Thoughts on the Imminent Xbox

The new Xbox is set to be announced tomorrow. Or today I guess, as it is in the United States that things will take place. But it is tomorrow for us, at 3:00 a.m. Microsoft is set to announce what can only be the latest generation of their gaming console; and I am pumped!

It is odd to realise that a central part of my entertainment is still being provided by a piece of tech that is around 8 years old. Eight years! Think about it; eight years ago, there was no such thing as an iPhone.

Sure, I guess now it is a sign of our times that we think new technology must be purchased the instant it debuts, and old technology shunted to the kerb; but 8 years seems a phenomenal time to still be using the same bit of tech.  Especially when you consider how much the experience has advanced over the years.

Just look at this comparison of Oblivion and Skyrim; same machine, same game series, wildly different experience.

Now, if I were to expect the same things of, say, my mobile phone, I would want my old 2005 era Nokia to be able to fill the boots of my current iPhone 4s. That means storing the whole discographies of my favourite bands, letting me watch my favourite shows and movies, connecting with family and friends, taking high definition photos, listening to voice commands and downloading thousands of amazing apps. Or at least instead offering me a fraction of this experience as the older Xbox did compared to the current.

Instead I would have been relying on this:

State of the art

Earlier today a couple of friends and I were musing over the difference that the console itself has gone through over its almost decade on this earth. There were the ugly ‘blades’ that were out gateway to the Xbox dashboard, or its initial inability to play media stored on an external hard drive (or even in such common formats as avi or xvid).

Check out the theme; so mid-2000's

Its older than Facebook, than Youtube (pretty much), and than Android.

Whats more mind bending from my point of view is its older than my son! Hell, its even older than my career (if you can call it that). 8 years ago, when it was finally time to upgrade from my humble old Xbox to the newly released Xbox 360, life was very different for me. For starters I had to scrape together money and ask for my mums help in being able to afford the thing! At least now I wont have to do that. Instead I will scrape together money and get my wife's help in budgeting this into our family’s expenses. Oh times how they change.

Debt remains debt it appears.

There was no financial crisis when Xbox 360 appeared. Few people could tell you what sub-prime even meant, and if pushed, I would have grasped at straws by mentioning Autobot hierarchy.

I guess as a lesser Prime he could be considered a 'sub-prime'...

There was a lot of hype around the new console, it managed to live up to much of its potential, but other parts of the state of the art machine have long since lost their relevance. Has anyone seriously been buying faceplates for their machines over the years? I did’t think so.

Thought this one is certainly worth investing in

The wait seemed to go on forever. I remember receiving my hideous blue faceplate in the mail a week before the console itself arrived on our shores, as well as a DVD of gameplay, and videos showing what the graphical user interface would look like. Watching it over and over as I dreamt of the amazing future that included things like, wait for it, wireless controllers!

It is also worth pointing out that the console I finally obtained on that day isn’t the same one I have today, though it is practically the same beast. Us Aussies had to deal with the crap end of Microsoft's roll out, first of all having our machines delayed when demand exceeded supply, and those Xbox 360s which had been destined for the land down under were appropriated by other interests. Then to add salt to the wound, the machines we got were more prone to suffer death via red ring. I had paid an extra $50 for the ability to swap any malfunctioning equipment with EB Games, and it was a decision that more than paid for itself (though note literally of course).

Within a week of getting my Xbox, it was dead. I replaced it in a day, and all was well. Until two weeks later, when the red ring fairy visited again and shut me down once more. Luckily third time was the charm, and the machine that hums and expels copious amounts of heat into my living room today is the same one that replaced the second try all those years ago.

Repeat screenings available...

One last thought.

I know sometimes it can be tedious to hear parents relate all their experience through the prism of parenthood; but I cant help feel that this next transition from seventh generation console to eighth will be an amazing thing to watch my son go through. During the previous transition between Xboxes he went from two disjointed human cells, all the way up to a cogent, sentient awesome little man. 

With a god damn green belt!

I remember playing Oblivion while he sat in a bouncer next to me, struggling to tell the difference between the world around him, and the fingers at the end of his hand. I remember introducing him to the world of gaming, and watching as he marvelled at the ability to shape events happening on a television screen with the press of a button.

When he was only two years old I would tentatively play Grand Theft Auto 4 with him on my lap (ensuring I obeyed the speed rules and caused no pedestrian harm), and was amused when he berated me for not putting on a helmet while I drove my motorbike around Liberty City.

If we can expect the same useful life out of this next console, then it will be the year 2021 when we next have to fork out a large sum of money and send it Bill Gates way. My son would be 15 years old on that day, in Year Ten, and living in a world who's fads and pastimes haven’t even been invented yet. Most likely he will play games between then and now that in some way will shape his life, his growth and who knows what else. He will experience movies and television shows that will stay with him forever. Through this conduit so much of our culture and knowledge will be available to him, in a way to shape who he is; and the thought of that really gets me excited.

Bring it on Redmond!

MM

I’m Back

Oh my how it has been a busy past few weeks. Hell, a busy past month!

