technology is so cool/how did I use to live?
So I was walking down 36th street towards 3rd Ave on Sunday. My fiance, her roomie and I had made plans to eat at a restaurant in the area. I got there before they did and found that the restaurant was closed due to renovations or something. I immediately phoned them and managed to catch them just as they were getting out of the subway station at 33rd and Park. The roomie suggested another restaurant, but couldn't remember where it was. I told them to come meet me and in the meanwhile I would look up the location. I used my Samsung A900 to do a Google search for the restaurant and within a minute had a mini-google map on the phone's screen. I scrolled down a bit and there was the phone number which I could "click" and the phone started dialing. By the time the girls showed up, I knew exactly where we were going and had put our name on the seating list.
Over dinner that night, while the girls were talking about wedding centerpieces or something, I drifted off and started thinking about my life just a scant 10 years ago. I was in high school just before mobile phones became as standard as TrapperKeepers used to be. Since then, technology has made my life easier to the point where I can't even recall how I did it before! As if I am in some Orwellian mindset without any memory. I live in a world in which thousands of hours of music and thousands of books can be carried in my pocket or in my backpack. Where answers to almost any question are as easy to get as flipping open a mobile phone. I'm not so old that technology scares me. I was born in 1978 and my first computer was an Apple IIe. I love new gadgets and consider myself an early adopter of new technology. Still, I can't help but be amazed sometimes at how incredible modern technology is. Not just mobile communications and computing, but biotech, materials science and more.
Apologies for the pseudo-profound ramblings I have just written, but I feel lucky to have been born long enough ago where I can remember, at least abstractly, that things weren't always as they are today. That I had to wait to see how my pictures developed. That I had to navigate using paper maps without GPS. That I had to record mix tapes and wait while the deck fast-forwarded to the next song... I have seen the world change in the proverbial blink of an eye, and am thankful for it.
I am sure that I am not the only one who is struck by how truly awesome the pace of technological advancement has become. I would love to read anyone else's story on how technology has made your life easier.
Over dinner that night, while the girls were talking about wedding centerpieces or something, I drifted off and started thinking about my life just a scant 10 years ago. I was in high school just before mobile phones became as standard as TrapperKeepers used to be. Since then, technology has made my life easier to the point where I can't even recall how I did it before! As if I am in some Orwellian mindset without any memory. I live in a world in which thousands of hours of music and thousands of books can be carried in my pocket or in my backpack. Where answers to almost any question are as easy to get as flipping open a mobile phone. I'm not so old that technology scares me. I was born in 1978 and my first computer was an Apple IIe. I love new gadgets and consider myself an early adopter of new technology. Still, I can't help but be amazed sometimes at how incredible modern technology is. Not just mobile communications and computing, but biotech, materials science and more.
Apologies for the pseudo-profound ramblings I have just written, but I feel lucky to have been born long enough ago where I can remember, at least abstractly, that things weren't always as they are today. That I had to wait to see how my pictures developed. That I had to navigate using paper maps without GPS. That I had to record mix tapes and wait while the deck fast-forwarded to the next song... I have seen the world change in the proverbial blink of an eye, and am thankful for it.
I am sure that I am not the only one who is struck by how truly awesome the pace of technological advancement has become. I would love to read anyone else's story on how technology has made your life easier.
Comments
Originally posted by CosmoNut
It is pretty amazing, and I'm about the same age as you so I can completely relate. On the flip side, however, a lot of technology has made us much more lazy and significantly less healthy on average. I also tend to think that society is growing ever more impatient as we get faster and faster goodies. No longer can we wait to get home to call someone. No, we have to call them from the car right now. Obviously, in your case a cell phone was the perfect solution, but so many people rely too much on technology to sustain their impatience. It's a little disheartening.
Certainly I appreciate what you are saying. Some of this technology has become so pervasive that it has changed the norms by which we conduct our lives. Phones in movie theaters and restaurants are a perfect example. Perhaps more emphasis ought to be placed on the fact that one may turn their gadgets off (and perhaps one should more often).
the other day we were looking for a restarant as well and i flipped open my Cingular 8125 and hopped and google and found that the "click-to-call" number was uber-convienant.
its amazing how many things we dont even realize that make our lives so much better and "easier"
i save sooo much time throughout every single day b/c of technology
i mean my phone ALONE probably saves me 30 minutes a day - it displays all my emails, the weather, some news, bluetooth allows me to multi-task, etc.
in the words of kipp - "i love technology"
You're right though, the impact of technology can be amazing. The wife and I finally broke down and bought our first cell phones, but didn't want to make too big a leap (and too big a bill) at first and only have the basic phones, no internet/bluetooth, etc.
Originally posted by iPoster
You young people and your newfangled gadgets! Why, I remember having to actually get up off the couch to change one of the four TV channels!
Interestingly enough, my (late) grandparents used to have a TV with what seemed to be one of the earliest wireless remotes. It used SONAR to operate. Whenever you pressed a button on the remote, a soft high-pitched tone would come out of the remote, the TV would "hear" it and change accordingly.
My latest favorite gadget is the DVR. It's so very true that once you have one you'll never watch TV the same again.
Anybody else feel naked if they leave home and forget their cell phone? Terrible.
My father still has anold dial type phonr that he still uses. It seems lilke it takes for ever to make a call on that phone
I will reiterate again how damn cool it is to be able to digitize all my music and then be able to access it from anywhere in the house and then stream it to any combination of sound systems. To walk down memory lane again, I remember when I was a kid, that my dad and I, during a Minnesota winter, had to run wiring through the framed walls of the family's house while it was under construction so that we could play music in different rooms simultaneously. Now with the help of a few cheap pieces of hardware, I can wirelessly do the same thing using any old stereo that I have lying around.
At work my amazement continues. General Electric has a major medical imaging R&D center here in Milwaukee. The Medical College of Wisconsin gets first crack at a lot of the stuff they are developing. I admitted a man with new onset stroke-like symptoms and we obtained the following image of his neck (Don't worry, it is HIPAA compliant):
So we have basically defined the anatomy of this guy's neck without cutting him open or injecting him with any harfmul dyes or radioactive tracers. Tell me this isn't damn cool!
Amazing... I have used that word several times, but it doesn't lose any meaning or impact for me. Whether it is something relatively trivial like being able to have every speaker in my house wirelessly play the same song, or something lifesaving like being able to virtually walk a surgeon through his surgery before he even puts soap to his hands, I am amazed by what out clever brains have invented. Bravo to science, scientists and the engineers that make this all possible.
Anyone else have a technological epiphany lately?