As some of you may or may not know, my current day-job (as, like all Social Media Ninja Expert Peeps, I have several projects behind the scenes which you will never know about but nevertheless make me better then you at The Twitter) is in computer retail. Mac retail, to be specific. And I enjoy it. (Of course, there are always the days that I don’t, and I’m saving those up for a few epic blog posts.)
There are a few aspects to my job. The largest proportion of my day is spent showing off the glitzy features of Apple’s operating system (some of which I only learnt about while screwing around on the sales floor with the demo content. Did you know what Data Detectors are in Mail.app? Have you been making use of the full range of multitouch gestures?). Like some sort of product demonstrating Terminator, I’ve been highly trained to sniff out exactly what it is a customer wants to see, and show it to them. Do they have a DSLR camera with them? Do a tour of the editing features of iPhoto. Are they wearing expensive clothes? Talk up the UI and brand. Yup, it’s narcissistic, cynical work, but it’s enjoyable, and I’ve gotten very good at reading people thanks to it.
There is nothing more rewarding in this line of work then spending 15 minutes amazing somebody by firstly predicting exactly what they’d like to use their computer for (protip: when asked, people will ALWAYS say that they will only use their computer for the following: Email. Internet. Documents.) and then showing them how to do it better. Taking the photographer example, I’ve sold people on buying a MacBook Pro simply by showing them the Colour Cast feature in iPhoto, and the photobook creation feature. I’ve had people swear in amazement as a (purposefully) crappy photo suddenly becomes perfectly coloured.
Anyway, all this has got me thinking: How much electronic magic do we take for granted in our day to day life? I still get floored on seeing 16gbs of data being stored on a card smaller then my fingernail, but I’ve grown accustom to many other real-life miracles we make use of every single day. From smartphones to tablets, e-readers to printers that (usually) don’t fail, technology is pretty damn awesome.
I recently got a new iMac, and it was delivered with a fairly impressive printer. I don’t remember getting excited about a printer before, but for some reason this particular printer, a HP Photosmart Premium, promised wonders beyond my wildest dreams. Sure, it could print and scan, all wirelessly. Nothing particularly fancy about that. How about being able to email the printer almost any document and have it print automatically? I’d say that’s pretty special. Of course, I haven’t actually used this feature yet, but I imagine that it’s going to make my life easier. At some point.
A piece of consumer technology which is in its infancy right now is that of the light field camera. These cameras, instead of simply capturing pixels, capture rays of light. As a result of some very fancy science, what this means is that you can refocus pictures after you take them. This, as far as I’m concerned, is witchcraft. Take a look: Simply click an out of focus area of this image taken with a Lytro camera.
I recently read a Reddit AMA (shorthand for Ask Me Anything, a sort of interview type post where Reddit members throw hundreds of questions at the person being interviewed, who tries to answer as many as humanly possible before passing out) in which a 101 year old women was the interviewee. When asked what the most shocking technological development was, she said running water.
We used to use a cistern or a well to gather water. I remember the first time my father installed a faucet and oh my goodness, I felt like we had won the lottery!
That certainly made me think. This women, who has lived through two world wars, says that running water is the most shocking technological development she has ever seen.
What piece of technology do YOU take for granted? At what stage did the magical become the mundane?
