Blogging and Laptops Are Immortal - Says the Year 2020 | Akp51v
You know that speculations attract human beings. And many dystopian forecasts tend to trend well. Oh, the almighty noise pollution of mainstream media. So, you might have heard about blogging becoming irrelevant. Also, your laptops were going to be a memory, they said.
Then, you might wonder if blogging is decreasing in reality. And yes, some smartphones are way superior to a big chunk of the laptop models. This is why you get to hear the ominous statements.
In this article, you will learn about the decline in traditional blogging. Along with this experience, you will find some compelling reasons for laptop usage. By the end of this article, you should know the following ideas.
The Concepts about Blogging and Laptop Demand.
- Traditional Blogs evolved into Modern Content Marketing.
- Textual Format is no longer sufficient for sharing your thoughts.
- Some unique experiences are possible only via your blog posts.
- Laptops have certain usability advantages over other devices.
- You need a laptop for using the cutting technologies anyway.
- Your smartphone has many limitations absent in the laptops.
- Nothing truly ends. And every tradition of each culture stays alive in one form or another.
- Now, you witness an unprecedented scope of storytelling. Thus, you can build better relationships with your clients. Via blogging. Using laptops.
"The days of some xyz are over," said a thousand platforms, as far as the trending topics were concerned. What can you understand from such speculations? Let's see.
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| Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash [compressed] |
Driverless cars were going to replace all the human masters of the vehicles, every door was going to have its own automated security system, robots were going to dominate the entire planet Earth and the most popular of all types of mad minds... "Hey, the world is going to end... D-Day is so near..."
While we all have some serious disagreements with the so-called scientific method; every day, at least something is being predicted to end abruptly.
And 'Fear' sells the best, doesn't it?
False Forecasts can still affect Our Mind
Turns out, a friend of mine is an 'expert' of future prediction as well. Apparently, some of most respectable online places had carved the years when the blogging will be extinct, email-marketing will end, and the laptops wouldn't be in the production models.
Though such events never took place.
When there is too much noise, and so many people with the sophisticated cloths are echoing the identical sentiment; even a person who is well-versed in the understanding of the on-ground realities, will start carrying the multiple doubts within.
Long story short, the statistical evidence may signal a gradual decrease in the trends of the old days, but as more and more netizens are becoming highly ICT-aware, many of these premature predictions have turned out to be a collective joke.
Still, the jokers do get the attention they seek.
There is a healthy limit, beyond which you can't keep holding the smartphone to continue the work or art. It takes quite a while to come up with a truly meaningful and emotionally resonating content. Just doing something with a high frequency is not enough.
You can repost and recreate the old thing only up to a certain limit; after that, recurring ideas become so easy to spot.
It becomes boring and too much safe.
When one idea becomes too popular, the copy-cats emerge from every known unknown corner of the world. Single format keeps reappearing, across all the channels of communication and storytelling. Same joke and the same story, with a few tweaks of synonyms or reordering, start smelling bad.
Nobody wants to take the first step, but everyone wants to copy those who do so.
However, spreading something stupid or absurdly idealistic doesn't need a lot of concentration, diverse backstory research, or recognised quality assurance standards. You are supposed to conduct these activities to come up with something valuable and share-worthy. Being a content creator comes its own set of the ethics and some tenets of the professionalism.
Nothing worth doing, is easy.
Just playing the piano of the 'productivity' illusion, with switching between the windows, and the tabs, with nothing else but the CTRL+C and CTRL+V keyboard shortcuts, is awfully too easy to be of any substantial significance.
So, what would be the main benefits of creating and propagating such a mess of the content that's useless?
Two words – Effortless reproductions.
You can keep repeating it and those, who carry immense insecurity about their own future, will keep coming back to you. After all, if the world didn't end in the year 2012, you can say it will end in 2030, 2040 or even better, in the next month. And there will be a readership even for that.
Is it surprising at all, that the misinformation and the conspiracy theories are some of the most engaging content types on the web.
On a larger scale, such ideas populating the mainstream media have the potential to affect the public perceptions and the consumer habits. Ultimately, we become what we watch, listen, read and re-share. The content we consume, can irreparably affect our worldviews and the principles behind our responses, to the daily life activities.
Yes, even to those who claim staying unamused by the advertisements, are driving the national and global economics, via Consumption. Whenever your time of the day is being utilised, some form of consumption has taken place.
Nobody is immune to that; it will affect your personality, today or tomorrow.
If the entire world appears to have some consensus about the economic fallout, or something becoming obsolete; what do you think – would happen to the Consumer's Confidence in the Markets? If every respected voice or self-declared 'expert' / 'executive' is saying such pessimistic things, why would anyone 'waste' their savings instead of cutting down their expenses?
And the same thing was going to happen to me, which can happen to you as well. Information is so powerful.
Upgrading the Old Tech Infrastructure is extremely Complex and Risky
You know that most of the websites are mobile-friendly, or trying to be mobile-friendly.
Living in the tiny well of the social media might convince you the otherwise; but those of us, who first did the web-surfing or browsing, and then, after those experiences, came to the world of social media with a significant delay, know very well: exactly how many sites still make use of the legacy technologies and standards.
Yes, there is a vast ocean of the great sites, beyond the first page of the search results, outside the tiny well of the social media platforms, which aren't ranking due to the optimisation-related technical issues.
Simply put, bringing the entire infrastructure to the modern standards is not easy; you risk breaking down the site functionality, you need the redirects to the newer URLs, you may have to abandon some functions which you loved, as the modern standards might have stopped supporting them.
Guess what, even your hard-earned Web Search rank or Authority can be damaged. Redirect URLs essentially make the users visit your site after having to visit a middle-agent site URL address.
In short, two URLs to guide the users to one content site, would delay the total loading time.
It will be an added trouble or an unnecessary inefficiency, for the Search Engine 'crawlers'. Quick question: how many sites will be okay with this possibility? Imagine that your SERP Competitors (Search Engine Results Page) staying the same, and you opting for revamping the entire site architecture.
No, redesigning the visual arrangement is cool and actually necessary, so as to keep up with the trends in the Design Philosophies of various Operating Systems or Cultural Shifts. Changing the appearance can be done without changing the URLs.
