The Attack of the Remote Control (and the triple w dot)

The other night, I was slouching again in front of my TV and watching Sex and the City - again - when I turned on my air cooler through its remote. As I clicked on one button, my DVD stopped and got me back to the root menu. I threw the cooler's remote control as if it was some sort of exorcised paraphernalia. I got it back again and pushed the "swing" button. My DVD ejected the disc. I stopped and gasped, I am attacked by my remote controls.

As we get more and more digital, I keep on wondering, is it really making things easier? Or are we making things more complicated?

I only have three remote controls at home. One for my TV, one for the DVD and one for my cooler. That is so simple. One is for the other and vice versa. But in that weird occurence, I have realized that apparently, my remote control for the cooler has some kind of intergalactic connection with my DVD player.

They sum it up in one scientific term called Infrared enabled items which somehow just link to each other. But you see, remote controls are supposed to help me out when I don't want to stand up from my bed and just feel the need to click the button for my convenience. It was not made to freak people out.

The digital world has been evolving in a crazy way. Being in a gadgets industry, everything is so fast paced. I launch new set of cameras almost bi-annually. In a span of so-so months, megapixel goes higher and higher and the Japanese always think of some ways to innovate. Cellphones have become multifunction, people share their photos online, friends get to know about their friends through Facebook or Friendster or Multiply. Seriously, do we really NEED all this?

This world has become so entangled with the world wide web. I say, we are entangled in its mess. Right now, I am writing in Notepad because I cannot get to have my Explorer going since some goddamn Antivirus Master (it is actually REALLY a virus, so guys beware!) keeps on reconfiguring my cookie settings. And this is pissing me off. Just this morning, my boss was sharing to me that her niece, who was nine years old, was swearing to her friends in Multiply, saying the F word. And she is really bothered. Is it allowed to do that? Toy with people's emotions?

Has the WWW. made things easier? I bet it did. Have the remote controls done their part to deliver convenience? You bet! Now, you dont have to crunch youself to yanking the 12-point dial of your TV. And channels go to up to a hundred.

But sadly, as all stories go, there is always the other side of the coin. And that is I say, when the remote controls begin to attack.