Generation iStupid? The “all in one” pc losing pieces (and sense!)

Already published in myblog 26 Aprile 2013 and now posted again as it was, after talking with some people about the latest Apple laptop, so extremely beautiful, with just only ONE PORT! As I am an astonished former Mac admirer, who can see some sense in all this (except choices of mere marketing), please write to me with a comment on these lines!


Dear Apple

after seeing in the stores your new amazing iMac, can you tell me just only one reason why I should buy a pc “all in one” without a DVD reader and writer? Is it to make the new jewel thinner? But why a desktop pc should be thin? It’s not a slice of ham, I don’t need to put it in a bag, nor to have it passing under a door.

DVD for Apple is probably “old fashioned”, as all updated users today fly on the cloud. They amuse themselves watching every kind of data jumping from the iPhone to the iPad, from the Macbook Air to the iMac: always tuned, always connected, and having everything synchronized automatically… Still I remember people complaining the loss of whole folders of music on the iPod, for a wrong step on Itunes…

Many years ago, the personal computer appeared as a revolution for two main reasons: it could work also without being connected to a network; it let the users to act eventually free from the power of industry. And a lot of incredible things happened, including the possibility of thousands and millions of “anyone” to choose together different ways of making things and information, according to their taste and will, not only buying but just inventing technology!

It was probably too much for average people: to much responsibility! So that when other devices came on the market, many chose them instead of a “classical” pc: smartphones, tablets and so on. Good: this is freedom. But if one, rather than only letting his digital printings on every sort of touch screens, is still keen of using his machine to produce what he wants, he should have more, and not less possibilities.

Sure, I still can go on the Apple Store and, if I succeed in founding it (where is it? I’ve found it in the Italian store – backward country! – but not in the main Apple!) eventually buy a cheap, lovely and nice USB exterior DVD device, in order to continue watching my old fashioned films and even to make them (by the way, where the hell can I get the “old” software iDvd?).

But average users never will put themselves in such an enterprise! They simply get used to forget DVD as they forgot VHS. And not for their own choice!

These days, the break is growing as never between the “professionals” and all the others. There are no technical reasons at all, as with nowadays machines each of us could do virtually everything, including incredibly very cheap 3D movies! But people generally don’t know and, according to the trends of market, they must not know!

If I already know, before, I can search, go beyond the shelves and surfing the web, to get software and additional hardware, in order to manage a personal, easy, cheap huge power! But if I don’t, If I come now without a previous expertise, the ideology of the market put me fluttering in a cloud where there’s no choice of doing almost nothing but leisure, and fashion, of course. I can enjoy, more and more, but actually I cannot choose!

The pc is definitely no more a machine to be discovered also by average people, by children, trying, imagining, playing, using eventually the same things in a different way.

So, with this new “all in one”, I cannot read millions of documents produced in last two decades; I cannot give you in hand my new production, as I must address you somewhere in the “cloud”, always connected to the network, always depending on it’s administrator, who’s the real owner of “mine” contents: If a server crashes, if a virus corrupt them, it someone for some reason decides to cut me off … It is the exaltation of digital divide, it’s the expropriation of every single man of the possibility of choosing; it is the “trend of market” elected as the final leader of the world, beyond any possibility of democratic control.

Somewhere in the deep space, the space probe Voyager, since 1977 is exploring the edge of the universe. Some old fashioned scientists chose to put in it a CD, containing “sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or for future humans, who may find them”.

But if the probe is got by the guys of iPlanet, lighted by the iSun, in the centre of iGalaxy, they are too ahead in civilization to take care of a primitive digital disc: “What the iHell is this?” And the message of life and culture in Earth – for those futuristic aliens as well as for our children – will be lost forever!

Please Apple: if I want to stay only on the cloud, an iPadcan can be perfect, but if I get a pc “all in one”, I’d like to have a chance to choose. Please Apple, rethink it!

pubblicato in myblog 26 aprile 2013

Fotografare lo scarabeo nel buio

Riprendo e ripropongo le foto scattate col telefonino e l'articolo pubblicato in my blog un anno fa.

Un volo denso nella sera, sopra il ceppo di pioppo tagliato da poco, attira l’attenzione. Insetto grosso, insolito, non una falena, adesso si posa e si mostra: è un inconfondibile scarabeo rinoceronte!

Da quando mi sono messo a fotografare insetti, è la prima volta che ne incontro uno e vorrei non lasciarmelo sfuggire.

Ho a disposizione solo il telefonino, che con il suo macro limitato può tuttavia andare bene con un soggetto di quelle dimensioni. Cerco anzi di non andare troppo vicino, per non mettere in crisi la messa a fuoco automatica in condizioni di luce scarsa, confidando nel buon obiettivo e nel flash morbido del glorioso Nokia N8 ultima serie (sistema operativo Symbian nella versione “Belle”, quella che funzionava, e soprattutto svenduto a prezzi stracciati!), che ai suoi tempi quando usci era il massimo in la fotografia, con i suoi 12 megapixel!

Le prime foto, con l’insetto a spasso ben visibile tra i cerchi del tronco tagliato, sono teoricamente le più semplici e ovviamente le sbaglio: è a fuoco tutto meno lui! Poi lo scarabeo scende nell’erba, nel buio, diretto verso qualche recesso del legno marcescente, e a questo punto non so se sia il caso di prenderlo e rimetterlo dov’era prima (e se non ci sta, e se mi scappa ancora più veloce, se spaventato vola via?), oppure puntare quasi a caso l’obiettivo sul percorso che intuisco e sperare che succeda qualcosa.

Non mi ricordo se avevo già osservato in azione questo dispositivo alla ricerca di un soggetto che praticamente non si vede. Però ora, schiacciando il pulsante di scatto, vedo lo schermo del telefonino per un attimo colorarsi di rosso e lo scarabeo sembra lì. Mi ricordo che con la vecchia videocamera Sony, la DCR-HC94, dotata di funzione video a raggi infrarossi, in modalità fotografica potevo scattare al buio con buone probabilità che le foto col flash venissero discretamente

Non sono stato fortunatissimo. Nell’unica immagine davvero nitida, si vede molto bene la corazza dello scarabeo, ma la testa è rimasta fuori dall’inquadratura!

pubblicato in myblog: 16 agosto 20014

The wrong frame and people’s resignation in the digital era

This was first published in My Blog on December 2, 2012. I paste it here as it was! 

It happens, very often, even in official festivals, even among professionals: the format of the video is projected wrong, so that circles are oval, cars are stretched or squeezed, thin and tall people appear fat and short when standing and flat like snakes when laying down on a sofa or the sand.

If you point out the problem, professionals begin to explain: “It is why…” But I already do know “why” and I don’t care. I’d simply like to watch the picture right!

The worrying thing is that most of “non professional”, when asked if they have seen that pictures were deformed, simply say that no, they haven’t noticed it! And someone even tells you: ”But you are an expert!”

 For common people, so it’s normal to see top models or basketball players short and fat like Miss Piggy!

The plenty of technology in our life appears to go together with a general loss of sensibility, eyes, ears, taste weaker and weaker… and all that defending and fighting and fearing and complaining about bankers, finance managers, politicians, immigrants, foreigners, aliens, all that suddenly faint in resignation in front of the magic of digital media, that resets to zero our critical, as well as natural senses. Deprived from too much tecnology! Remember Ivan Illich: «Modernized poverty appears when the intensity of market dependence reaches a certain threshold…»

già pubblicato in My Blog  2 dicembre 2012