I’ve mentioned before that over a (by now) rather long career I’ve been exposed to many computers of varying sizes, sophistication and speed.
I recall with fondness DEC PDP8 computers with paper tape loaders, front dip switches and the ubiquitous ASR-33 teletype. I’ve dropped boxes of punched cards (whilst not being drunk) and marveled at wall-to-wall flashing lights, whirring tape drives and devastatingly fast line printers. I was in the forefront of microcomputer networking and sat fascinated in front of an NEC APC computer with a colour screen with more power than an IBM 7040 of a previous generation.
So what, you might say?
Well last month, I acquired my latest computer. It plays games, has full web access, does my email, tells me where I am and can work out how to get home from where I am, gives me pictures of my house from on high (including those of our relatives in Los Angeles and Manila), and plays (extremely well I might add) my recordings of my piano as well as playing full movie videos if so required. Rather usefully, it has a very neat metronome application that looks and sounds just like the real thing and a superb Mandelbrot application which draws incredible designs on my screen. To top it all off, I can generate a rotatable 3D image of the copper-containing plant protein Plastocyanin derived from the leaves of some rather large poplar trees outside St Paul’s College at Sydney University during my time as a PhD student in the Crystal Structure Group in the School of Chemistry – complete with copper atom in green, the sulphur atoms of the cysteine and methionine in yellow, and the nitrogens of the two histidines in blue.
Oh, coincidentally, this thing also makes mobile telephone calls through the 3G network, and sits very comfortably in the palm of my hand.
It’s an iPhone.
I must admit it is very impressive. Now I can carry around with me photographs, sounds and videos of the piano (and of course lots of other things as well) to the tune of 16 gigabytes. It just goes to show that the march of technology is getting faster and faster.
This doesn’t have much to do about the Stuart piano other than as I said I have much better access to the sounds and looks of the piano, but it is indicative of the ability of people now to access copious quantities of information from wherever it is and wherever they are – instantaneously. So it is possible for me to look up the website and play the sound samples directly on the iPhone. I can access iTunes and download (if they are there) tracks from artists playing the Stuart piano – from anywhere as long as I have 3G access.
The mind boggles as to the possibilities – it really does. I wonder if I’m getting too old for this stuff?
Now which game do I want to play now…