Behind the scenes of technology

I was innocently surfing tonight when I was all too suddenly broadsided by a careening semitrailer of technological illiteracy.

03:13:48 Unknown_Player(1): if i stick songs on itunes from a cd, do those songs take up a lot more space than an mp3
03:14:07 I: that’s what an mp3 is
03:14:14 I: a song that was on a cd and was then moved to a computer
03:14:36 Unknown_Player(1): i thought you had to convert them or something
03:14:59 I: that’s also what an mp3 is, it’s a converted file of audio, usually extracted from an audio cd
03:15:16 Unknown_Player(1): oh, ok
03:15:24 Unknown_Player(1): my bad.
03:15:45 I: the reason people encode (convert) their audio is because a CD can store around 700MB of data, but if you rip it to mp3, it can be only 100MB or so
03:16:09 I: but it depends on the quality at which you rip… higher quality, bigger filesize, but it still won’t be as big as a full cd
03:18:29 Unknown_Player(1): oh. i duno i just imported a bunch of songs from cds
03:18:54 I: well good yeah that should work too
03:19:30 Unknown_Player(1): yay

Jordan commiserated, saying “I wish I knew what some people think goes on behind the scenes of technology.” This reminds me of a video my mother recently sent me, saying that I would probably find it very representative of the relationship I have with her. (She was wrong.)

Here’s to magic, eh?