By Tony Hallett, 22 August 2006 11:35
COMMENT
I was watching a programme last night - and let me say upfront that I was tired out, lying on the sofa, too lazy even to reach out and change channel. It was called Decoding Da Vinci, an investigation on Channel 4 by a journalist called Dan Rivers into some of the conspiracy theories and organisations at the heart of the novel The Da Vinci Code (which is now the best selling novel ever, believe it or not).
Now I'm not a huge fan of the book/film, nor did I really have a high opinion of the Rivers' approach. But what did hit home was one of his tactics for researching some of the subject matter.
He'd be standing in the crypt of a church or wandering around somewhere, and say something like: "I wonder what the internet has to say about the Knights Templar."
We didn't get the usual cut to the next scene in his documentary or some dodgy graphics. Instead, he'd turn to his laptop and perform a search using Google. (Not 'google Knights Templar'.)
Now plenty of us do this type of thing all the time. The brands involved don't much matter. He used an HP laptop, a Vodafone 3G datacard (I think) and Google. I might have used Toshiba, Orange and Yahoo!. In fact I would have.
But the fact this sort of thing is so ordinary now, ordinary in the sense that it's reliable enough for this guy to work this way, is significant.
We're getting to the stage where mobile working isn't just possible, it's easy. I realise there will always be places where a 3G or wi-fi signal isn't available but for millions of people (including those living in Milton Keynes who will shortly get WiMax too), it is now. And it's even made its way onto camera.
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1. Richard
An even better use of technology:
I “read” the book thanks to an innovative pilot project by the UK National Library for the Blind.
The NLB had used a computer synthesized voice to convert the text file into speech, to produce a CD in MP3/DAISY format.
The enjoyable result was not spoilt by classic conversion errors:
- The American synthetic voice garbled all “foreign” words & names. (This book has lots!)
- The voice was very sensitive to any punctuation errors.
- The voice wrongly expanded some “abbreviations.”
eg. “...the Bishop went to bed after mass.” Was read as “...the bishop went to bed after Massachusetts.”
Also, “St. James Street” was read as “Street James Street”
etc. etc.
However, it was a thoroughly good use of technology!