(Anti-)Social

Picture this, if you will.  Everyone’s electronic devices … phones, computers, tablets … are connected to a massive computer that monitors everything they do and uses that information to control what they believe, think and do.  Or.  Imagine that your devices and everything you do on them is displayed to a team of managers whose job it is to keep you online as long as possible and to drive you to look at certain advertisers’ information.  Sounds like a 1990s science fiction film, but it’s not.  These are two of the images the film, The Social Dilemma, uses to illustrate the ways that social media like Facebook and Instagram are damaging our society through manipulating what we look at based upon our actions online.  The film offers three areas of concern: mental health because studies show a decline in mental health and life satisfaction greater use of social media; decline of democracy because of disinformation campaigns on social media; and rising extremism because the majority of people in extremist groups were steered there by social media.

Finding My Phone

I seem to misplace things a lot these days.  My glasses.  My bluetooth earbuds.  My keys, my phone, my tablet.  I like to think that its because I have a lot on my mind and not because I’m 75.  At least once a day you’ll see me roaming around the house using the Find My Device app on my phone to find my tablet or vice-versa.  Or using the Tile App on my phone to ring the Tile on my key ring.  Finding my glasses and wallet requires a good old-fashioned, where-have-I-been hunt.

Fidelity and Philosophy

This is Part Four (and the conclusion, finally) of a post on the journey of my music listening from high-fidelity to mobile phone earbuds and back again.  You should probably go back and read Part 1 , Part 2, and Part 3. Or not.  If you’ve stuck with me through four parts, thank you.  I hope you learned something … I certainly did (which, of course, is one of the reasons I write).

As of Father’s Day, I was the proud owner of an AGPTEK H3 HIFI High Resolution Lossless Digital Audio Player and a pair of 1MORE Triple Driver In Ear Headphones.   Anxious to try them out, I installed a 128 gB mini-sd card and loaded my music collection, mostly stock MP3 files.  As I mentioned in Part 3, high-resolution  audio should be regarded as a marketing term.  Case in point: my player can’t play in high-resolution unless the music files are … and MP3 files are not.  Still, the difference from my phone and basic earbuds was striking.  Acoustic guitars were crisper and clearer, drum beats were sharper and orchestral passages didn’t sound as muddy.    Since the source was my MP3 files, the improvement in the sound he heard is due to high-quality electronics in the music player and the quality earbuds, not so-called high resolution or even better file formats.  But it does speak to the improvement in fidelity that better equipment can provide.

Fidelity and Resolution

This is Part Three of a post on the journey of my music listening from high-fidelity to mobile phone earbuds and back again.  You should probably go back and read Part 1 and Part 2.  Or not.

At the end of Part 2, I was listening to music stored in the MP3 format on my smartphone, happy as the proverbial pig to have my music portable where I could listen as loud as I wanted.   But I kept seeing articles about high resolution audio online.   Neil Young, of all people, made a passionate plea to save music through his high resolution  player and streaming service, Pono (since abandoned).   Other articles sing the praises of so-called lossless compression formats like FLAC and ALAC.  On Amazon, I found pocket devices claiming to be high resolution music players ranging in cost from $25 to almost $4000.  Even given the tendency of audiophiles to equate high cost with high fidelity, that seemed suspicious.   Suspiciously, too, I can find articles claiming high-resolution audio is anything from audio Nirvana to practically a scam.  So just what is high resolution audio?

Fidelity (Part 2)

This is Part Two of a post on the journey of my music listening from high-fidelity to mobile phone earbuds and back again.  You should probably go back and read Part 1.  Or not.

The early 1980s brought a revolution in the form of the Compact Disc, popularly known as the CD.   According to Wikipedia, a CD is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony and released in 1982. The format was originally developed to store and play only sound recordings but was later adapted for storage of data.  Suffice it to say that digital meant the music was stored at exactly the value recorded in the studio and that optical meant the music was read with light … no needle to scratch the surface or gradually degrade the fidelity.   CDs were smaller than vinyl records and durable, too, making them suitable for cars and portable players.   When recordable versions appeared, CDs quickly supplanted cassettes and gradually displaced vinyl, too, a music companies delivered more music on CDs only.   CD players appeared in cars and in portable units.  Not everyone was happy … some audiophiles lamented that music from records sounded warmer or more realistic.  But the tide had turned digital even though some hardcore audiophiles insist vinyl sounds better.  Older Eyes added a five disc CD changer to his music system. and his CD collection grew.

Fidelity (Part 1)

This (probably) three part post requires an introductory explanation. For Father’s Day, my wife Muri bought me a High Resolution Music Player and a pair of audiophile quality earbuds. The quality of the sound is astonishing, reminding me of the way music used to sound before music moved from large music systems to phones and earbuds. This is a (probably geeky) retelling of that process in my music-listening life, with perhaps some old-guy philosophizing at the end.

