Backyard

Just recently I bought a new computer with a TV card and a decent video card, which I connected to my lounge room TV (via cables under the floor, it doesn’t dominated the lounge room at all). This is, as you can read in lots of places, one of the new frontiers!! “Harnessing your vast media library” blah, blah, blah.

I have been very aware that it has changed in lots of ways how I/we view and use our media “stuff”. We have watched many more slideshows of the family photos and videos etc as we can all share them on the family TV (proudly still a CRT but I am weakening) while sitting on the comfortable chairs and talking with each other. We have also watched “streamed broadcast TV programs” which we missed and forgot to record – I almost said “taped”- as well as the usual downloads. But today was just a little different …….

I was reading Alan Ramsay in today’s SMH (one of my favourite print columnists) in a typical piece on great leaders and their ability with words as he reflected on the current reaction to Barak Obama. Alan quoted extensively from a speech the “unknown” Obama made at the Democratic Convention in 2004 as a keynote for John Kerry. I read the quotes, which were 80% of the article,  with great interest and Alan’s reflections on Australian leaders.

THEN … I simply browsed to Youtube and, sitting in the same chair, watched it, on my TV while I was reading the paper in the same chair!!

It really made me think about accessing sources, literacy and the part played by both types of media in my experience and understanding (besides feeling really cool)!

As I often say these days: “I’m not really sure exactly what is happening in this world in which I live but, deep down, I just know it is different in a way that is fundamental”