First, some background details. He and I lived together for about a year and a half or so about a decade ago and he was, is and will always be a collector. Our respective girlfriends at the time marveled at the dozen still-packed boxes of his stuff that literally leaned against one of our walls for the duration of our living together. Contained in these boxes were old computer mags, Pennysaver ad papers, a few gadgets, doodads, sketches (some of them old and some of them really neat) and other miscellaneous items that I can't describe in 2 words or less.
In short, I knew about this, but looking at only the stuff he's getting rid of is still quite the sight to behold.
The "singlemindedness" of a console in my view is not a negative, because this generation of consoles are powerful enough to be more than just for games. My buddy Marco, actually uses a router to interface his computer with his PS3 so he can use it to access his media files wirelessly and watch them on his TV. It's an elegant solution and quite simple; I'm going to use the variant of having a big-ass hard drive to connect with the PS3 via USB instead.
Also, the "expense" of a console is understandable, but the expense of money, time and space involved in W's pluralist approach indicates that on top of enjoying gaming as an activity, he also enjoys building, tinkering and otherwise wrenching away at old machines to get some use out of them. I've always found that admirable in my friend, in the way that it's not something that I would have the aptitude or patience to do myself.
This also brings to light the distinct mind of the modern Computer Gear Head, showing them to use computers in the opposite way to which they were intended by the software designers and marketing folk. Computers are ideally in our lives to make things easier and more organized, and I say this because that is how I use them (and why I buy Apple like the good middle class twat that I am). Folks who have grease monkey aptitude with a computer tend to keep almost every piece of tech that they buy well beyond their popularity cycle.
Every person that I know working in job or who fancies themselves as a bit of a programmer or computer wizard ends up with so much equipment that they need a storage unit for it all. They are usually fairly proud of this fact because they see that they are not being wasteful with respect to available resources (with the exception of their own living space and time).
If Apple designed NORAD, it would probably be a giant touchscreen with no buttons. I'm thankful that gearheads are protecting our shores from attack, but I'm also very happy that I don't know how it works. Call me crazy, but I'm fucking ecstatic when something just plain works and I don't have to fix it.
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