Inside Nokia Music

I don’t know how anything works.
There, I said it.
Technology is something I use every hour of every day – I would frankly be lost in a sea of utter pointlessness if it didn’t exist – but I really don’t know how any of it actually works.
I mean, OK, I understand the vague overall concepts of binary, electricity, light and sound, but getting me to explain how stuff like computers, phones, mp3 players and televisions work using those concepts would be like asking a bluebottle to explain the finer points of Euclidean geometry. The very best it could do would be to vomit on a piece of rotting meat, then suck up the resulting, semi-digested, viscous fluid through its proboscis, which you’d have to agree, probably isn’t the most full and accurate of explanations.
The thing is, I don’t think the vast majority of us are meant to know how these things work. Our brains don’t operate that way. Just look at the way people act on planes. It’s easier and much less distressing just to switch off the part of your brain that whispers in a panicked voice, “Heavy. This thing’s really heavy. How the hell is it staying in the air?” and just enjoy the pretty, pretty clouds. Look, that one’s shaped like dumb ignorance. Beautiful.
The thing is, the way I feel about technology is, I reckon, the way the vast majority of people feel about music. It’s everywhere. It’s essential to our lives. We love it, and our existence would be infinitely less interesting if it didn’t exist. But we don’t know how it works. And thinking about the mechanics of it leaves us cold.
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