How best to fit technology into our lives? Part 2

Last week I put up a post about how we fit technology into our lives, see here. By which I meant how we physically fit technology into our homes, when we use it and how we use it with others. This thinking was kick-started by having to reorganise my own home as my wife is expecting our first child.

This week I've been reclaiming the spare room, which for many years has been a general dumping ground for all and sundry. One unexpected side effect of this was that I had to get rid of the only remaining desktop PC in the house. This large silver tower has been largely unused for a couple of years now. As more-and-more powerful laptops entered the house, it became increasingly sidelined; eventually becoming little more than a very powerful games console.

Now, PC gaming certainly still has its place in my heart. A few years back I would have said this was due to needing a keyboard and mouse to play games properly, but my tastes have changed and now I'm happier playing most games using a joypad while sitting on a sofa. No bad thing as current high-profile game releases seem to be more-and-more aimed at console gamers, as the furore surrounding the lack of PC specific features in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has demonstrated.

It's still arguable that PC games have more depth, and the lack of platform holders like Sony or Nintendo certainly helps free developer's creativity. For me, though, the decision is largely one of comfort. I spend my whole day sitting at a desk, surrounded by monitors, using a keyboard and mouse; and so don't want to continue with the same physical posture when I get home.

With gaming now moved across to the media centre PC, more on that next week, and various games consoles, there was little reason left to mourn the loss of our last desktop. I will miss it somewhat, though, as it was easy and inexpensive to upgrade, plus having a big monitor is useful, and occasionally essential. Because of this I've kept the screen, so I can break it out and attach it to a laptop on the odd occasion I want to do some video editing. I was considering wall-mounting it at the end of the dining room table, but this apparently broke some unwritten rule of polite living in the mind of my wife, so it's tucked in a cupboard now.

One thing I won't miss about the desktop PC is that feeling of being placed out of the way in the least prepossessing room of the house. Ever since people have had home computers, they seem to have ended up in spare rooms, studies or 'dens'. Whatever you call it, you can be almost certain it's the smallest room in the house, quite likely to be the one with the least natural light, and entirely possibly the one that has never been properly decorated since you moved in.

This out-of-sight and out-of-mind situation certainly did neither PCs, nor their ardent supporters, any favours in terms of social reputation. The early home PCs, in their beige boxes with huge CRT monitors, probably didn't deserve any better treatment, aesthetically speaking at least. But it seems that once a particular activity has been assigned a specific room, then it's very hard to change, and so PCs have stayed in the spare room for decades.

Thankfully, the laptop has come to our rescue. Originally intended as a portable working device for businessmen on the go, there are now millions of such computers which rarely travel further than from the lounge to the kitchen table and maybe occasionally make the long haul upstairs to a bedroom. The distances may not be great, but the flexibility is still incredibly liberating. You can work from home on the kitchen table, browse for a movie review without leaving the sofa and even hook up your laptop to your TV to watch online TV content as a family.

At my mum's house I regularly see two or three laptops clustered on the dining room table, as everyone now has their own computer. It's amazing to think that in the last thirty years - a comparatively short a space of time - we've gone from the idea of a small number of enthusiasts owning 'Personal Computers' to every member of my immediate family having their own, truly personal, computer.

Of course this may only be common in wealthy westernised countries, but even then the power consumption and resource consumption of all these millions of personal computers, is certainly a concern. But unlike cheap commercial air travel, or eating meat as part of every meal, I think that the open and immediate access to the wealth of communication and knowledge that the internet provides is certainly something that's worth paying a hefty price for.