It is amazing how technology has progressed in the past fifty to one hundred years. Who would have thought, while watching Star Trek back in the sixties that we would have communicators just like Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock (although I am sure, that the crew of the USS Enterprise didn't have to worry about their minutes).

I used to work at the Warwick Mall Cinema when I was just a young lad, and except for the manager being a complete butt- head, it was a terrifically easy and stress free job. The only other hard part of that job was on the days that the new movies would arrive at the cinema. The cans of film weighed about sixty or seventy pounds a piece and were encased in metal tins. The handles on the tins were just plain, thick wire and used to cut into your hands when you carried them up the stairs to the projection room. Every time I put a DVD into my DVD player to watch a movie, I think about those days, and am amazed at how a little disk like that can contain all that film footage that, not too many years ago, used to bruise my hands.

All this technology is great and everything, but it still isn’t good enough for me and I have a few questions and serious beefs when it comes to some of the applications and uses of these technologies. One thing that I don't understand is why we have these little plug in memory sticks that plug right into our computer‘s USB port that hold over 500 megabytes of memory, yet they don't sell movies in this format. Nor do they sell video games or music albums in this format. It doesn't make any sense to me.

In my experience, it has always been better to have something, whether it is a car or a piece of electronic equipment, that has less moving parts. To have a movie player that would play movies using memory sticks would definitely have less moving parts than a DVD player (it makes sense;, less moving parts equals less wear and tear and,. less wear and tear equals less breakdowns, which equals a better product for the consumer. IE, me).

Nintendo used to use computer chips for their games, and at the time, it might have been a smart move for everyone (Sega, Nintendo and Sony) to switch over to disk format. But now, we have the technology to go back to a much more stable format (memory sticks). It just really bugs me to have all my space taken up by those enormously stupid DVD cases, when I could have a little bucket the size of a loaf of bread filled with memory sticks which contain hundreds of movies, music albums and video games.

MP3 players are examples of what I am talking about and are a much better use of our technologies than a DVD player. Although DVD’s are a far cry from the days of VHS, in my eyes, there is much more room for improvement.

We now have television sets that are only a few inches thick and can hang on your wall (although still way too expensive for most of us to afford). What I don't understand is, there are four or five different types of television sets. What the heck is this all about? Stop messing with all the different types of formats and work on making the best type more affordable for the consumer Decide the best way to view television or a movie and work on it.

Right now they are just scratching the surface of integrating digital images with digital movies. But I know that in the near future there will be a digital camcorder that will be able to take a great quality movie or still photo in the same piece of equipment. The quality isn't quite there yet, but it won't be far off when all of us will be throwing away our outdated digital cameras.

One final thing I would like to mention, another gripe; why on earth should they not make a cell phone that could be used as a television remote control? A couple of phones that I have owned have had infrared capabilities. It would just make sense to be able to use these infrared capabilities for our televisions too.

Just think, you could have your cell phone programmed and set up for the different televisions in your life. If you are at your friend’s house, you wouldn't have to search for his remote or yell out to him asking ‘where the heck his dammed remote is’’. You would merely have your cell phone set for his television (and many others) and press a button to switch the channel. They have made no attempts to integrate my cell phone with my television remote.