One of my all time favorite movies is Singin’ in the Rain. It was so enchanting when I was little – the singing, the dancing, the costumes, the colors. As I have grown, I still appreciate the aesthetics and entertainment value of the film but I now understand a different side of it – one that can’t necessarily be recognized at face value, or at least not as a four year old. During the duration of the movie, the main character is forced to come to terms with the introduction of the “talkie”, which threatens to eradicate the silent film – the very thing upon which this Hollywood star’s fame and relevancy is based. The movie studio jumps on the bandwagon and produces a talkie with the star, but it flops. Not only does the fairly new equipment fail, but the star’s lack of familiarity with the new style makes him ill-suited for his new role.
You may be wondering what this movie has anything to do with understanding technology. While the actual technology of the talking picture may be one that it easily understood, it is the constant improvement and introduction of technology that is bringing with it the unfamiliar. When the introduction of the talkie came about, the once dramatic tableaux and expressions that were necessary to portray emotions in a silent film were replaced with words and dialogue. This trend has been mirrored again and again: when the first piece of mass-marketable technology was released, a new generation of tech-users made way for a new paradigm of people increasingly reliant on tech-based products and programs. This trend was repeated when the laptop computer made its debut and the need for a computing tower was eventually made obsolete, and again with the launch of social networking platforms like Instagram and Snapchat surpassing other platforms like MySpace (if that really counts) or even Facebook. And with each step, a different group of people is detached from the general camp of the technologically-savvy (or at the very least familiar).
By the end of the movie, the main character is able to come up with a solution to his predicament by adapting to the fast-paced, ever-changing trends of the silver screen (which is, ironically, outdated) and making a successful talkie musical. And generations slipping away from the limelight of technological improvements have adapted, too – my mom is now posting her updates on Instagram. But no one can argue that the popularity of the movie-musical hasn’t paled in comparison to that of the CGI action film, at least to the grand majority. These degrees of unfamiliarity exist for us in a very tangible way – we have all had to help a grandparent figure out how to do something as simple as adding a contact in their phone, an action that may seem second nature to us. Or, we have had to explain to a parent how a certain feature of an app works or why we prefer one social media platform over another. What may seem foreign to us is that, by law of trend, there will eventually come a day when we, like the silent film or our moms posting updates on Facebook, will become outdated.