This difficulty in the global implementation, of the constantly changing standards, is a grey zone topic of our life. Most real aspects of life fall into the Grey Zone of the numerous disciplines anyway. Keeping all the wishful mindsets and the idealism aside, the practical concepts indicate the permanent coexistence of the Control and the Conflict.
Chaos and Order are present simultaneously; just like trying to categorise the timelines, we love to presuppose that only one of them can exist at a time.
Yeah, that went too philosophical.
In other words, even if the URL redirects had no added risk liabilities, the other factors would prevent the end of any technology, which is being predicted with over-rephrasing across certain channels.
As such, there are many websites which are crucial from e-Governance and Informational Education perspectives, that are not truly mobile-friendly for now. That doesn't mean the users won't visit them.
Not every user is a Power-User of Net or Smartphones
Saying that the smartphones screens, held in the landscape mode, would suffice... is not going to be harmless for your eyes. Sure, the text-only small posts or messages, or posting photos can be done from a smartphone.
And it seems faster as well as easier, without a doubt.
But handling the tabulations of a lot of data, embedding different file formats into a single data objects, and for working with a single huge files, consisting of the multiple multi-media information objects; you need a simple notebook PC as a minimum provision, for protecting your vision.
The world will always remain a complex combination of the oldest and the latest technologies.
The digital, economic and educational inequalities are way too large; there are still parts of the world which don't even know about any IT hardware or software solution. Unlike what we may be witnessing in the development hubs or 'major cities' as we call them, the number of people who are just some accidental netizens is definitely huge.
The evidence is not hidden either.
Otherwise, how could so many online scams and frauds be happening every year? Those cases indicate that the increasing adoption of the internet-accessing devices, has no assurance about the Digital Literacy of all the users. They still use their email IDs, birth-dates, common words or phone numbers as their passwords.
Same concept can be applied to the idea of blogging and the laptops.
Redefine the term 'Power Users' as those individuals, who actually know how to do everything just with a smartphone, and how to enjoy the dopamine kicks, of extremely short duration content forms.
Those individuals are correctly saying that the laptops are no longer necessary, and the people have shorter attention span to read a long post. For them, and only for them, the predictions such as 'Blogging is finished' or 'Laptops are unnecessary' are completely realistic and valid.
Let's not neglect the year-on-year changes in the Net Penetration worldwide.
While more than five billion people are estimated, to have some form of the internet connectivity (this number varies depending on your source, and their methods), you can guess that not everyone is a power user.
In fact, assuming that half of the world population has some form of connectivity, Statista's chart about the offline global population with age-group breakdowns is eye-opening.
Short version; even among those who do have some connectivity, the lack of the understanding about how the internet works, what are the SWOT factors of the cyberspace and other aspects of Digital Literacy, is not that surprising.
Given such a digital divide, you can see why the premature declaration that the Blogging or Laptops are finished, is a grand joke.
It's a statistical absurdity.
As the power-users who definitely have a better grasp of the modern ICT tools are busy with the Virtual Reality, Video Conferences and 'Cloud Connected Everything'; more and more jobs are demanding the digital literacy.
The internet users, as a whole, are accessing the web for educational and entertainment purposes, but the internet speeds as well as the hardware bottleneck vary in huge way, even if two users are living in the same area. Personal experiences have revealed that much to me, and to you as well, at some point.
There are users who don't want to use the net, but they need to use the net.
They are still forming the total sum of the Internet Users. They access the web to file their taxes, benefit from e-governance and watch a few favourite resources at a slow casual pace. Most of them are not on the major blogging and the social media platforms.
The only reason they have a Facebook account or WhatsApp installed, is the elements of familiar controls. You can't make them use Pinterest, Quora, Tumblr, Reddit or RSS Feeds just because you are comfortable with those interfaces.
Thus, the social media platforms could be used as a micro-blogging channel, but not everyone would buy that idea.
Most of these non-technosavvy users, prefer the traditional approach of the user interface. You know; the skeuomorphic designs with the shadows, and the button labels. They find it easier to follow the instructions, especially if they were having a limited exposure to the IT concepts from earlier.
However, most of the social media platforms and the so-called modern 'software design philosophies' are relying heavily on the Gestures and the Intuitive Designs. How can the people who were hardly having any success with 'Clicking' and 'Toggling' will be able to navigate such interfaces? This is another reason why the Blogs can provide a better experience for such people.
Not everyone can just guess that certain gestures would improve the User Experience. Blogs can remedy this situation. A blog post is more customisable than the monotonous social media posts.
Design Freedom of Blogs and Inclusive User Interface
On any operating system or social media platform, the users have literally begged for a dark theme, for like, many ages. And the dark theme which is provided, is a cruel joke on the AMOLED display screens.
They always give you a greyish white or whitish grey user interface. While the dark blue background seems better than pure dark background, you cannot use grey font with it. Fonts have to feature a bluish theme, and white fonts are a strict no-go.
But with your blog, you can provide a pure dark background and eyes-friendly text. (Pure White Text can cause blurry vision, so maybe it is cool for Logos and Short Quotes only).
So Personally, I avoid the websites which use light grey fonts, especially unreadable ones.
I love reading, and you might understand how it feels, to look at an extremely bright white background with the grey narrow text. You can't do any serious reading with such stupidity, in the name of the 'negative space' or 'design philosophy'.
As far as the conventional 'print' familiarity and the scientific research studies are concerned, personal taste is still more important to me.
And if someone is using the device at the maximum brightness, no amount of visual optimisation can save the eyes. Everyone is completely free to choose any theme, any colour or any level of the brightness and contrast. Obviously, the contrast is more important.
Blogging gives you an opportunity to customise your site any way you see fit.
Neumorphic Design is based on the Skeuomorphic principles to some extent, and it is one of the main hypes of the year 2019-20. Why was this shift towards a repackaged skeuomorphism happening in the first place? Oh, only for aesthetics?
Nope, flat or minimalist design is difficult for the non-techs to navigate, or even to guess to be interactive. Yeah, probably just a personal theory.
But it is easier for the adults to navigate using the on-screen buttons. Internet is no longer limited to the young and the techno-savvy.
