Saw an article a few days ago detailing the professions that have arisen since the turn of the century. So many things that we take for granted now did not exist even recently. It’s scary to think that people can’t make do without some of these conveniences nowadays.
This got me thinking of the changes that have taken place in my lifetime since I was a kid growing up in Houston all those decades back and if these changes have really improved my life, complicated it, or are in fact stifling it.
I had no internet or computers as a child. My first brush with these was early in high school and it was laughably primitive. Computing was mainly a one machine affair with crude graphics, monocolor TV screens and little to no storage capacity. Video games were similarly limited. My first pocket video game was the colecovision football game.
Texting was unheard of. Beepers were high-tech gadgets. Fax machines were the wonder of the age and some cost as much as $5000. Phones were firmly plugged into the wall and using them required parental consent. We only had 2 phones, one in the kitchen and one in my parent’s room. I am probably one of the last people who you will meet that knows what a Telex machine is.
My cell phone can now carry out all the functions of the last 2 paragraphs combined and can do many other things besides.
Black and white television sets were still widely available. I had a small portable black and white TV. In the living room we had a Curtis Mathes 25 inch color TV. Curtis Mathes was at the time the Samsung/Sony/LG of televisions and the television console itself was the size of small table. Cable TV existed but I didn’t get this till after college. We had a large overly complicated TV aerial on the roof that inevitably blew over or fell after a large storm and I had to climb on the roof several times to rearrange it and shout through the chimney “Is the picture better or worse?” VCR’s were the best recording technology and I was the only one in the family who understood how to program them.
Television is in the process of ceding its dominance over the American household to mobile devices and the internet. The process is long-term but definitely taking place. We are no longer bound by the 3 TV networks of old and can watch what we want, where we want, when we want.
My father had a 1982 Oldsmobile Cutlass and he kept that car for nearly 12 years. I learned to drive on that car and when my dad was on business trips I would drive that to high school. As late as 1990 he had complete strangers drive up to the house and offer to buy it. Eventually he passed it down to a granddaughter. The most advanced electronics in the car were in the analog radio.
Last month I drove a rental car that did everything but fly and had electronics undreamt of in the 80s.
I could go on but won’t. Do these new things improve my life? In some ways yes. I am not tied to traditional office spaces anymore for work, I can access a nearly endless library of data, information, and entertainment at a stroke of a finger.
But I have to wonder, is that in fact the trap? If tomorrow the internet crashed, if all these techno toys shut down at once and in fact were in danger of never returning, how would we move forward? What would the social media specialists do? The web page designers, the e-sales people? How would we access our clients overseas? Would the vast forests of TV aerials sprout up again? Are we the masters of our technology or are we its slaves?
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