Addiction

In 1994 I got my first Mac. It was a little thing that sat in the corner of the lounge. I got it after visiting a friend who's just got this new thing called the internet. I'd been round to her house, and we had a drink or five while chatting to strangers around the world on IRC. I was hooked. I went home and less than a week later I'd bought the Mac and gone online. I spent most of my free time getting to know people on IRC. It was amazing, this new technology. I was addicted.

I can't remember when my IRC addiction died, but it probably coincided with this new thing called Napster which I discovered around 1999. It was amazing. I suddenly discovered that I could download free music and save it on my computer. I spent hours and hours scouring for collections of singles and albums. Sadly, a lot of them were Kylie Minogue remixes, but regardless of musical taste it was bloody good fun. And free. Amazing. Welcome to my latest addiction. With an ever growing collection of MP3s on my Mac, I started to wish that there was something like a Walkman that would play them on the road. A trip to Argos told me that there were a few overpriced underspecced players on the marker so I never took the plunge.

Until Apple introduced this thing called iTunes, which was quickly followed by the iPod. My world changed. Physical media became a thing of the past and I spend hours and hours converting my existing CD library into MP3s to playback in iTunes and on the new iPod thing.

Around this time a site in Russia caught my attention; Allofmp3.com. What a gem. You credited your account with a few dollars, and could buy loads of music. Suddenly I was downloading music again like a man possessed. I bought entire back catalogues of artists work for mere dollars. It was ... addictive. The authorities soon caught on and the credit card companies refused to fund the site, so it died.

A few years later, along came Facebook, the slightly popular social networking site. Someone at work introduced me to it. I wasn't sure what to do on it but it was still addictive. Welcome to the next addiction: Facebook.

As it grew in popularity, I became more addicted, with all those apps about werewolves and vampires biting each other. Hilarious. (well, it was at the time).

A freelancer at work one week introduced me to newsgroups as a way of getting TV shows from the US. Bing! A new addiction. Or at least a variation of a previous one... downloading Music, TV shows and movies. Day in, day out. My Broadband provider (BT) eventually noticed that I was downloading on average about 20-30Gb a day! They capped my speed, which was (for an addict) the most disastrous thing that had ever happened to me! My fix of endless TV collections was being stunted. I learned moderation. Kind of. And eventually my full speed was returned to me.

Then Apple (again) introduced the AppleTV and movies and TV shows became available in iTunes. I realised I wasn't even buying DVDs anymore. When Apple TV introduced HD TV shows, that was it... I was downloading an episode a day. I may not have been watching an episode a day but I was downloading them. Addicted!

Then came along the iPhone. I could surf, download music, watch TV shows all on this little phone thing. Then along came the App Store. Addicted!

Twitter. Addicted. Nuff said. Still am. It'll wear off, I know. Something else will come along. Dunno what yet, but I know it will.

Now the latest thing for me is Last.fm. Addicted. It's combining everything; social networking, and discovering new music. Addictive. Addictive. Addictive.

I haven't even touched on Warcraft, collecting Agatha Christie reproductions, and a whole bunch of other addictions I've either had or have.

Sometimes I think I should try and give it all up, but it's too much fun and pretty harmless really. Plus it keeps me off the streets!

I'm sitting here trying to think of what the next online media file-sharing blogging social networking addiction might be. Last.Fm is making me think that eventually TV will end up this way. Why should we download shows and store them on our own drives when download speeds are good enough to be able to just stream whatever we want to watch whenever we want to watch it and on whatever medium we choose.

In the future will we all be walking around with (an Apple branded) device like the iPhone that does everything we want, media wise. We're almost there with the iPhone, and with a new one due out in a week's time rumoured to have HD video playback, I think that will probably be my next addiction.

Roll on next week.