You can even add a good translation option such as Google Translate Gadget. Yes, the translations are not always perfect and often end up being some grammar lesson, or misinterpretation of the literary freedom...
Those are textbook languages, understood by only a tiny fraction of any demographic. But come on, Google Translate saves us the trouble of having to translate everything ourselves. That gadget at the top of this blog is providing more than a hundred different languages, in which you can read this blog.
Which brings us to the puzzle of Localisation.
Localisation of Blogs and Translating without Browser Settings
Not everyone is interested in English or the National Language. Most human beings feel a mysterious pleasure, when they consume or communicate any content, in the same language as their home and the parents.
The reason why the social media cannot win against blogging, but it has to rely on the blogs, is related to this phenomenon as well.
Translation and Transcribing aside, the content which is originally written in a native regional language, has the power to impress the adults. Not all adults are equally comfortable with English language; we are talking about the entire planet Earth here. In fact, is all content, that goes viral in your area, in English?
In India, the trending topics might use the Roman Letters, but the words can come from any language; be it Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, Bengali and there are many more.
There was a viral keyword, as 'Binod', which began in the comment section of YouTube, and became an international trend. Binod is a Hindi word for Joke. Also, a content written in a native language has a greater chance of being shared and going viral.
Though 'Binod' is not an English word, it went viral.
Let's look at the language estimates. Statista implies that in the year 2019, a total of 1.27 billion people were estimated to be able to speak in English; note that this number includes those, who may speak in English as their second language.
This number is followed by 1.12 billion people who speak Mandarin Chinese.
Now, contrast that with 637 million people, who are estimated to be speaking in Hindi.
Yet, the word 'Binod', which was neither English nor Mandarin Chinese, went viral. Localisation can create many opportunities on a regional as well as on an international level. However, the social media platforms do not facilitate 'on the spot' auto-translation.
Why would that matter?
Well, the internet accessing users would definitely have a basic working proficiency in English. Given the opportunity, chances are, anyone of them would prefer the content in their own native language. Working knowledge of English is great to have, and it is easier to enhance it for reaching the higher proficiency.
But till that happens, providing the instant auto-translation options will stay cool.
Bloggers' Unrestricted Freedom To Create and Combine
On each social media platform, there is some kind of 'restriction' of word count or something called User Authentication Tokens.
True, those are two different things; but from a seamless experience point of view, these technically required limitations (to ensure that the servers work well) are not that pleasant.
You cannot keep making the multiple posts, or populating the comments sections as freely as you can do on a blog.
Actually, you can get blocked out of your own account. You may be suspended from the platform, under the suspicion of spamming. In fact, there is a chance that just you will be specifically picked on, to send out some kind of strong signal, related to the Copyrights or the Appropriate Content policies.
On your Blogs, things are different.
You can directly provide your Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, Disclaimers and any other important details, which can prevent any form of confusion or the misunderstandings from going berserk, for some mere difference of opinions.
Remember, on your Blogs, there would be no character limit.
Storage Limits will exist, especially if you are going to use true high-definition images; but that has not much relevance depending upon your website host. It becomes an issue only after your site has become too big.
Blogging, Curiosity and the Pursuit of Purpose
The greatest factor is the unidentified source within all of us; we seek 'meaning' all the time.
Originally, I had the same idea, that you and me just want to be happy. But the more joyful things you do on a repetitive basis, the less satisfied you might become. Apparently, the good-sounding concepts such as 'joy' or 'enjoyment', cannot assure you of a long-lasting satisfaction and the inner peace.
Simply put, reading a thousand tweets or watching a hundred motivational videos might be great for achieving a temporary short-term illusion of happiness; but the effects fade away. As we become mature about our life as well as our usage of the internet, we tend to see through the shortcut content types.
You know them; the memes or the motivational quotes might be helpful, from a mood-management point of view. Nevertheless, we cannot expect the results, obtained from a two-minutes break, a two-hours meditation and a two-weeks digital detox, to be the same.
And in that case, only a full-fledged article can calm your inner storm; you can create it yourself and share it with the world.
No shortcuts; no compromising.
A Blog is the reflection of you, as a person. It is said that 70 percent bloggers don't care about monetising their content. Their blogs are their own perspectives, experiences, interests or even a semi-personal journal.
They write the blogs, as a hobby.
So, they are never going to stop blogging, just because nobody is coming to read them, or some platform is going to close down. Blogging will remain in existence, in one form or another. It is simply evolving, and not many bloggers pay attention to the Views, or Popularity in general.
Not everyone is chasing after the ads' money; but from a economics point of view, you should get something in return, for your valuable contributions to the society. So, definitely consider a user-respecting method, of monetising some part of that value-addition.
Unique, original and in-depth creations do the value-addition.
Quality of the Comments Section on Blogs
As reading a proper blog post takes time and patience, the quality of the conversations in the Comments, is at another level than some popular social media platforms. It is surprisingly true for each other aspect of our life; if something is easy and fast, everyone will do it, and then everyone will be busy reacting at the same fast pace with great ease.
Reading any four lines or the watching a Video... These are easier activities.
If we call them as Consumer Actions, they are essentially the Passive Consumption Activities. Reading a longer content requires patience, and an actual desire to learn what is being said. Long Reading Posts will be ignored by many, because only a few will ever finish them. That is an active process after all.
It's like a New Year Resolution.
Anyone can start reading a Novel or a good quality Reference Non-Fiction; but only a small percentage of the readers, will ever succeed in completely understanding those resources. Even if you don't completely understand such resources, the act of finishing the book without any 'too drastic' shortcuts, is an admirable and brave accomplishment itself.
A Reader has to keep the main topic in mind, throughout the length of a long article.
While such a meaningful experience is sought by everyone, consciously or subconsciously; most of the time, we want instant gratification. Blaming the notifications doesn't work, when you yourself enjoy the reasons behind the reduced attention span of yours.
Getting the Luck-based Daily Rewards in the video games, just for keeping the game installed on a device, or counting the Views, Likes, Followers or Subscribers; these activities won't go away.
The basic human nature, isn't it?
The Power-Users of Tomorrows'
That can be our case, as well. Except the 'online forever' individuals, the rest of the world still buys the books, the comics, the novels and the drama tickets. It means, their Attention Spans are not compromised.
