Almost thirty years ago I won a hefty bet over the likely movement of interest rates with my boss. He coughed up the money and I went off to buy something called a CD player. The talk at the time was that the compact disc (CD) was going to be the next big thing in music and that the days of the vinyl record were limited. The audio fundis said that they had never heard anything so ridiculous and warned that CD’s offered a cold, manufactured sound compared to the warmth of vinyl. And who was going to buy a CD in its horrible little plastic box when you could get a fabulously designed album cover with sleeve notes and beautifully printed inserts? Who indeed?

It wasn’t easy to buy CD’s to play when I bought my first CD player because most people still bought long playing records. But within a few years records had virtually become extinct and what had been known as Hillbrow Records (a regular Sunday afternoon haunt in the days when no shops were open on a Sunday in SA) gradually morphed into something called the CD Wherehouse and moved from Hillbrow to Rosebank. It seemed that the music buying public were prepared to put up with the “cold, manufactured” sound of a CD in exchange for the convenience of not having to get up to flip a scratchy record every twenty minutes. Although, as I remind younger friends today, there was something special about attempting to seduce a girlfriend with a record playing in the background. If you hadn’t got her bra off by the end of the first side when the needle started clicking in the final groove you definitely needed to up your seduction game. That’s why the swinging sixties were the age of free love. There was an urgency about getting laid. If you’ve got three weeks of continual music loaded on to your iPod one or other or both parties are likely to doze off at some stage. Now CD’s are rapidly being replaced by direct downloads as a means of distributing music. A lot has happened in 30 years.

Remember when you were worried about running out of film on holiday? Or you had to miss a few shots of a spectacular sunset because you only had 8 of the 36 frames left. And then you had to get home, take the film in to be developed and printed and collect it a few hours later (it used to take a week) only to discover that the camera flap had got in the way of the otherwise perfectly exposed shot of a couple of leopards mating? Then along came the digital camera. The photographers at the Sunday Times didn’t think that the digital camera had much of a future initially and resolutely stuck to the film format which was what real professionals used. A few years later and you are hard pressed to find a professional photographer who isn’t using a digital camera. The capacity of a memory card banishes all fears of running out of film or having to stop and reload while the winning goal is scored. The photographer can immediately see what the shot looks like and computer programmes are much easier ways of finessing a shot than a dark room and lots of chemicals. The major advantage though is that the photograph I took five minutes ago can be sent anywhere in the world via the internet. How many shops do you see selling film these days?


We are immensely privileged to live in these times. The Industrial Revolution in the 19th century changed the world forever by introducing the steam engine and mechanized production which moved countries like England from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy. However the pace of change in those times was positively snail like compared with developments today.

Last week, the master of media hype Steve Jobs presented the Apple iPad rather as Moses presented the tablets containing the ten commandments. The initial reaction has been lukewarm but once the iPad hits the stores I think that might change. Next years’s version will undoubtedly be better and have more applications but that isn’t going to stop many tech fans buying this model. Within a few years you will be reading the Richmark Sentinel on a hand held tablet screen. One that adds less than a kilogram to your luggage. The newspapers you will subscribe to at a fraction of the cost of the printed edition will be accessible immediately and instead of looking at a photograph accompanying a front page story you will watch a video clip supporting the story. If you prefer, the story can be read to you in one of any number of accents. If you’re in France and have downloaded Le Monde but can’t read French then the iPad of the future will translate the paper into English. Want to do the crossword like you used to in the days of newspapers? An electronic stylus will allow you to fill in the clues but you won’t have to wait until tomorrow for the answers.

Once you’ve finished with your daily news consumption you will be able to talk to friends all over the world face to face on the screen. You’ll be able to do everything that an iPhone and an iPod can do and more. The long battery life will allow you to choose from any of 1500 pre loaded books on a long airflight or a selection of 500 movies. Your personal headphones will eliminate outside noise and 3D spectacles will make the iPad movie that much more realistic.

Personally I can’t wait to clear out all those books I will probably never read again and the space invading DVD’s I may watch occasionally in exchange for an iPad with the electronic equivalent installed. I don’t get misty eyed about handling a newspaper any more than I get misty eyed about playing a record. The new technology is so vastly superior that being a Luddite is not an option. Oh brave new world.