It's Alive!

An unassuming packet arrived at my door this morning, I had been waiting for it, not knowing what it was. It was a mystery present apparently, from my family back home. Opening it up, my suspicions were correct, it was the best flavour Pi comes in. Who knew that the love-child of a mathematical constant and a rather tasty berry would get me so excited? Anyway, this low powered, credit card sized and unassuming board will hopefully propel me to Maurice Moss level 9001. My lofty goal aside, the Raspberry Pi is a cool but almost useless piece of equipment. It's value is not in its ability to chomp through numbers or rearrange files but in its ability to polarise a group of people and inspire them to do something. If Steve Jobs taught us anything its that selling a piece of fruit is easier than selling a FG8950HD-lt. Get the mix right and you have a grass-roots project that snowballs into a great success. The purpose of the raspberry pi is not to be objectively good (although it is for its price), it's to be something that is interesting for anyone, stimulates curiosity and in some circles at least, be cool.

I digress, the Raspberry Pi did get me excited like a small child, as I hunted around for the right keyboard and hdmi lead. The reality is that its a slow computer with a tiny SD card, in my head though, its a Pandora's box of nerdy things to do. Here's a few:

• Turn it into a web server
• Run Quake 3
• Run Quake 3 in a LAN with other similarly nerdy friends
• Turn it into a sensor station
• Turn it into a sensor station with an ability to interact with things (like turn on my radiator remotely)
• Turn it into a sensor station with a full artificial intelligence then put it outside to get struck by lightning and become self aware, calling itself Jonny 5 and going on many adventures with its socially inept master/friend. 

Sorry got a little carried away there... (although I think that's the point)

In the Slick Stream of Giants

Our world is obsessed with progress, and its easy to see why. I love progress too, its exciting and promises a better life. I'd love that new tablet that cool looking tablet that's coming out in three years, my current one is now inadequate by the very expectation of the shiny new one. I seem to forget that one day I will end my love affair with that new tablet, as I have done with my current one. But it's okay, technology doesn't hate me for it, and the industry rubs its hands in delight. When I look back at my intense excitement for a laptop with a full 64MB of RAM, I am reminded by the futility of this circle of desire. But unless it stops you ever being content as it can do, it's actually one of the better aspects of capitalist consumerism. Nothing else can drive progress to such a degree. With that obvious exception of the vicious circle of discontent, progress is still great. We are born into a world with a certain level of technology: this is our baseline minimum. The newborn don't appreciate the progress of history, only what they can perceive from their baseline. If progress stopped, we would become restless and bored by the lack of it.

Occasionally though we can break the cycle. Because there is only desire for the latest and the greatest, yesterdays technology can be produced very cheaply. For example the Raspberry Pi, with only a 700MHz processor and 256MB of ram, its quite pitiful compared even to my humble desktop. However, at only £16 (or £22 for a slightly better one) it is a bargain for something that would have been considered a supercomputer compared to my first laptop. So paradoxically, the way to be rewarded by consumerism, is to defy it.