Story time everyone (in Farnsworth voice, naturally)! Let’s set the scene shall we? Right, you’re on the first part of a long commute. You sit down in the too small bus seat, seriously they don’t cater for the leg length of the taller among us, and uncomfortably fumble through your bag. “It’s all going to be ok” you think to yourself, “I’ve got my PSP to pass the time.” You dig it out and flick the on switch. Nothing happens. Right, not the end of the world, let’s try again. Nothing. Irritated you open the back up, remove the battery and replace it again, you think to yourself “This must work.” It doesn’t. Dejected, you move to your MP3 player of choice; music will have to do instead of gaming but that’s ok. A track and a half in and… LOW BATTERY appears in all its formidable glory across the screen. Bugger.
What I’m getting at in this tragic example of a recent trip of mine is that when technology works it makes everything better, but when it doesn’t boy is there hell to pay! In defence of myself, the PSP was charged but the battery has gone the way of the Dodo, the MP3 was entirely my fault but I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s accidently forgotten to charge their device of choice before a trip when it’s going to be used to keep drudgery at bay.
We are at the mercy of battery operated travelling companions and when we are deprived of them, when we need them the most, the rage builds and builds. It also never seems to be one failure at a time, it’s like the tech-gods conspire against us occasionally to screw us over and ruin our days. There is a silver ling to all this occasional disappointment; we have the magic entertainment boxes in the first place.
I remember before we had portable music players, portable games machine and hell, a phone without anything worth playing on it. These days we have smart phones with a huge variety of games, we have the DS and indeed the 3DS from Nintendo. Sony provide us with the PSP and later this year PSP2 (since if it’s called anything else when it comes out I’ll eat my proverbial hat). We have advanced from cassette walkmans with 10 songs on to MP3 players with 10,000. This is truly the golden age of portable technology and the next steps are being taken to level it up again.
Take the 3DS, I was sceptical at first but having played on one to some degree I am very impressed, the 3D really does work and isn’t as gimmicky as I was expecting. Granted it may not work so well on buses or trains, you have to look pretty much straight on to get the 3D and on a bumpy vehicle this may not be achievable but even with the 3D off it looks fantastic for a handheld. Speaking of looking great Sony’s upcoming portable, going on what I’ve seen so far, looks spectacular.
“But wait!” I hear people cry, “What about books?” Well let’s examine books in the same way shall we. Yes they don’t run out of power or break; unfortunately there is a massive drawback to the printed medium, which for the record I deeply enjoy. On public transport there is almost always lots of noise, morons playing music out loud from phones, people talking really loudly, crying children etc. This isn’t an environment which I can comfortably read in; I need peace and quiet to concentrate properly. This problem is of course eliminated by headphones or ear phones.
So all in all it’s worth the pain and frustration when these things don’t work for the fantastic experiences when they do. These things make long journeys bearable and without them public transport would revert back to being loud, boring and generally unpleasant which it oftentimes is. The biggest problem is remembering to get off at your stop, but as long as you can keep that under control (believe me after a few slips you will!) it’s simply the only way to travel.
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