Heh.
Just had an interesting chat with my good buddy SCI-FI. He pops up in the gchat window and we go back forth about what the day holds in our crazy suburban dad lives (on the agenda today in the G. clan: Taking TheBoy to the local Wildlife Sanctuary for Cub Scouts, then winterizing the camper. The fun never ends). He's out running errands, and mentions that he's at the barbershop, next in line, texting on his iPhone.
That just struck me as the oddest of confluences - the barbershop, one of man's oldest institutions, and the iPhone, the ne plus ultra emblem of modern personal communication that allows one unfettered access to all of recorded human history at the swipe of a finger. While he's waiting to get his hair cut - using tools essentially unchanged for certainly decades if not centuries - he's using a device that would have rivaled the wildest science fiction offering even 20 years ago. The old and the new, brought together in an unlikely alliance to aid communication.
I thought about how much things have changed in the time I've known SCI-FI. I met him in 1984, my freshman year of high school - we shared French class together (while he was a year ahead of me, our high school mixed languages and mathematics according to ability, so I had classes with older students in many cases). 1984. Ronald Reagan was in his first term. The "personal computer" was in its infancy - certainly nowhere near as widespread as today. Cell phones had just gotten their start, either gigantic "handhelds" or "bag phones", and only businessmen with fat expense accounts had them. Heh - remember beepers?
Today I have a laptop in my kitchen accessing the internet through the wireless network set up in my house. I can use a small handheld device smaller than a package of cigarettes to surf the web, post updates to my blog, or communicate with folks around the world on a myriad different online applications. I have a cell phone that is wildly outdated by current standards, and even that can take pictures, receive texts, access limited internet, all while costing little money and being easily replaced. That's a crazy amount of change in one generation - I wonder what my grandkids are going to have for gadgets?
Damn, but these sure are interesting times in which to live!
That is all.
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7 comments:
"I wonder what my grandkids are going to have for gadgets?"
Popsickle sticks.. the way things are going ;)
I sometimes wonder if there is a plateau with technology--it seems like things taper off and just become more of the same. Here, I'm thinking of cars and planes, where things haven't really progressed much in recent years.
You totally forgot to mention "SCI-FI was preening over that ridiculous mane of hair of his like an immature starlet."
Did you see the take by Louis CK on Conan's show when he talks about technology? It is a hoot, and largely true.
Typing this on my phone because the wife is about to send me the grocery list from her phone to mine.
Also note that we are both a local call away, but we talk every week on Skype!
Also I say. "Local Call" but what does that even mean these days, my home and cell phones don’t care where I'm calling, so long as its in the country.
It's nice to know there is another child of the 80s loose on the internet blogging scene. It makes me feel like less of a Johnny come lately techno retard. While we're at it, let's not forget the BBS, usenets, newsgroups and other now defunct onramps to the information super highway.
Lets see here:
Communicator on belt? check
Tricorder? Damn near.
Transporter? Gotta work on that.
All in all not a bad start to the 21st Century.
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