Picture Phones
Picture Phones
The Luddite has already talked about cel phones in an earlier piece. Now he is going to talk about their bastard cousins, picture phones.
The appeal of the picture phone is apparently to send pictures to people of something you are actually looking at while you are talking to them, instead of simply describing it. Yeah, The Luddite doesn’t get it either.
There is a drawback to the picture phone, but The Luddite doesn’t know what it is. There must be. There are drawbacks with everything else. He doesn’t know how much power they use or what a low battery might do to its picture-taking or sending qualities. Also, he doesn’t know how much longer you have to stay on the phone while transmitting one of these things.
Since Mrs. Luddite is ramrodding a camera lab and bringing her considerable artistic talents to printmaking, she has had a lot of experience with the quality of the pictures taken by these phones, especially when people bring in the little digital chip to have prints made. The Luddite can safely say that the quality of the pictures these things take really sucks, so much so that it would be easier and probably more economical just to describe on the phone what you are looking at.
This would eliminate the dreaded Slide Show, which seems to happen after every vacation, but other than that, The Luddite sees no advantage in it.
The people on vacation have this weird idea that other people actually want to see what they are looking at. Between you and I, they don’t. They want to BE on vacation, not look at pictures from someone else’s.
But that is getting a bit off the track. The Luddite also has heard that, like paying for video games by phone, the telephone company charges you extra each time each time you use these things to send a picture to someone. This is only fair, since The Luddite can’t imagine them doing it for free, but The Luddite cannot see what you are gaining by taking a picture with a phone. You get charged twice. Why not just take the shot with a camera, pay for the printing and to hell with the phone company. Doing it the other way seems like another expense, like going on vacation with TWO spare tires.
The Luddite has already talked about cel phones in an earlier piece. Now he is going to talk about their bastard cousins, picture phones.
The appeal of the picture phone is apparently to send pictures to people of something you are actually looking at while you are talking to them, instead of simply describing it. Yeah, The Luddite doesn’t get it either.
There is a drawback to the picture phone, but The Luddite doesn’t know what it is. There must be. There are drawbacks with everything else. He doesn’t know how much power they use or what a low battery might do to its picture-taking or sending qualities. Also, he doesn’t know how much longer you have to stay on the phone while transmitting one of these things.
Since Mrs. Luddite is ramrodding a camera lab and bringing her considerable artistic talents to printmaking, she has had a lot of experience with the quality of the pictures taken by these phones, especially when people bring in the little digital chip to have prints made. The Luddite can safely say that the quality of the pictures these things take really sucks, so much so that it would be easier and probably more economical just to describe on the phone what you are looking at.
This would eliminate the dreaded Slide Show, which seems to happen after every vacation, but other than that, The Luddite sees no advantage in it.
The people on vacation have this weird idea that other people actually want to see what they are looking at. Between you and I, they don’t. They want to BE on vacation, not look at pictures from someone else’s.
But that is getting a bit off the track. The Luddite also has heard that, like paying for video games by phone, the telephone company charges you extra each time each time you use these things to send a picture to someone. This is only fair, since The Luddite can’t imagine them doing it for free, but The Luddite cannot see what you are gaining by taking a picture with a phone. You get charged twice. Why not just take the shot with a camera, pay for the printing and to hell with the phone company. Doing it the other way seems like another expense, like going on vacation with TWO spare tires.
posted by S. Olson at 9:56 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home