Although a large number of people don't know the features of Social Media Platforms, they have their own events, gatherings, festivals and cultural heritage, in which, only the long duration and the serious content forms are accepted.
These individuals may not be a power-user today, but their children are going to be the power-users of the tomorrow.
Youth might seem engaged on the Social Media at an increasing rate, but that offline population chart from Statista, mentioned earlier, clearly shows that the young adults do have their priorities. Pause for a moment to think about the column, which shows that 35% people, between the age group 22 to 36 years old, are offline for almost all the time.
These individuals are still unfamiliar with the constant attention fragmentation, which is caused by the Notifications Hyper-Tsunami and the crowded email inboxes. You know how overwhelming, the constant informational intrusions, can be.
Should we think, that these individuals won't read a long post just because some 'experts' say so?
Novels, Books, Articles and Blogs are not going away anytime soon. They will co-exist with the Social Media Micro-blogs. Upon a little more careful inspection, we realize that the content on the various online resources, is actually based on the Literature, Mythology, Cultural Heritage and the actual journalism, from the different places and from the different times.
And such inter-connections have been satisfying the older and the younger humans, alike.
The Relationship between a Blog Writer and a Reader
On your Blog, the reader and you, only you two will be communicating with each other. The social media platforms are crowded with so many people talking about the same things, using the same design interfaces; and in such a crowd-sourced environment, your individuality is totally dissolved.
On your Blog or Website, only you will be interacting with the reader, through the words and/or the design choices.
Think about it. On the social media, you are not the only one, who is creating a certain type of content. For every subject of interest, there are at least a thousand other people, creating the content. As a Writer, you have to compete with a lot of over-information, just to reach a reader.
From a reader's perspective, you don't really need to follow, like, share or comment on, any post. Why would you?
Because the content is unique, right? But what can be unique, if everyone is creating the content meeting certain criteria, which is essentially the same for all. If the content creators are obeying the exact same rules or tips, then the posts which are same, will be grouped together, automatically anyway.
And to avoid the same type of content, the users will just scroll through that over-information, as if a sleepwalk marathon.
Slow-Reading, Serif fonts and this Century
How often do we forget the name of the site, we had visited recently? What was the title of the post? Can we recall the name of the author? We scroll fast, and I am pointing this out with a specific purpose.
When studying the usage of the different fonts, the concept of Reading Speed came up. Let me sum it up; the fonts like Times New Roman, are called the Serif fonts, due to the tiny pointed structures on each letter. The thickness of these fonts changes, and they were supposed to use less ink, and less paper space.
And that was okay for the print media.
Previous generations would sit or move at a slow pace, when reading the newspapers and the books. Each word used to carry its own significance. Pick up any classic book, and start reading. Every sentence would be made up of multiple clauses; separated by at least three to four commas.
Hence, the Serif fonts mattered; to the publishers, to the owners of the printing press, to the ink producers, and to the readers.
Now, imagine if there is no limitation on how much space the letters could use. What if, a font with a thick and uniform thickness can be used, without having to worry about the inking and publishing cost over-heads.
In that world, let's assume that everyone is busy, running in the rat race, at the maximum unhealthy speed.
Nobody would be having time to read slowly. Appreciating the poems, studying the sentence structure, making some sense of the multiple small clauses, in a single lengthy sentence, meditating over the facts and the opinions being consumed... all these activities, would be deemed unnecessary, boring and too slow.
In that world, you would need to write in a manner, which the people could quickly grasp, without any difficulty.
Non-Serif or Serif-less fonts, such as Calibri, which is the default font in MS Word, or Roboto, the default font of Android Operating System, facilitate the faster and the easier reading experience. As a result, most of the operating systems and the content creation platforms, would use them.
Such fonts, are called the San Serif fonts; which might become a problem.
These fonts have their own unique design details, but unless you are a graphic designer or a calligrapher, you will not succeed in finding the differences in them, without increasing their sizes. Some of these fonts are too much geometric or monotonous.
Besides, if every other day, on every other place, such fonts are being used; the written words may loose some of the charms of writing, when these fonts are used for an article.
Whether the written piece looks modern or not, is a secondary question. The major concern should be, if anyone would enjoy reading it. To avoid the mechanical shallow reading, you need to use at least some of the Serif fonts. They can slow down the reader a bit.
Personally, I prefer the words written in Serif fonts. Nothing judgemental against the geometric uniform thickness fonts, which I love to use for the major headings and in the digital art; but my familiarity with the printed books and the PDFs of certain non-fiction public resources, make me prefer the Serif ones.
While your font options, which can affect how wholeheartedly any Power-Reader would be reading your content, are limited on many other platforms; your blogs can provide the readers with the conventional or a different font.
There are the other aspects, such as limiting the size of the paragraphs, since the phones have a less wide display. There are concepts such as Eye-strain, Reading Fatigue, surrounding brightness etc. However, those are always being disputed by various users and creators.
While I choose San Serif font mostly for the rapid reading purposes, it is really your choice as a reader or a blog writer.
There is a sense of Trustworthiness or Authority, that's associated with the Serif font families. It is speculated to have been resulted, from the abundance of the Print media and Research papers, which use these fonts.
At least for such a vast availability of the fonts-related choices, blogging is the only space where you get to do so directly. On the other platforms, you have to use Digital Graphics skills, which results is the text that doesn't reflows as per the device-width, or that needs more bandwidth (data usage) to load.
The Valid Drawbacks of the Laptops
The entire logical salad up to this point is relevant in the case of the laptops; however, Blogs are a digital experience which cost nothing to read, and the laptops are actual financial commitments which cost more than a smartphone. If the maximum value for money is the only criteria, then using a smartphone is enough.
And here, dear friend, things take an interesting turn.
Bigger screen benefits can be achieved with a Tablet PC as well, but the market is offering more 2-in-1 options. If touchscreens are the best, why do people love the keyboards? Smartphones last longer because of their entire design (as well as the screen size); it is a story much different than that of the laptops.
Then, there is the portability factor; smartphones fit in your pocket and laptops can be heavy. Would you like to carry some hundreds of grams of a smartphone, or something of two to three kilograms, that doesn't fit in your pocket?
