Kirk Hiner's

"When thinking differently just isn't different enough."

Size Does Matter
or, Put That Back in Your Pants, I'm Trying to Watch the Movie

By Kirk Hiner

I just got an e-mail that told me, "Size does matter." Actually, I just got a dozen e-mails that told me, "Size does matter." Actually, I've been getting a dozen a day for the better part of a year now. Do you think it's true? Probably not. Advertisers told me I'd lose my confidence, my job and wife when I lost my hair, and that didn't happen. I'm now being told I can't get raises or respect if I don't have perfectly white teeth. Man. It's a good thing Ma and Pa Hiner taught me to respect myself and others, or I'd be cowering in a hole somewhere right now.

Anyway, "Size does matter." I think the new Godzilla movie used the same slogan, only they didn't seem to believe it themselves since Godzilla's size changed drastically three or four times in that movie. I won't dwell on that, though. I don't want to bury my point under six feet of freshly dug-up geekdom.

Do you know who really believes that size does matter? Apple computer. They always have. The thing is, though, they don't care what the size is, they believe that sizes matter. Small, big, who cares? As long as it's both. PowerBook 3400, PowerBook 2400. Newton, eMate. 15" LCD flat panel, 20" Cinema Display. They've pretty much always given us the choice, and I appreciate that. I appreciate it because both choices are great. I'd happily work with any of the aforementioned products, save for perhaps the Newton. Never wanted a Newton, although I'd still like to tinker around with an eMate. Anyone have one they want to trade?

With most other products, however, I wish the choice wasn't there. Take cars, for instance. Were it up to me, there would be no SUVs for mini-vans. Busses and other means of public transportation would still be allowed, of course, but I would have no more of these other bloated road hogs obstructing the view from my modest Honda Civic and using up far too much gasoline. Truth be known, I think even my Honda Civic is too large. I'd be much happier if cars didn't get any bigger than the Mercedes Smart Car. If nothing else, at least auto racing would suddenly become much more entertaining. Less room for all that ridiculous advertising, more room for comic value.

For the most part, however, I prefer things to be large. And not just large, but imposing. I like buildings to be huge, imposing masses of muscle, steel and stone. I think all cities should look like Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Art deco...there was no better period for architecture. Everything was built to last forever, yet hardly anything did. The end result is that most of us now live and work in little boxes. So sad.

Making some products much bigger could tremendously benefit society, I think. And by "society," I mean the area that encapsules my daily routine. Take cell phones, for example. Why are these things so abused these days? Because they're small and cheap. Too small and too cheap. Back when people had to pay something like $5.00 a call, no one used them aside from those who needed them: doctors, businessmen, and drug dealers. These days, children have them at school, moms have them in the grocery store, and morons have them in front of me in the movie theater. None of these people need cell phones...generations have survived just fine without them. People complain about how fast-paced society is today and how they don't get time to themselves anymore, then they propagate the situation with their stupid cell phones. Of course, someone will raise the point that they're handy in emergencies. Of course they are, so I won't argue that they should be completely taken away. Instead, they should just be made more inconvenient to use.

I originally thought that raising the price to some ridiculous amount would do the trick; make each call a minimum of $10 to both the caller and recipient. My theory is that, then, people will only use them in the event of emergency. This logic is flawed, however, because many people will still make stupid calls and bill them to their company or something. Also, especially in America, people don't seem to care about paying for stuff they can't afford just as long as they don't have to pay for it right away. As long as cell phone calls are being billed at the end of the month instead of immediately, people will still be calling their beauticians while driving 85 MPH down I-271 during rush hour traffic in their damn SUVs.

So, my new solution is just make the cell phones bigger. No more of these tiny things that can fit in shirt pockets...I want cell phones that you have to wear on your head. Huge, ten pound helmets of metal and rivets with antenna that shoot six feet into the air. No room to use them while driving, too much to carry into the store, and a good warning in movie theaters that here's a person behind whom you don't want to sit.

But, back to computers. They're getting smaller and smaller as well. Although I think this is fine for now, I worry they might start getting too small. Remember that commercial with the guy who has a computer in his glasses and he's frightening the birds by screaming about his stocks? Me neither. Hopefully, no one remembers that technology, either. Wouldn't that be grand? Instead of people talking on the phone while driving, they'll be creating PowerPoint presentations or playing The Sims in the movie theater.

If I had my drothers--indeed, if I knew what drothers were--computers would be massive collections of pipes and levers. I'd want them to be as big as ships and made of wood and chrome. This picture was inspired by an e-mail conversation I recently had with former Wall of Voodoo lead vocalist and now solo artist, Andy Prieboy. The picture he presented left me with an image of a dozen men in uniform toiling before a mammoth machine, dozens more waiting below to relieve them when the whistle blows. Can you imagine that? All that work to create an iMovie or play a game of Burning Monkey Puzzle Lab? Now that's cool.

With the 17" PowerBook, Apple is certainly heading back in the right direction. I was a bit nervous with this new iMac. Sure, it seems to have drawn its inspiration from the alien spaceships of The War of the Worlds, and that's pretty cool, but it's just too small. The new PowerBook, however, is simply "jahugeous," a word my wife created to mean, "larger than necessary to serve a given function." Spiders can sometimes be jahugeous, according to her. In the 80s, many haircuts were jahugeous. SUVs are certainly jahugeous, and now computers are once again becoming jahugeous.

My hope is that, as in the past, other computer manufacturers scramble to follow Apple's lead. Apple introduced color into their designs, other companies introduced color into their designs. Apple removed color from their designs, other companies removed color from their designs...albeit usually at the request of Apple legal. Now, Apple's getting big. Hopefully, other computer companies will again follow suit. Apple's getting small, too. The other companies don't need to do that. Most never get it right, anyway.

So, does size matter? Sure. Questions are, what size? What product? Apple continues to give us a choice, and I think we can trust them with that. Everything else...well, it won't be my receding hairline or lack of sparkly white teeth that drive me cowering into my hole. It's just that I'll have nowhere else to go to escape all these cell phone microwaves and fuel exhaust from SUVs. My hole will be the only safe place to hang out. I'll just have to make sure I rip some Wall of Voodoo onto the iBook for I head there for good.

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