It’s a sad day: Kodak is closing shop. The company that allowed us to know what mom and dad looked like when they were kids, what our grand and great parents looked like at all is gone. Kodak aimed at recording -for the first time in history and for the sake of the common man- memories, families, friendships, beach trips and teenage romances that quite a few times became married couples and families and on and on! Cameras were not ubiquitous and film needed to be bought, preserved and developed. Only the closest to us could find a place on our pictures because film real estate was precious and bad pictures could not be deleted and taken again. This is why most of those faces belong to people we loved or cared for or had real, lasting fun with. In a nutshell, family and friends. We only cared about showing bright smiles and hiding pimples, braces or undone pigtails, not about pixels or megabytes. Now, as we are growing older, we care about handing down these memories to our progeny so the bonds remain. Kodak finally went under because it could not keep up with this vain, fast-changing digital world. Nowadays people do not care about families because marriages come apart just as soon as they come together. Youngsters freely take pictures of any John or Jane Doe they met the night before. They brag about having hundreds of friends across a computer wire, friendships as shallow as a bottle cork and as fleeting as the life of the latest smartphone on the market. I loathe the buzz and hype about geniuses in Palo Alto changing the world with their pads and phones and tablets. These people mean nothing to me except an easier way of exchanging and storing data. It was George Eastman who allowed me to keep a hold on all those wonderful characters who share my blood and the most memorable moments of my life. He is my real 20th Century hero.
Experto en Análisis de Sistemas, desde 1984 ha ayudado a organizar la información de muchas empresas en Venezuela y España, como Grupo ACO, Informática El Corte Inglés, ONCE y Carrefour. Ha sido también traductor de innumerables documentales y telenovelas en inglés, español y portugués (que seguramente has visto en televisión en los últimos 25 años) e instructor de inglés y español en colegios, embajadas y empresas transnacionales. Además es Trusted Teacher del Foreign and Commonwealth Office del Reino Unido.
Ahora se encarga de llevar el mundo virtual al aula y de influir en los niñitos para que se aficionen al jazz y a cantar rock progresivo en buen inglés y de enseñar a los jóvenes cómo aprovechar las ventajas del bilingüismo en sus vidas profesionales.