When I started listening to music, there were two popular forms of recording … 45 rpm discs, popularly known as 45s … and Long Playing or 33 1/3 rpm discs. High quality recordings and players capable of reproducing the sound at a level of quality commensurate with the recordings were termed high-fidelity, or hi-fis for short. Of course, exactly what constituted hi-fi depended upon who you talked to. The Magnavox TV and Music Console in my parents living room was (according to the brochure that came with it) hi-fi but the group of sound equipment aficionados known as audiophiles would find that hysterical. But our stereo was good enough for me to develop what would be a life long love of music. In high school, I built a 25 watt Heathkit amplifier which I combined with a set of cheap speakers and a turntable, my first component hi-fi. Audiophiles were still laughing. When i got married in 1968, I bought my first serious system, a Yamaha receiver and turntable and a pair of Heath speakers.

Oldereyes and the Dark Screen

I was slow to join the ranks of people using tablets like the ubiquitous iPad and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab.   I have a laptop, I said.   I have a Kindle.  I can do everything else on my phone.  Why would I need a tablet?   But as I became more connected to digital media like Facebook and online news, via my phone, I got the answer.  Size does matter.  I bought a 7 inch Nexus tablet and it became a constant companion.  When I bought a bluetooth keyboard it even replaced my laptop for many tasks.   When my Nexus died (the early models had quality problems) I bought a Samsung 7 inch tablet which has been a reliable friend.   Unfortunately, with age comes weakening vision … reading the news on the seven inch tablet became too much effort.   Last July I moved up to a Galaxy Tab A 10.1 inch which  I use for reading the morning news.

Robo

In the little ranch style house I grew up in in East Haven Connecticut, there was one phone.  It looked like this one, a masterpiece of efficient electro-mechanical machinery, weighing about 2 pounds.  By placing your finger in the hole of the number you wished to dial, rotating the dial until your finger was against the stopper, then releasing it, the internal mechanism would generate that number of pulses and sent them out on the phone line.  I think that phone rang two or three times a day, always answered by my Mom.   It was usually a call from a friend or family, but occasionally it would be a business inquiry from an establishment where my parents did business.  There was a small pad next to the phone for messages in case the call was for someone that wasn’t home.

New Landscapes … New Eyes

If you bothered to read my Home page, you will see a quote by Marcel Proust prominently displayed:  The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.  It is  a motto that suits me.  For most of my life I have been good at appreciating the life I have and found fulfillment in looking inward for adventure rather than outward.  But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t benefited from an adventure that stretched my boundaries now and then.

Night Lights

No one but a few regular readers may have noticed but I have.  I haven’t posted since May 24th.   That may be the longest period of time between posts since I started Older Eyes – Bud’s Blog.  I miss it.   If you are not a writer, that probably makes no sense to you.  If you miss it, then do it, you say. I’ve tried.  There are half a dozen stalled attempts waiting patiently on my WordPress dashboard waiting patiently for me to finish them.  Here I am, trying again.   This time, I have a theme … Things That Have Changed Since I was Young.  That should cover a few posts, don’t you think?  You may think, Here he goes, pining for the good old days, talking about how much better things used to be.  There may be some of that but what I have in mind is something smaller and simpler, changes without social consequences or value judgements.  No, I can’t promise my Inner Curmudgeon won’t have some cranky opinions but isn’t that what Curmudgeons do?  Anyway, let me give you an example.

A few nights ago, I was finishing up my last game of Classic Words on my tablet.  The lights in our bedroom were out and my wife, Muri, was snoring softly.  I turned my tablet off, plugged it into the charger and made my way to the bed, being careful not to trip over the pair of shoes I always leave out.  As I climbed into bed, I looked back at the room …  a dozen tiny lights pierced the darkness.  The LED on my phone was glowing red to tell me it wasn’t through charging and amber one on the cable box said it was standing by.  The time glowed in red, blue and green respectively on Muri’s alarm clock, mine and the cable box.  Naturally, the times didn’t agree.  On the wall, the carbon monoxide detector winked green to tell me it was doing its job, keeping me safe from an invisible enemy, and on the ceiling above, the smoke alarm did the same.  Intrigued, I got up and walked though the house.  Every room glowed with illuminated times and tiny colored lights.  The kitchen offered competing times on the oven, microwave and coffee make.  The blue LED on the dishwasher signaled the dishes were done and a green light on the master GFCI power outlet assured me that the circuit breaker had not blown.  In the family room, the Tivo glowed green … if it was recording, it would change to red.  The wi-fi range extender twinkled and flashed with each digital message from the router upstairs in my office you where can practically read by the light of the electronics.

When I was a kid, I tried hard to be asleep before my parents went to bed.  As you probably know, trying hard to go to sleep is not a great strategy for sleeping.  I knew the themes song of the TV shows my parents watched and knew that when I heard the closing theme of their ten o’clock show the house would soon be dark.   No glowing LEDs or digital clocks to keep me company.  Really dark.  Would an assortment of multi-colored LEDs reassured me or morphed into the eyes of scary creatures peering at me in the darkness?  Perhaps I’ll ask my grandsons.

If you are waiting for a point, there isn’t one except that the world has changed a lot in sixty years.  Technology has pervaded our lives and houses.   It is everywhere around us but takes a seventy-two year old man who slept in a pitch black bedroom to notice the evidence everywhere around us in the Night Lights.