The world is awash with technology, most of it the size of a bar of soap these days - yet it is barely forty years since the first mobile phone call; thirty years since the first Apple Macintosh computer; twenty-eight years since Windows 3.1 (the first version in colour); twenty-five since GPS satellite technology, Sim City, Lotus Notes and the Nintendo Game Boy; and a mere twenty years since the official launch of the free "World Wide Web", with its (then only) browser Netscape.
Google is only sixteen years old, Blogger is fifteen, Wikipedia is thirteen, Amazon and Facebook are ten,
To divert us from thinking about all this, let us embrace the far more comforting futurist visions of the fantabulosa Trans-X - with their only hit, from way back in the early 80's - it's Living On Video:
Give me light
Give me action
At the touch of a button.
Flying through hyper-space
In a computer interface.
Stop - living on video
Stop - integrated circuits.
Stop - sur un faisceau de lumieres
Stop - is this reality?
Travelling in a light beam
Laser rays and purple skies.
In a computer fairyland
It is a dream you bring to life.
Stop - living on video
Stop - integrated circuits
Living on video - sur un faisceau de lumieres
I see your glittering blue eyes
You look at me with a smile.
It's a computer fantasy
It is waiting for you and me.
Living - living on video
Living - living on video
Living - living on video
Living - living on video - stop
I adored this song then, and I adore it now - which is more than I can say about the pace of technological progress!
A world with the internet would have made my life so much easier when I was a kid/teen. Forget waiting for weeks to catch the latest Madonna video on my (local!) TV station - just go to YouTube!
ReplyDeleteBut eBay was actually founded in 1995 and I have been using it religiously since 1998...
Great choice of track to go with this - just what I needed on a very dark, early morning while I wait for the weekend to come...
Oops - I have corrected the eBay boo-boo...
DeleteI'm not sure about the "need for speed", where the Web is concerned - I remember the excitement of listening to John Peel and watching Top of the Pops and Old Grey Whistle Test to catch the new music/videos, and the thrill of shopping in HMV (or earlier, WH Smith), getting that record home and playing it in my bedroom. Pleasures sadly lost today.
Jx
I know what you mean. However, I lived in in tiny TINY (we're talking about 600 people) town on the outskirts of the country, when I was a teenager. No record store, one TV station and two radio stations! No MTV for me until I was 14, no TOTP etc. I would have killed for the internet back then, or just a record store... In many ways, kids have it SO easy today - but there is also a lot missing; the hunt, the anticipation etc.
ReplyDeleteI still keep it alive though - I wait for my Amazon orders to bring the latest CDs I bought instead of streaming them on-line, and I tend to download loads of music videos and burn them onto a DVD, watching it over the weekend with a glass of wine. That way, it still feels a bit like old times :)
I bet you would have killed to have found someone to shag in that wilderness, too... I know the feeling - I was a "village lass" myself! Jx
DeleteOh yes, that too - the only gay in the village...
ReplyDeleteThat, I suppose, would have been another "itch" that would have been alleviated by the Interweb... Jx
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