I was listening to the news on Radio 2 on the way home on Friday and there was this guy from
Blinkbox being interviewed. Blinkbox is apparently the next big thing in home entertainment. After you join up online you can either rent a movie to stream onto your computer or TV for a limited amount of time, or you can buy a movie that will be stored in your cloud for you to access in perpetuity. A virtual DVD shelf if you will.
This interview got me thinking on a couple of levels (doesn't happen very much, so make the most of it). Level one: the realisation that I'm listening to the Blinkbox guy and nodding along in agreement and understanding. This doesn't usually happen so it's a bit of a Eureka! moment, maybe thanks to Cam23. And, level 2: my, how things have changed over the last last 15 years... I feel a reflective moment coming on...
...casting my mind back to my university days, I remember the awful strain on my poor Dad's back every beginning and end of term. From 1994-1998 my parents had an old Volvo estate that was ready for the scrap heap but they didn't let go of it. Why? because they needed a large capacity car to transport me and all my stuff to uni and back on a regular basis. By stuff I mean: a hi-fi the size of Asia and all the cassettes and CDs that came with it; a mountainous tower computer and screen (in a faded off-white colour of course); floppy disks in various plastic containers; stacks of course notes and A4 lever arch folders; tonnes of photos in albums; text books; French novels; German dictionaries; portable (ha!) TV and video recorder plus video tapes, etc., etc., etc... In 1998 when I finally graduated, the car heaved a sigh of relief and finally gave up the ghost, as did my Dad's back.
If I were going to university this October in the year 2010 what would I be taking with me? Just a laptop and a smart phone perhaps. I would probably have all my music, films and photos in digital format stored on said laptop or phone, or waiting for me in the cloud somewhere like Flickr,
Spotify, or Blinkbox. All my course notes would also be digital, maybe on
Evernote. At a push I'd have an 1TB external hard drive for extra security and storage. I could access my text books and dictionaries online, so I wouldn't need to lug those about. Even my camera would be integrated into my phone and I would stare with bewildered eyes at the mention of the acronym VHS. In other words, I could probably fit everything into a small suitcase, get on the train and save my Dad, his back and his poor old Volvo a lot of work!
