Tech finds a groove
The Technology sector has a reputation for inflexibility, rigid adherence to working formulae. Rarely is this more apparent than in design. Hard chrome and flat steel saturate the industry, giving a cold, sterile impression to prospective consumers.
But
Tech needn’t be so unbending. In fact, it has a fun side, a groovy side, a floppy side. And to further illustrate this point (that I’ve decided to make because I’m bored) are a trio of floppy technologies that have helped shape the industry into something that bit more... whimsical!
3. Floppy Keyboards
Virtually weightless. Water resistant. Foldable. Unbreakable! The floppy (typically rubber) keyboard is for the PC user on the move. Nothing makes you feel like a super-sleuth or a ninja hacker extraordinaire like whipping a damn
keyboard out your coat pocket, plugging it in and getting to business!
Despite a long teething period while your fingers adjust to the smooth yielding rubber, with the meteoric rise (meteors do that sometimes!) of the ever shrinking
Netbook, inbuilt keyboards are frankly getting too damn small!
Floppy keyboards help one’s digits feel adequate again...
2. Floppy Tellies
OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode)
Familiarize yourselves with this acronym because it’s going to be one of 2012’s buzzwords.
Like
Revengeance. And, ahem,
clickonline...
Slapping a layer of organic compound between one or more transparent electrodes, the former responds to assorted electrical currents via the emission of light.
And for the general consumer, Light < or = Telly!
Sony in particular have been experimenting with this tech, developing fully malleable, bendable screens. With contrast ratios in excess of 1000000:1, in May 2007
Sony debuted a 2.5” flexible OLED of 0.3mm thickness. A year later they more than quadrupled that with a 0.3mm thick 11” display and a resolution of 960x540p.
And that was four whole years ago. Not long for a human or a
turtle (they seriously live forever) but practically generations in the tech industry!
Save up enough green in 2012 and you’ll likely find a 40+” HD telly that can be rolled up, put into a poster tube, brought to a mates house and used to make their 18” 200lb audio-visual monstrosity feel inadequate and obsolete!
1. Floppy Disks
The original and best, the floppy stands accused of confusing innumerable early PC users, as it was neither floppy nor disk shaped!!!
Composed of a thin, flexible magnetic storage medium sealed in rectangular plastic, for three decades the Floppy Disk (specifically 3.5”) was the omnipresent storage and transfer method used in any computer. In 1996, there were an estimated five billion floppy disks in use. That’s almost one for every human on the planet.
Certainly every turtle...
Eventually replaced by the likes of
Zipdisk,
CD-ROM,
LANs and
USB devices,
the Floppy Disk retains its title as the most amusingly named storage system in recent memory.