No argument at all.
Speaing personally, I never got the hang of them (although, I must concede that TV was never a large part of my life); I could see the convenience, but, to be honest, it was never an unthinking part of my life. (And, 'unthinking' is the level of ease that was needed, but was never offered, by that technology. Not unless you were ten years of age; an utterly sober when you thought to try to programme this infernally complicated piece of equipment).
If you're talking about programming VCRs, I'll say this:
I'm allegedly pretty tech savvy. I grew up surrounded by computers and electronics. They've been a part of my life for as long as I remember. But I've only ever programmed a VCR once, and it wasn't an easy thing to do.
To spare my ego, I convinced myself it was always 12:00 at all times. 24 hours a day, every day, 7 days a week, it was noon or midnight. Nothing else but.
Needless to say, I was always fashionably late for everything. School. Work. Dates. Court hearings...
Sure, CD-Rs, (and , indeed, some time later, CD-RWs) were not all that far away - I remember being awestruck when they came out. And I recall my stupefied astonishment - and yes, awe - when I was shown a USB stick in Belarus, (and how to use it) by a colleague, a fellow observer, during an appalling election around a decade ago, and being enormously impressed by the technology and the sheer size of this ultra portable device.... And then, the challenge of tracking them down when I returned home, and being stunned at the prices charged. And willingly paying them, for the convenience and size
.
Same here. I've seen a CD press in action before. The fact that the technology had reached the point that this little device that I could hold in one hand, one that looked and acted exactly like any other optical drive, could replicate a job (though not in exactly the same way) that once took a fairly good sized machine to do absolutely blew my mind.
I thought the same thing about the iPhone when I first laid eyes on it. I had seen plenty of smartphones up to that point, but even the best of the best struck me as nothing more than a glorified digital notepad. Some of them were powerful enough to play Snake on. Neat, certainly. But nothing that drove me to enviousness and covetousness.
But the iPhone? It was a small computer you could fit in your pocket, capable of doing lighter versions of tasks you'd normally associate with a full sized PC. The moment I saw it, I was piqued. When the iPhone 4 came out with it's high res screen, I had to have one.
When I think about it, it's the miniaturization of technology that impresses me the most. When something isn't just capable, but capable and efficient.
...though the tragedy of it all is, as impressed as I was by it, I've kinda come to hate my iPhone. Because of it, I'm always getting calls and texts, usually at the worst possible times. Damn people.