It has been far too long since I posted regularly on here, and for those few of you who enjoy reading my esoterically themed posts, I apologise. Indeed you can take my previous six-thousand word strong post as something of a compensation for this (I hope it wasn’t too long). But there has been a lot going on lately which explains this absence.

First, there was my favourite day of the year, St Patricks Day. Expect a post on this one soon or at least something outlining my maleficent love of Guinness, and my recent membership to the 100 pint club. Then there was my mates wedding, where I was one of the best men, and agonised over the prospect of doing a speech which apparently went down alright in the end, but about which I have little to no recollection of right now (not to mention the random singing of a Eurovision song as demanded by the father of the groom....). Then the Easter break came along, and a long weekend of caravan parking, and beer drinking, left me thoroughly off the radar on all accounts.

Oh and did I mention that in the midst of this I decided to take up a second job tutoring at university, have yet to figure out how this will work with my current full time job, and am still trying to convince my work that this will in some way offer positive benefits?

Anyhow, this is in part the reason for my absence, and I shall endeavour to rectify it as soon as possible. In the meantime, enjoy this random Hitchens quote and unrelated gif:

 “We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universes - one indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximum freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way” - Christopher Hitchens

Wednesday's Words - Week 1

Welcome to the first installment of my hopefully weekly Wednesdays Words. The basic aim here is to spur me on in my blogging with a weekly commitment, based around my thoughts of one of the weeks daily quotes supplied dutifully by my trusty desk calendar.
So then, here goes......

“When the time is right, the answers will come” – P.K. Shaw

I chose this inaugural quote out of the seven available to me this week not because I agree with it, but because of the rant which it inspired.
I am not a fan of this quote, as I don’t like mysterious agents being invoked that ensure everything will be ‘just fine’. To say that answers will come at some mystically appointed right time doesn’t gel with me as I don’t believe there is any all powerful being at work putting our lives together. To believe such a thing raises some seriously disturbing questions regarding people whose lives were lived in less than desirable circumstances.

Destiny either isn't real, or its indifferent

But I do see the benefits in getting people to be positive about the future, particularly when it comes to the uneasy fact that it is full of unknowns. However rather than invoking some predestined path set out for you in an uncertain future, I prefer to look at the possibilities inherent in this seemingly random future.
The late founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, once gave a commencement speech to a group of students beginning their tenure at university which I previously blogged on here. In it he goes over a similar concept to that which I have been discussing (unknown paths leading into the future), that I think really hits the nail on the head.
First a little background.
After officially dropping out of his university course, the young Steve Jobs decided to hang around campus for a bit and take part in things that he was previously unable to, due to course commitments. Reed College apparently had the best calligraphy instruction available in the United States at the time, and the beautifully scripted labels and posters around the college grounds piqued Jobs’ interest. He enrolled in the class and developed an appreciation for the importance of typography in graphical representation. His early exposure to things like font families, serif versus sans-serif and proportional spacing was something that Jobs would later draw upon when developing the early Apple computers, which were among the first personal computers to display text in anything other than a monospaced, generic font.

Yes that's right, its an apple.....

Jobs mentioned this in his address to those students’ years ago to help highlight the uncertainty of our future, but also the importance of what we are doing, and of not disregarding where we are just because we don’t know where it will take us. He summed up the crux of his argument in the closing statement of this portion of his speech.

“Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.”

You need to trust in something, not because there is something out there working for you (as in karma, destiny, gods, or whatever), but because in trusting that there is something out there for you, you are implicitly trusting in yourself. Jobs mentioned it himself when he says that such trust in the future gives you confidence, regardless of what you ground it in. I would go a step further and say it is better to place your trust in yourself, and your own faculties, rather than in some possibly existent third party.
Don’t just trust in the future because you believe it has been laid out before you; trust in yourself because you are the one who will actually do it!
If the future were fixed, if there was some destiny out there with Mathew James Morton written on it, I am not so sure I would want it. If there was something out there withholding the answers from me until the right time came along, I don’t think I would cheerfully take them when said time did arrive.
The enlightenment taught us that human agency was where we should place our bets, not on some higher power, whatever form it may take. Trusting in foreordained events and personal destinies was so widely believed in the past that in the event of a shipwreck, people would clamber over whomever stood between them and safety, believing that God had already decided who lived and who died.
Accepting human agency as the driving force in our lives means we don’t sit around waiting for answers; we go out and find them. We don’t wait to see where our path in life takes us; we walk boldly ahead in the unknown knowing that though our path isn’t part of some divine plan, it is nevertheless our path to make, and our privilege to forge it.
I am going to close this post with a quote which I may have already recently mentioned (though I can’t remember), but which all the same seems to fit well with the topic.

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” – Soren Kierkegaard

I hope that you enjoyed this first installment of Wednesdays Words. I think it went quite well, but I have the niggling thought at the back of my mind that this is a somewhat lame attempt at regularity.
Please let me know what you think in the comments; I crave your approval!
MM