Geekdom: A World of Multiples

We live in a land of multiples. In the post-modern computer era, geeks were happy with their trusty old computer and a 56k dial-up modem. And for most households, that’s all that was available to them. And not all families and households had one. In fact, there was a time when if you had a computer, you were privileged. And if you had internet access, it was even more of a privilege.

For around the last 5 years, we have acquired more and more gadgets than we ever require. It’s not unusual for households to have multiple desktops and probably a couple of notebooks. Some households even have multiple options for web connectivity, DSL and Wi-Fi. And each family member most likely possessing a cell phone also. And that’s not even considering all the other personal gadgetry equipment that we all have, MP3 players, personal media players etc. When I read stories of some people having or getting severe cases of technology or internet addiction, I can seriously believe it. Because it is not an easy thing to just drop what you are doing and forget about all thing technology related, because we’re constantly surrounded by it. No matter where we go or what we do.

The above is all obvious and something you probably already know and just accept as the normal. Because it has now become what is considered normal. But something that you may not have thought about is also having multiple services of the same type. I mean multiple email addresses, multiple operating systems and multiple software applications.

I know I have many different email addresses all used for different work and different projects. I also have multiple operating systems that I use and have multiple software applications that do the same thing. I have just learned to accept and adapt to having multiples of everything readily available at my fingertips.

But this is not necessarily a bad thing as it can almost guarantee that you are capable of the task at hand. It’s a great feeling when you get a task and you just know before you’ve even started that you can do it, because you already have software X or software Y installed. And software Z will probably also do the job. When you look at your own software application menu in your own operating system, you’ll see what I mean. Web browsers are always a good example to start with, as most of us have more than one browser installed on our system. I have Firefox and Chromium. Do I need two web browsers installed? Probably not. Do I want two web browsers installed? Yes I do. Because it’s what I am used to and what I like having readily available to me when I do want to use a different browser for A B or C task.

Put the above into perspective and we can appreciate our systems of 2012 which are more than capable with 4GHz+ CPU’s, 4GB+ of RAM and well over 1TB hard drives. Just for a second, think back of the systems of the early to mid-80‘s and think how the system would run with all the services that we run on today’s systems. And I’m sure it will make you appreciate what you have today even more than what you did yesterday.