Am I possessed by the things I possess? I have audio CDs of music in my study, with a copy of most of them in a separate collection in the drawing room. Some have been converted and compiled into MP3 CDs. A smaller collection travels with me in one car, and a smattering in another.
There’s also a collection I like to play on the home theatre system in the bedroom. The DVD-video collection sits next to it, but I also like to watch some videos downstairs. Another TV sits in the lounge, but has no DVD player connected to it. The iPod has its own collection of music, and both my wife’s mobile phone and mine are loaded with photos, music and videos that are too precious to lose. In addition, hundreds of photos lurk in two digital cameras, but it’s too awkward to have people crowd around their tiny screens. Hours of video recorded by the camcorder collects dust on mini-DV tapes and recordable-DVD discs.
Digital deluge
(Left) Linksys Media Center Extender DMA2100 $299.99, (middle) NetGear EVA9150 Digital Entertainer Elite Rs35,000, (right) D-Link DSM-510 HD Media Player $199.99
Yet, surprisingly enough, the use of this home gear is nothing compared with my computers. I watch more hours of video on the computer than I do on regular TV. Friends email photos every day, and I share hundreds of photos over Flickr with friends and colleagues across the world.
My biggest collection of music, videos and photos is scattered across my network of computers in a plethora of file formats—some under the Mac OS on my Apple laptop; others under the Linux partition on the same laptop; some on an external USB hard drive, some on USB thumb drives of odd sizes and shapes; and some in various partitions and folders on a Linux desktop.
Add to these the files on my father’s and brother’s computers, digital cameras, MP3 players and mobile phones. Naturally, I dread the moment when I need to locate a specific song or photograph.
Also, I can’t help noticing that there’s a growing chasm between my home gear and my computer-driven lifestyle. My hi-fi home stereo lies abandoned as I listen to otherwise high-quality Internet radio broadcasts over tiny computer speakers. At a recent party, a guest requested me to pause the audio CD on the home stereo and log in via my laptop to share a song he discovered on YouTube. All good, except for the tinny sound from my laptop speakers, and the choppy video in a Web browser that was badly out of sync with the audio. That, too, on a computer screen too small for a roomful of people. By now, my home theatre system must have taken to looking on mutely at its own Shakespearean despondency.
Play it again