, it takes other people a while to get around to inventing and marketing things for me. No problem, I just do what I can with what is available. Someday, and I know it will be within the next ten years, the music industry will probably find that high fidelity is all they have left to sell and mp3 players will play better files, but in the meantime, I have the mp3 player and headphones I like. All the other electronic gadgets I have will get better too. Quality will not lose in the end, I'm more positive than ever. These are dire days for quality for sure, but sooner than you think, quality will come right back.
My bag is a bit of a burden but I can do things better than you... too bad your little multitaskers can't do things as well. I feel for you, but it's your own fault. "It's raining, it's pouring....." Oh gosh those data packages are so expensive..." nanny nanny boo boo."
I'm still writing long haired and long winded blogs about things that are real to me on a real keyboard. I feel better than ever about my decision to blog rather than facebook. I feel so much better after writing even if no one gets it.
I read a lot of psychology books as a teen and at least 3 of them had the cat thing :
This supposedly chronicles the descent of the artist into schizophrenia. Someday my blog might well be in a textbook, hopefully my descent will be into something easier to spell at midterms.
And as for The Case for God, I'm not sure I'd recommend it to the faint of heart. The search for God has been a long one. :) I think this book really should be entitled "A History of the Case for God". Yet I'm in wonder about the fact that the book moves along (very very painstakingly) a path that comes closer and closer to my personal understanding of God. I'm happy... that I have not been wasting my life in my own search for meaning, that others have gone down the same experiential paths.
As I read books in dribs and drabs, switching around when I feel like it, perhaps there is hope yet for multitasking and perhaps convenience. Yet.... nope, the small screen of that iPhone will never do."iPhone" is a pretty good metaphysical name for the product though, all it needs is a capital "I" to make it's name grammatically correct when beginning sentences and theologically descriptive of it's nature in the eyes of it's converts. :)