Kindly study all different segments of the laptops, to understand why the three kilogram mark is mentioned. Though there are the laptops, which weigh less than two kilogram; let's ignore them. We are focusing on those, with a CD/DVD drive, bigger screen (excluding 14-inch) and longer battery.
Water-proof phones do exist; laptops are not much water-proof or fluids-proof; more risk factors, no?
So, from the purchasing cost and the 'ease of use' point of view, smartphones would definitely replace the laptops in the next two years, next two months or even in the next few hours. At least many 'expert' websites have declared their game-over, in 2016, in 2018, in 2019.
We will see the role of year 2020 in a short while; but first, let us see why laptops were still in the trend all this time.
Potential Reasons as to Why Laptops still have a Consumer-base
On a laptop, you can check your social media notifications, mostly from the browser; on a smartphone, you have to specifically choose the Do-Not-Disturb setting, which can interfere with some phone calls.
And then there are the phone apps, which can over-ride the DND settings.
Privacy is a crucial aspect for the professionals, and the businesses. While the PCs and Laptops are busy collecting the usage data, the smartphone apps demand way more permissions to function properly, in a reasonable comparison.
On top of that, you and I are keeping our photos, as well as a lot of sensitive personal data on our devices (precisely, on the phones).
Business and Professional Documents are more sensitive in the eyes of the employers. From the cybersecurity and data-breach protection point of view, the employers can secure themselves with a Desktop-Laptop workplace environment.
The risk of Attention Fragmentation is reduced since the Desktops are the company property, and even if the employee uses own laptop, the risk of the Notifications or Social Media, interfering with the work hours and the employee's productivity is lower.
If this doesn't ring a bell, just remember that the companies demand that their employees should have a laptop, either directly or through signalling.
If there is any particular requirement, which can improve your chances of
getting the job, you will definitely invest in it. After all, the
education schooling systems are designed to produce the
obedient employees, and not the self-driven entrepreneurs.
Thus, the competition is cut-throat.
Such is our fate; everyone is wanting a laptops, as soon as possible.
A laptop does offer a larger screen, to work with the multiple software windows, simultaneously. Each configuration of the desktop, can be separately saved as a Desktop shortcut, in the current Windows 10 versions, at the time of writing this written piece.
You can install more than one operating system on the laptop. Doing that on a smartphone, is riskier.
A laptop provides you with the shortcut keys, and these key combinations can be customised in any way you want. Most of the software, that's available on the laptop, gives you the freedom to re-arrange the default User Interface or Window Menu with no strings attached.
Especially, if you use Open Source Software, you can do anything with the software, with a complete license allowing you to do that. Any code, program or developer's kit, can be run on a laptop.
It's not limited to a single app-store; get any software, from anywhere.
That is theoretically possible for the smartphones as well; but from a safety, legality (in certain countries) and security point of view, you might be better off avoiding the third-party downloads, particularly if you don't understand the downsides of unidentified publishers, and rooting etc.
You can use any software designed for any device, using the Emulators. On a laptop or a PC, you can write your own software.
Without depending on a mouse, a touchpad or a touchscreen, you can do anything with the laptop using just the keyboard, especially if you know the safe ways of using Command Prompt or the Terminal (depending on your OS).
Laptops are essential in the Corporate World; not joking at all.
Not many people would care about your external appearance; but almost everyone (exceptions do exist) will have a reduced impression of you, if you don't have a laptop. It doesn't matter whether we like this or not; remember, when you are a professional person, you have to play the game by the rules.
Any rebellious behaviour, would act as a red flag to your current and the future employees.
I guess, this became too demonic in its tone. Personally, I like working on this laptop of mine, but Blogger has become mobile-friendly, so for making any little changes here and there, I use the smartphone.
Getting the things straight, you should know that I used to be an advocate of 'Smartphones are enough, laptops are unnecessary' type of mindset. In my first two years at the college, I did all of my work from my first smartphone. Then, I paid the price for that extended usage of the smartphone...
Smartphones, Laptops, Your Body and the Ergonomics
You may or may not have heard the terms 'Ergonomic Chair', ergonomic scissors or the ergonomic keyboard.
Ergonomics, which might be loosely translated as Work-Law, is essentially the science studying the efficiency of the people at work; and no, we are not talking about the stupid deadlines.
Instead, the word 'efficiency' can be inferred as, the saving of the efforts, as well as avoiding the unhealthy side-effects of using any tools, in a particular way.
If you had to write a lot during your school year just like many others, you can recall what would happen to our wrists, neck, back, eyes and sleep, due to the workload of the schooling rituals, known as the 'Home-work' (assignments).
The more pressure or speed you'd put on the pen, or on the pencil, the sooner there would be that trouble near the thumb and the backside of your fingers. If the two loops in the scissor are a perfect circular ring, with a uniform cross-section; your fingers would pay a hefty fee if you were to use this scissor for the entire day, on a routine-basis.
The chairs in a multi-hour-long speech or summit are more comfortable, than the school-college classrooms', which were better than the stools (seats) in the Laboratories or the workshops, where the standing work was expected from us.
Each work environment has different priorities, which is why the way people are supposed to work varies, and this is reflected in the design of the tools to be used as well.
A Writer has to sit for many hours to keep working on the draft. I am writing this piece for almost 2.5 hours or 150 minutes now; not to forget that the editing, proofing, formatting, restructuring etc. quality improvement and content updating measures, can take even longer duration.
Major Tip for that; keep yourself hydrated, by drinking water in every 15 to 30 minutes. It helps a lot.
You can try to imagine what would have become of me, if I wasn't sitting on a proper office-chair, with a suitably high table, and a laptop screen inclined at a safe angle, so I won't damage my neck, wrist, back, eyes and brain... like that one time.
When were you given your first laptop?
What was the first thing you did with it? I played a lot of games during my high-school days, since our area saw GTA Vice City for the first time. Till that point, we knew about 8-bit and 16-bit games, and the 3D-like world of GTAVC was an entirely another level for us kids.
In fact, I tripled my efforts of learning English, to make sense of what was being spoken in the Mission Cut-scenes. I was ultimately too ill to attend the school; it was four days bed-rest, after which I stopped playing the games for a really long period of time. And this was done on a laptop.
