Turning Up the Volume

I wanted to turn up the volume, so I did. Nothing happened. I worked for the day in relative silence, but something struck me. Volume, no longer means what it used to. It's louder and bigger than ever before. I'll explain.

First, back to the beginning. I turned up the volume, and nothing happened.

Maybe the volume button the computer wasn’t working. I went into the sound
properties on the control panel, and clicked on the tab. There was a Volume
Control, Wav, SW synch and CD player. I understood the first and the last and
thought the second one was a .wav file, short for wave. Simple. I turned them
all up. I could have clicked ‘mute all’, or muted them all
individually, if I’d wanted no sound, which was what I had… so I
didn’t want that, so I didn’t do it.

Still no sound.

I went to the speakers attached to the laptop, and turned the knob on those to
full. I checked connections, and thought… I’ll reboot,
that’ll fix it. So I did. It didn’t.

Still no music!

And do you know what I thought? I thought… this is nuts. There are so
many layers and levels between me and the music that even turning up the volume
can be a bloody trial. I can do that on old machines in a jiffy and I
didn’t even like the music that much. I’d spent 10 minutes
foostering around for no sound, and all because of layers and layers of
software, hardware and options. Would I give up? Yes I would. For the
moment. Music isn’t that important. Is it? Ironically, I thought
having some background music would make me more productive? I’d have to
work pretty hard to catch up on the time I’d lost already.

Silence… kind of. I worked away for most of the day, to the irritating
clatter of my own keyboard, busses, ambulances and fire brigades, other
peoples’ radios and the odd screech from the kids scrapping at the bus
stop. I worked away to the sound of Dublin instead of music to give me
enthusiasm.

But there was volume after all. Lots of it. Just not a lot of music, or sound.

I sent an email to 3,000 people for research purposes, spoke to several more
through boards and chat, work related emails flying back and forth, another
mail shot, the mobile phone beeped with texts, and rang with calls while the
work phone bleeped every few minutes and the doorbell rang.

The ads we post on websites and search engines must have been seen by 20,000
people to generate the 2000 or so clicks we’d tracked so far and the
online videos… hmmm. 600 views? You Tube viral views? Thousands. By
5.30pm we’d generated maybe 25,000 communications, many through the
little laptop in front of me, in only 6 hours. Thats a lot of volume.

And the moral, (if there is one)? In this new digi-world, sometimes it can be easier to
ask 25,000 strangers to pay attention and click, or let them tell you all about themselves, than it is to sit back, on your own, and listen to a good tune. :-)