Transparent technology
by Dean Lozovitsky
There"s no stopping an idea/product whose time has come: the Palm Pilot, the Russian Mob, reality TV, satellite radio and, let"s not forget, SUVs in our era of global warming and petrodollar supported terror. OK, OK, maybe the Palm and satellite radio are the only items that belong on that list. The Russians, reality TV and SUVs beset us, like locusts or plague. The good news, I promise you, is that you will never have to turn the (conventional) radio on in your car again, ever. That, one day at a time, you will 12-step your way out of America"s passive addiction to really bad radio. Technology is supposed to enhance our lives; the mark of an evolved technology is that it is transparent, so easy to use that we"re unaware of it. Conventional radio would certainly qualify. But technology simply brings the content to the listener, and few would argue that the bilge that pours out of the radio, over the floorboards and seat wells and into our brains is life enhancing. In fact, unpublished studies have shown that regular exposure to radio turns well-behaved Republican children into tattooed "n" pierced thug wannabes and increases the incidence of bisexuality in certain key consumer groups while also causing their SAT scores to trend downward. Bummer, man! Fight the power! Satellite radio is the coolest new entertainment option this year - and the best value, yielding a thermonuclear bang for your buck. A space-based platform beams 100 channels of commercial-free radio to your car, house, boat or aircraft, eradicating your involvement with conventional radio. Literal audio manna from heaven. The choices of programming are so rich that in my two-week trial, I never got past the swing channel, the blues channel, the reggae channel and C-Span. What a relief to have in-depth news besides whiney old NPR. Of course, they offer NPR and the BBC and ABC along with tons of talk radio, sports and comedy. And the music! I am a music snob from the lower depths and can always find flaws with CDs, artists, shows and even the music I love. So it was with that familiar sense of impending disappointment that I got in my ride, powered up the unit and began to drive north to Castleton. It was a cold, foul December day; if you called the scenery monochromatic, you"d make it too interesting. On my suburban sprawl mission, I went right to the blues channel, ready to be burned. Wrong! In my brief trip I heard music from Muddy Waters, Robert Cray, Tom Waits, Pinetop Perkins and Lighting Hopkins. For blues fans, it doesn"t get any better than this. Randomly, I scanned and got Steve Martin doing stand-up on a comedy channel. The point is that I found myself looking forward to such trips, regardless of how skanky the outing, almost hoping for traffic jams because of the quality and variety of the music I was hearing. Running to the neighborhood Walgreens to get toothpaste, a brief, meaningless trip, I heard "Sheena is a Punk Rocker" by the Ramones. The satellite service I was using (there are two), Sirius - pronounced "serious" - provided an unrivaled musical experience. No commercials; low-keyed, knowledgeable jocks; unbelievable programming. Sirius delivers the musical universe promised by the Internet but not delivered, 24/7 and coast-to-coast, all the formats, all the genres. No downloads, copyright infringement or 8-bit nonsense, no screwing around with CDs or MP3s, always ready to go and each channel programmed by music fiends who love what they do. The cost is nominal as well, $149 for an entry-level unit that adapts your car"s existing radio to Sirius, plus $10 a month for the service. Quality of life is what this is all about; where else can you spend so little money and get such a dramatic improvement in the time you spend in your car? You can"t. A quick count showed 10 rock channels, from metal through three channels of alternative, to stadium, classic and snooze rock. An electronica channel, another for trance and drums "n" bass. Six jazz options, including the aforementioned swing, which I never left after I found it. There"s something about cruising the cityscape with a fresh Billie Holliday track coming down from space, with the luminescent display flashing "Billie Holliday" as the night goes by your windows. Title of the song, album and genre can also be displayed. Transparent technology. And on that note, my mom (noted technophobe) is getting a unit for X-mas.
Thanks to everyone at H. H. Gregg for providing everything for the demo and being so helpful and accommodating.