So, over-use of the laptop with a poor body posture, is an assured way of self-inviting the trouble.
But it was nothing compared to the third year of my college. Because we were sure that, in the final fourth year, we would be consumed by our Project and Report Works; we spent more time in improving our college campus, and especially on the cultural festival.
This resulted in the high pressure of having to complete our Term-Works, in a truly short duration.
And I was a fan of the Smartphones, remember? I used it extensively to organise my notes, any useful content over the internet, leisurely gameplay and the casual online entertainment (Naruto, Naruto Shippuden, One Piece, Gintama)… the consequences were not at all amusing.
My wrists became increasingly numb.
The neck and the shoulders started feeling strange. Especially, my elbows were misbehaving. My back was always 'tired'. Don't ask about what happened to my deep good-quality sleep. Eyes started staying dry, and sometimes they would be red, without any cool effects like Sharingan or VFX from anime.
It was a catastrophe.
Although I had succeeded in finishing my work within the timeframe, I started leaving my phone in the drawer or in the bag, and consciously avoided using my smartphone. It was difficult. Personally, I will never refuse the idea that, the addiction to the digital devices and the internet, is real.
Even if the scientific arguments of wholistic development, could be summarised as, 'digital addiction is merely a symptom of an underlying deeper distortion'; if we know where the trigger is, why find any excuse to left it unresolved?
And in the final year, we were supposed to be working on the report of forty pages, avoiding plagiarism and writing the entire report from the scratch!
I got my laptop, carried it without any worries, and we finished our project report without any 'copy-paste' unethical job; not a single one of us invited any health disaster. In a nutshell, Ergonomics is not a pseudo-science, as long as their is a strong empirical or analytical basis.
You might have felt those issues at some point of your life.
Let me assure you, freeing your wrist and having a larger screen to work with, these two factors will significantly improve your productivity, if you have to do the sitting work for the extended hours, using more than one software, or just doing a lot of research, editing and designing.
Taking the small breaks after every 15 minutes, 25 minutes or 45 minutes (depending on whose rules you follow), is helpful indeed. Still, a laptop is better than the smartphone, and the desktop is the supreme tool, for protecting your health. Ergonomic Keyboards can be connected to the laptops as well.
With a lot breaks and frequently changing your sitting style, such that your back would stay safely straight, and your eyes are not too close to the screen, you should be able to use the Smartphone for the extended hours in a safe manner; but ultimately, I don't have to worry about these issues with a laptop.
I would rather stay with my laptop, and focus on my craft (or my draft), than keep worrying about my eyes drying, or the wrists going numb.
Available ICT infrastructure vs. Work (and Learn) From Home of 2020 requirements
Most of us were too much depending on our smartphones. And why would we be busy with the laptops anyway?
The keyboard you use, can start having the issues of a broken key, or a slow pace of typing; it's not going to happen with the touchscreens, isn't that right? The screen may be bigger, but it will perform differently than a smartphone's Super AMOLED display. Colour precision and Image clarity defers, indeed.
Not all laptops are compatible with the earphones, which you received with the phone, or probably bought separately. The smartphone games were some Megabytes (or Mebibyte) big, whereas the laptop games would need a lot of GBs.
Now, who wants to manage all that, from the working class?
The consequences were not unexpected; as the smartphones gained more of our attention and care, the laptops and the PCs appeared to be obsolete. For any work-related need, the desktop in the office was more than sufficient.
Outside the office, using the Smartphone for less sensitive activities was the obvious choice. Basic inevitability? The ICT infrastructure back at our homes, wasn't sufficient for the maximum productivity.
Then we said Happy New Year 2020...
Due to the increase in the 'Work From Home', and 'Learn From Home' routines, many of us realized the necessity of the laptop. After noticing the poor performance, of the decades-old machines, the demand increased.
More and more organisations wanted to ensure a reasonably profitable, or at least a sustainable work routine, for their employees.
Not only this gave a revival boost, for the laptop demand and usage, but the special situation of the year 2020 crisis, resulted in the individuals spending even more time on the internet.
With the 'Learn From Home' model, the same parents who were trying their best, to prevent the children from using the electronic devices for too long, began attending the online study sessions with their children. If the year 2020 were to be normal, the laptop demand would have been unchanged.
But whatever has happened in this year, is our shared reality, and it has unimaginable implications for our future work protocols.
Since the Work From Home (WFH) model was already in the trends, due to the freelancing, and more digital job-profiles. They were created from the technological leaps in the Service sectors, and CAE (computer-aided engineering).
Blogging was going to increase anyway. With the headache of the year 2020, it is going to be even bigger.
In fact, various businesses are switching their verticals, with a more automated or digitalised operations model. Whether you know a small biz, or a Multi-national Enterprise, each business entity is seeking a long-term relationship with their current customers, clients and the business partners; built on trust.
Is some repetitive message, of just a few lines, going to help them with their objectives?
Bloggers can explain any complicated concept in a simpler language; and pardon me to mention the Automated Translators again, but I have reasons to believe that, most people wish to have the better tools, however, they don't know how to use them.
And nobody tries to elaborate about any long-term gains from those tools, in their own first-language; inclusive of all the native accents or dialects.
In other words, the initial purchasing cost seems a 'not affordable' price point, because the individuals don't see any value in the offerings. Most people would choose to buy only what they reasonably understand.
Not everybody is a gullible idiot, who will waste the time with some too-complicated, or mysterious product / service.
And there is a huge difference between an honest Consumer Education and some manipulative 'Network Marketing', Multi-Level Marketing and Pyramid Scheme scam.
Blogging as the Strongest Marketing, Educational and Truthful Content Form
Genuine Blogs are the key element in a good digital marketing strategy. They enhance the general knowledge of the public, even if the readers don't buy the products immediately. At least, they would know what the business offers, and how the products or the services function.
With such a knowledge, they may not purchase something from your business today; but if the low-quality problems become too much of a pain, the customers would at least consider your offerings.
For an instance, let's ponder the question of 'why do people purchase a printer?' just for some thought experimentation.
In my house as well as at my relatives' house, the key reason was common. The carbon-copying machine centers would always be crowded. And there is a profit-margin for every copy, which is supposed to cover a lot of other costs.
