Dreams for the next 100 years
Over the weekend, I bit the bullet and bought a pair of really good speakers by KEF - the iQ70 series. As I listened to them, for the last couple of days, I realised something that is, quite obvious, yet, goes unnoticed all the time. I wanted to show my parents how great this new set of speakers were. Even with all the advances in science and technology, I could not really convey how great the speakers sounded. It occured to me that there is no way to share experiences unless we share similar quality equipment. You could record video in HD, with a RED camera, but unless the person seeing it uses equally high quality display, there is no way, he/she is going to get the same experience you had. To some extent we have, acheived parity in display quality, and hence can convey images and video without losing much of the experience. However we are nowhere near ubiquitous when it comes to sound. Other factors like touch, thermal state, smell etc and completely beyond our prowess to express. However, we must pat ourselves in the back a little, coz in a matter of decades we’ve gone from a select few being able to communicate across great distances to several million all at once, in a matter of decades. ...