I got a phone. It’s an iphone 11 Pro Max. Not because I’m a pro, just because I need a bigger screen.
These little gadgets are amazing. Mine measures 6 1/4 inches by 3 1/8 inches by 5/16 of an inch thick - barely a quarter of an inch. Smaller than a box of crayons (8 count). It weighs just under 8 ounces and stuffed into that little glass covered Pandora’s Box (along with a battery that will run for 20 hours) is an an A13 Bionic chip, three 12 megapixel cameras with separate lenses, 512 GB of RAM, 4 microphones, 2 speakers, GPS, a digital compass, an accelerometer, Wi-Fi, cellular, blue tooth, iBeacon microlocation (whatever that is), and even a phone so you can make phone calls. Like on a phone. A phone call. If anybody does that anymore. It’s also water resistant up to a depth of 12 feet in case you want to go swimming with it.
The camera in this phone has more pixels than a field full of pixies, Each one magically converts light into an electrical signal. A transformation. One picture contains 12,192,768 pixies, I mean pixels. Ha.
It can make HD movies (4K) at 24 frames per second, good enough for movie theaters. It can shoot slo mo, time lapse (with stabilization no less), has an audio zoom function, optical zoom, extended dynamic range, continuous autofocus, stereo recording and can take 8MP still photos while recording 4K video. Wow!
And that’s just some of the stuff. You could write an entire book about the A13 bionic chip with it’s 8.5 billion transistors, it’s 6-core CPU, 4-core GPU, and 8-core Neural Engine capable of doing a trillion operations per second. How it communicates with the internet, looks at weather radar, finds the square root of 693 (it’s 26.32 something something), edits pictures, edits movies, creates documents, buys stuff online, recognizes your face, talks to you and answers your questions and a million zillion other things.
And for a little historical perspective (incase you’re not impressed yet), the phone I carry around in my pocket is 5,000 times faster than the Cray2 supercomputer of the 1980’s which weighed 2 1/2 tons, stood 4 feet tall and cost 16 million dollars. It was the fastest computer in the world in 1985 and used 200 kilowatts of power. That’s 200 thousand watts. My phone uses 2 or 3 watts depending on the task.
All that and it’s now obsolete, six generations behind, iphone 17 is out. I don’t even know what that’s about.
Where am I going with this? I don’t even know yet. I was fascinated by the tech specs when I started exploring just exactly where are the microphones out of curiosity. I began discovering all kinds of stuff. I love tech specs.
Everybody’s got a phone. Mine isn’t special, it’s very average but near miraculous anyway. When I go out on my bike ride this morning I’ll stuff it into my belly pouch and carry it along. Maybe take a picture or make a voice recorder note or (my weakness) check Facebook for some sign of life from my ‘friends’. Maybe I’ll work on my Substack post while I sip a cappuccino. Maybe I’ll write a poem or compose a dissertation. Maybe I’ll send a text message to a friend. My phone offers unlimited opportunities. I feel bereft without it.
Which is exactly why everyone has a phone and there are cell towers sprouting up everywhere like some kind of modern day forest.
So no music on this post. What kind of music could you possibly use to accompany tech specs?
So. So what? So here’s the deal.
Are we all becoming cyborgs? I guess that’s the question. The answer seems to be ‘yes’, after finding this music (now there’s music). Sounds familiar? Almost like you could understand it? It’s R2D2 from Star Wars, 1977. We’ve been programmed to recognize the beeps and boinks as some kind of language since 50 years ago.
Every time we go into a store to buy something we have to communicate with the computer. Stick your card in the machine and wait for approval. Then you can go. There may be a human there or maybe not but your conversation for sure is with the computer.
Well, bippity digital boink bank. We’re all being seduced by the computers then. Huh. Don’t know if I like that. Think I don’t. But can I still think or am I a droid, like Ava in Ex Machina or Roy in Blade Runner. But both of those, er, people strove for some kind of freedom. Do we have to become cyborg before we can become human? Interesting question.
Help me out here. I don’t know the answer.
podcast music / thank you robots
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