In our worldly conversations, which could vary from the buoying markets to French cinema to organizational behavior as a management subject, we end up more often than not, discussing some consumerist trends.
One such topic is ‘Entertainment’ and all its forms. Let me not even remind you of the bygone era of physical purchases of cassettes, VCDS and later the CDs and DVDs of movies, songs or games, which now are all just a click away. A general inference of this observation is that this is the ‘NOW! Generation’. We are spoiled with low turnaround times. Effect has to instantaneous. Truer it is for the Junta or the cool youth of today – restless, impatient, fickle minded also – they have almost none or very little time to decide between you and the product stacked next to yours. Just take a look at some of products today – fairness or clear skin (or whatever the products are promising) is delivered in just 24 hours or less (yes and we aren’t even talking 30mins nahi toh free kind of products); imagine talking about 7 days to get the desired effect – now that has become ANCIENT DUDE (says my 14year old brother).
Whose Hard disk is this dude?
Entertainment – back to the point. My observation was regarding the methods of storing entertainment. Honestly it was just regarding the number of hard disks that the last five guys that I discussed movies with possessed. Two at the least, varying from 500GBs to 2Tbs. Digital storage had become an important aspect of our lifestyle. Just like the cell phone which started as a luxury and turned into a necessity, the hard disk has successfully integrated itself with our lives. From storing those very important movies, each and every song that we could fit in there, all the special pics of special memories of the fantaboulous places to where I have been to. Guesses as to why has this piece of equipment has gained mass traction lately in our lives opens another insight – creation and geometrical explosion of digital data. Shifts in our working environment, into a digitized version of all our work (we thumb scan our way into office and create massive 200 slides of strategies till we thumb scan our way out again). Even the way education has adopted digitization – beginning at school project level to college presentations and dissertations submitted in ‘soft copies’ – digitization has now become the new lifestyle of data management.
My beloved hard disk is simply a by-product of this need to store data. It is just a simple pawn in the larger game plan of digital data. So welcome to the age of digital information and online living; and as Western Digital has correctly named its portable Hard Disk, the little assembly of chips and circuits could well be your PASSPORT to the digital future (‘My Passport’ is the name of the HD offered by Western Digital).