The relationship between the payback period for an investment, and the total cost of ownership, maintenance, replacement, depreciation or upgrades, is not an easy derivation.
But the most straightforward way, of justifying a direct investment for owning something, is the issue of reliability, availability and a perceived sense of savings.
Though indirectly, this blog writer, has just said that making a purchase decision based of the pure intuition, is okay. Engineering Degree is probably weeping or laughing somewhere.
Thus, the printers were purchased.
The other reasons were quite systemic; the working adults in the both households, used to get any type of work requests, or the urgent notifications at any time of the day. Also, nobody should forget about the last-moment changes, in the original schedules of work-packages.
In India, the school and college students, need to deal with a lot of different types of the hybrid form fill-ups, compliances or projects, irrespective of their medium of instructions, or education board. 'Hybrid' means, both offline and online procedures.
Thus, the purchase decision made sense, from the reliability and the availability perspectives.
How did those products improved the quality of the problems? Products or the Services are essentially solving or replacing the low-quality problems in our, with the better problems. The printers enabled them, to do their work at a slower pace.
Since the humans are not supposed to be like the robots, my highly judgemental personal opinion might be written as, "Humans working longer on an Activity, can come up with more beautiful and deeply valuable results... without permanently ruining their psycho-physiological wellbeing."
If something goes wrong with the consumers' experience, they can visit the blogs directly provided by the businesses, to have a better and more comprehensive conversation with the Technical Support Desks.
Did reading all this depiction of a modified thought experiment, based on some of my real-life events, affected your way of looking at the printers? Or gave you an idea about the Total Cost of Ownership? Was it interesting in any manner? Should I start putting Affiliate Marketing links for the printers?
If even one of these questions has any ounce value in your eyes, then the blogging would never end.
Generally, one should stop at this point, but let's ask a few questions about the above content; would you like to know more about various vehicles, devices, tools or business models, and the Total Cost of Ownership? Not going happen yet, but there is one more point we can note from this.
Even if it was about the printers, nobody has restricted me from trying to sell you an e-book about Total Cost of Ownership, or even some book about Management Theories which could be used in everyday life.
Do you see now?
Such an opportunity, cannot be achieved with any other Content Form. This was a story; which was about the printers, but there were other characters as well in the story. And they could have their own spin-offs or fanfictions. Is any form of marketing superior to the word of mouth?
Are the comments, the likes, the follows, the subscriptions and the re-shares, not a cyberspace analogy for the real life word of mouth?
And if the answer to that question is "Yes"; what can be more powerful than a vibrant community, driven by good quality conversations, in the comments? User-Generated Content is what the industries strive for, and most other Content Forms would progress too slowly on that frontier.
Good sources of high-quality or High-engagement comments come from, the written blogs, the video blogs, the Live-Streams and the podcasts.
Blogging is going to end, huh? Not a chance anytime soon. It is the only source of the excellent quality comments, made up of the user's knowledgeable contributions; for which you don't have to be good voice-actor. I am stating this much, with a complete seriousness.
More about the requirement of Good Voice-acting, and more importantly, the confidence in front of the camcorder, when developing the other content formats, will be explored in the later sections. Let's focus, on the Blogs and their significance in Education and good quality 'True' Information first.
Least problematic Educational and Learning Resource of Blogging
Financially, it is one of the most important medium, of a deeper relationship development. Similar in-depth dissemination of knowledge, is the need of our time. But the schooling system is stuck with the outdated, or irrelevant Syllabus and Curriculum.
With your permission, let me go as far as saying that, only the Blog Writing can heal the people's hatred towards the schooling system.
Where did that come from? It is applicable not just to the writers, but also to the readers.
First of all, the blogs are essentially consisting of the words. You can update them, remove them or stylise them, as per your needs, without needing to learn any video-editing, screen-sharing or graphic-designing software.
Text is the smallest, in the terms of the file size. In other words, it is easier to take the backup of textual information, than taking the backups of the audio-visual (videos, voice recordings) information. The backups for each post, are in the size of the kilobytes to some megabytes, mostly less than 10 MB.
Hence, you won't have to worry about the memory card capacities, or your device storage, as an educational institution or a publisher.
And yes, it means that, with the virtually zero costs, any and every teacher, student or trainer, can spread the information and the knowledge. This information can be updated from time to time, without having to change the URL web-address of the site.
The comments on a Blog Post, could include any doubts and the clarifications, for the same. No matter the quality of the communication skills, of the students or that of the teachers (or facilitators), everyone would get a chance to think carefully, about what to ask and how to answer.
The long-standing issues, such as some people speaking too fast, or with too low voice, some persons rushing up or slowing down, the pace of other co-learners, as well as the difference of the learning styles or the grasping prowess of the learners... all of them can be eradicated.
No buffering is the best.
Since the rich media, otherwise known as the audio-visual content, is huge in its digital mass (size); it needs the faster upload and download speeds, for practically useful streaming quality (upstream, downstream).
The situation with the recorded videos, is yet less frustrating, than the Live-Streams or the real-time virtual conferences. In the later case, the feedback plays a vital role; while in the former, the instant feedback is out of the question. Thus, even with the video buffering, the former streaming type, works.
But can it work in every part of the world?
We have already explored the alarming state, of the Digital Divide and the Digital Literacy. Not to mention, those students who were not much interested in some subjects, or the entire schooling system, would only become more frustrated, due to the ICT infrastructure deficiencies.
Blogs are not perfect solution, because Perfectionism is more of a brain illness anyways; but it is the least problematic one, as the above-mentioned unpleasant user experiences, could be avoided with them.
An educational institution, or a body of the professionals, can maintain a blog to let the students add their content. Imagine a world, where even the smallest school, in the most industrially backward regions, can give and take some form of knowledge, from any other institution, in a local language.
Language Barriers should be a thing of the past; irrespective of our geographical or economical realities.
Blogs can make the learning process a joy-ride; and a blog written in one language can be read in many other languages. Localisation was found to be quite crucial, in the earlier sections.
No idea as to why only a few sites make use of the Translate Gadget though. Maybe, for the privacy or translation accuracy concerns? Oh, just remembered that, some of the grammatically incorrect liberties of mine, make it difficult to read the blog post in the other languages.
