Community Corner
Humor: White Whines Of Today's Tech
Creve Coeur-based Oakwood Systems Group offers up food for tech thought now that it appears computers are working too quickly.
The following blog was republished with permission from :
As I was reading this article on The Verge this morning, wordily titled "Windows 8 boots too quickly to be interrupted, Microsoft adding new "boot options menu," I was reminded of a site I check in on from time to time called "White Whine," in which modern-day whining is captured for posterity. You'll find things on there from Facebook posts like "It is so inconvenient when the pool boy is late" to "My double whip extra caramel frappe had too much caramel so I had them remake it twice," and more - a commentary on how blown up and entitled we sometimes sound in our social media hangouts.
Apparently we are now whining that the newest and shiniest PC operating system "boots too quickly." Love it. It wasn't that many years ago that we would power on our PC and go get a cup of coffee, hoping that it might be done by the time we got back. This definitely qualifies as a "white whine" in my opinion, and it occured to me that technology has actually brought us many more.
"Someone gave me a 1GB thumb drive. Yeah right. Like that's going to do me any good." I'm dating myself here, but I remember when the hottest thing in PCs was a 10MB hard drive - yes, you read that right, ten megabyte.
"Internet wasn't working on my flight. I should get a refund." Really? You are thirty thousand feet in the air, in a relatively comfortable chair, with free sodas and yummy peanuts, hurtling toward your destination in the company of a hundred or more other intrepid travelers. That in itself is a miracle. Now you feel that you have a "right" to Internet access while doing so? Suck it up and read a book.
"My laptop weighs seven pounds. Too heavy to carry around for long." I totally get that seven pounds can get heavy after a while, but I also remember that the first "laptop" I carried weighed 26 pounds and was the size of small suitcase. The laptops we carry today have one thousand times (or more?) the computing power of the ones we lugged around back then. When I am carrying around my backpack, I am grateful that my laptop weighs ONLY seven pounds.
The message of White Whine is a simple one, to me. By poking fun at our random complaints, the site makes it clear that we are in an age where all things are possible and accessible, and that what we have is pretty miraculous indeed.
What technology "white whines" would you add to the list? Do you have any cheese to serve with that whine?