Today, being a Sunday, my family and I managed to set up a video chat (using Facetime, although Skype used to work before that). My sister’s family were also in attendance and so it was a lovely opportunity to catch up with everyone, especially my nieces.
When I got a chance to speak to my parents my dad told me about a problem he’d experienced making CD’s from MP3’s he’d downloaded: the CD only played on certain CD players but not all of them. In particular it didn’t play on the CD player of the man for whom my dad bought the album. He bought and transferred the MP3’s to a CD for his friend who only had a CD player.
Now, to me this sounds like “par for the course” because CD-R’s are, and always have been, a shit technology. That’s just what happens. But my dad was concerned that he’d done something wrong.
What follows is another way to interpret my dad’s experience. He and my mum read this and so they may wish to correct me on any of the details.
My father is 82. As a result of my arrogant nature and desire to be able to maintain his computer from 3000 miles away I’ve forced him to use Ubuntu. It’s a massively underpowered machine for 2013 but he maintains it well. Using Ubuntu my dad managed to purchase a gift for his friend – a bunch of MP3s from amazon.com. He also managed to transcode them to WAV files and then burn them to CD. The fact that they didn’t work on a bunch of CD players made him feel that he’d done something wrong. This is an example of how broken the world is.
CD-RW’s, CD-R’s and all of the various family members are examples of crap technology. They are at best an anachronism. But when you have to deal with non-geeks, they still have their place.
I suppose the point I’m trying to make here is purely that I’m massively proud of my parents. My dad is transcoding MP3’s for his friends after buying them on Amazon while my mum is happily using the iPad to explore the world.