Any particular language should not be a barrier to the access of knowledge and the ideas. You agree, don't you? As a Side-note, the Translate gadget loads a JavaScript, at each moment any of the pages on this blog, is being loaded in your browser. It means, the site loads a little slower.
From the Search Engine and User Experience (UX) optimisation viewpoints, any site that loads slower than a certain timeframe, is not going to have a good PageSpeed Score. In simple words, faster sites are more preferable, and you can enable region-specific translation, with other means, with coding.
Back to the section highlights, there are some technical issues with the Live Video Lectures and the Video-Audio based educational, or training resources, besides the storage considerations.
The difficulties of these rich media content forms, mentioned in the next section, are applicable to the teachers as well as the students, or anyone who want to start, maintain, improve or protect a YouTube channel.
Blogs vs. YouTube, Live-Streams and Podcasts
Auto-translation of YouTube Video Subtitles, is available only on the desktop mode; but Blog Translation is made available, on the mobile sites as well. Thus, individuals with no access to the computers, would stay devoid of this feature.
Since you have already read about my admiration for the Translate gadget, let's skip to the major points.
Though the Blogs might need a lot of careful consideration, about the appearances and the content structure; the audio-visual content forms, need an entirely different type of preparation.
If you make a mistake, or if you want to update the content, you can do so on a Blog without having to abandon the original URL. On YouTube, you have very few options to edit your video in-place. That is, to make very significant changes, you need to upload another video, resulting in a completely new URL.
The issues of the Redirect URLs is reappearing here as well.
You ought to be careful with what exactly you wish to post, as a YouTube Video. For Copyrights reasons, it might be taken down. On a blog, you have an opportunity to clarify your policy about the copyrights. So, any issues can be resolved, in a civilised manner.
On YouTube, you should be careful about the music and the visuals to be used.
Not every company, studio or organisation, is going to look at the Fair Use provision, from a free marketing aid, or a word of mouth point of view. Every country has its own Copyright policies. Every publishing platforms has its own Guidelines, Terms of Service, Disclaimer and Rights Disputes Settlement Mechanisms.
When this blog writer, in front of you, was just passively or actively consuming the content, he didn't study the Copyrights mess, of the multi-national blitzkrieg, with the sufficient depth.
Although he knew about the Intellectual Property philosophies, and carried a soft-spot for the Patents-related journalism; it was after he started posting the Instagram design samples, that he grew insecure about the 'not using the Watermarks'. They disturb the negative infinite space, around the design.
That's why, you should try to contact the original creator, of any music or any creations, before proceeding with a non-original work.
The two key problems, are related to our voice skills and the body-language.
Not everyone has a award-winning voice. That doesn't mean, to quit YouTubing. But remember, you don't have to worry about it, when the blogs are textual in the nature. As for the background music, which is crucial for your audience, kindly read the full terms of any Licenses or Usage Policies.
Soundtracks might reduce the potential negative opinions about your speaking style, pronunciations and all, but the second element, would be the frame.
Each frame of the video, or each image that makes the video, will be visible when the video is paused. In you are not showing your face and creating a audio-only video, then the body language issue is non-existent. Still, each frame of your video would need to be reader-friendly.
Unlike a blog post, you can do any modifications. For a video, you just can't replace any frame, in which your face is appearing too abnormal, with a better face.
Be it any Streaming Platform, virtual conference, or the podcasts, the quality of your voice-acting, will affect the final impressions. In some case, you may have to invest in the better hardware. For videos, you have a visual mode available, but for the podcasts, it's your voice alone, that's suppose to do all the work.
The camcorder is not an easy challenge for everyone. Whether it's your Phone Camera, or a digital one, you are supposed to talk to a camera, you know. No, you cannot look at your own face in the selfie camera; depending on the video quality, it is easy to note any eye-contact breakdown.
You need to speak with a natural, confident and honest manner, especially if the video blog is aimed at the educational goals, instead of the entertainment goals.
During the recording session, you can't let the doubts about your facial expressions, voice, speech, grammar, or backgrounds, interfere with the planned execution of the content.
Updating the entire blog with a different style, is quick and easy; not true for a YouTube Channel.
The impact of the unequal quality of the internet connectivity, cannot be stressed enough; specifically about the video conferences and the live streaming.
And hence, blogs are more effective, flexible or future-proof when compared with the other content forms.
After all, the video content might be the richest media format, but the other operational overheads, associated with its planning, production and backup-maintenance, are the highest as well.
Endnote - Even if they (Blogging and Laptops) were to end...
Let's say that Blogging and Laptops are really going to be extinct in the next two months. Should you really stop engaging with them?
Are you blogging? If not, do you want to start blogging? Why? For money? For fame? To promote your name? Why worry about the laptops? If they are going to be stopped or rendered obsolete, then maybe really the demand has gone down.
At the end of the day, the blogging platforms and the laptops, are made possible by the businesses. Paid as well as the Free Blogging Platforms see some potential in the blogs.
At the time of typing this, already the top blogs are earning a lot of real money, a part of which is being shared with the ads-networks. Remember, the ads-providers only pay, when a real human user sees their ads.
In short, people are reading and sharing the content, that they found of some practical, emotional or intellectual value. That's why ads get the genuine views, and thus the advertising-related companies love the blogs.
While the year 2020, has seen a seasonal spike in the demand of the laptops, about which almost every major site, is posting something each day; even if the demand peaks, or the demand drops after that, decreasing for many years, due to some Macro-economic Realities, which await us all...
Even in that scenario, those who love the bikes and travelling, will keep their interests alive. Those who love working on the laptops as well as those who are happy with their smartphones, they will keep working.
And there are large fractions of each and every country's demographics, which are essentially untapped markets, unreached audience and unknown horizons.
Still, a lot of humans have no connectivity, they are surviving in a low HDI (Human Development Index) environment, and even if there is internet availability, the quality of the services, and the digital literacy of all the users, have a long way to go.
When the Digital Divide will become narrower, and when the netizens will increase by another 50 to 100 percent; only then we can start talking about the game-over of some xyz.
Till then, everything is mainly some type of click-bait.
For the time being, keep blogging, for meaningful reasons.
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