When I bought my new car, I decided to pull the 12-disc CD changer out of the old car before I traded it in. At the time, I had every intention of having someone install the CD changer into my new car for me, as soon as possible. In the mean time, I placed it in a cardboard box and sat it on a shelf. Seventeen months later, it's still sitting in that box. And if you know me, then you know why.
No, not because I'm too lazy to install it myself, or too cheap to pay someone a few bucks to do it for me. Not that I'm not lazy or cheap, mind you. But it's just that I haven't found myself missing my CD changer, not even once, not even slightly. The reason, of course, is that my iPod has stepped in and given me access to a few hundred CD's worth of music while I'm driving. So what could a CD changer, with its measly 12-disc capacity, possibly bring to the table that my iPod hasn't already addressed?
Well, nothing. And so, it sits in a box. Which is fine. Because for reasons that I won't bore you with, my entire CD collection is currently more than two hundred miles away from me, and has been for the past six months. Well, the physical CD's anyway. But every last one of them has been loaded into my iPod, so it's not as I've missed them. I listen to some portion of my CD collection ever day, despite the fact that it's a few hundred miles away. In fact, these days there are an increasing number of possessions of mine I don't miss, or won't miss when they're gone.
When my last VCR finally broke, I figured I'd hold off on buying a new one until I was actually in a situation where I realized I needed one. That was three years ago. And now that my new laptop includes a DVD-ROM drive, I'm guessing that I won't need to replace my current DVD player when it breaks, either. Not that it costs more than about $29 to buy a new one. But if you're never going to use it, why waste even that much money?
Now, some might think I'm living a little strangely when I run through the complete list of formerly indispensable items that I no longer own. I don't have an FM radio anywhere in the house, as the one in my car is annoying enough as it is. I also no longer have a telephone line in my home, nor do I ever plan to again in the future. All of my phone calls are made via my cell phone, and my internet is handled by a cable modem, so what would I even use a traditional phone line for?
It's not as if I've been actively trying to rid myself of possessions. It's just that as we've progressed into the digital age over the past few years, more and more old paradigm "necessities" are no longer necessary at all. Now, sure, everyone's situation is different, and I can understand why most people might still find use in such items as a VCR or a standard phone, but in most cases such stuff just isn't for me anymore. But even those with no such desire to live on the bleeding edge will eventually find themselves owning fewer and fewer non-digital items, until such items become a thing of the past altogether.
What got me thinking about all of this, was Canon's announcement yesterday that it would stop selling analog camcorders altogether, instead focusing solely on digital ones. This falls in line nicely with Kodak's January decision to ditch film cameras in favor of digital cameras, and shows (if anyone still didn't "get it" by now) that most non-digital products have almost no place in our near-future.
So what on earth could any of this have to do with the Macintosh? Click here to read Part 2 of this article.
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