Wonders Will Never Cease
The other day I watched a friend describing a conversation he'd recently had. Instead of holding his hand up to his ear, pinkie and pointer extended in the classic "talking on the phone" gesture, he held his imaginary iPhone, air-texting the messages back and forth.
And today, a friend sent me an hysterically funny link to a website devoted to those funny, embarassing, Freudian, wish-you-could-take-them-back, "did they do that on purpose?" auto-correct moments that have only existed as long as the iPhone has been around. (I still insist that iPhone auto-corrects "Harvard" to "garbage" on purpose!) http://damnyouautocorrect.com/
So I started cataloging things that we now take for granted as part of our lives that when I was a child - heck, when I was a young adult! - didn't exist.
Of course, email. And the horror of "reply all." All you have to do at a cocktail party now is say, "Did you ever hit 'reply all?'" to be inundated with funny, sad, blush-inducing moments.
Of course, nobody "googled" anything in 1995. Now, there are those among us who would probably give up our beloved dog, not to mention first-born, before we gave up our Google.
We take for granted, no matter where we are, what time of day or night it is, that we can get money, check our balances, listen to our favorite songs (you can't possibly know what deprivation is unless you lived in a time when the only way to hear your favorite song was to wait for it to occur randomly on the radio... you know, the radio. A funny little device with knobs. Knobs? Oh... never mind...), watch a movie, talk to a friend anywhere in the world. Instantly. No charge.
We can shoot, edit, and share our own movies. High def.
We can download ten or twenty books onto a device the size of a notepad and carry them around with us. With tons of room to spare.
We can share our thoughts, dreams, hopes, and plans for lunch with our 1478 best friends instantaneously - with photos! We can watch a tv show with our family members who are 500 miles away, and comment on the action via text messages with all the joy of sharing our reactions and none of the annoying noise. And we can point our smart phone at the show as the credits are playing a great new song and invoke the app Shazaam and find out what the song is, go to iTunes and buy it and download it and listen - all in about 5 minutes. Or if we're not quite so nice, we can check for a torrent of the song. Torrent? Well, that's a file that broken up into little bits and spread out over so many different computers it can't really be said to exist anyway, effectively bypassing copyright issues.
We can buy groceries, cosmetics, clothing, sporting goods, books, drugs, office supplies, and a boyfriend, and never leave the house. Heck, never leave the chair, or our comfy jammies. We can PhotoShop 10 years or 10 pounds off our image, diagnose our fainting spells, and have a Skype conversation with family members whom we'd otherwise never get to see.
We can play games, research a term paper, settle an argument, and chase down the truth about UFOs all with the flick of a wrist. And all at the same time. Oh, the power!
I watched a one year old play with my iPhone recently: he grabbed it in his chubby little hands and wasn't going to give it up. He already knew how to flick the screen to move from one "page" to another, and to push the button at the bottom to return to the menu screens. His four-year-old sister could play music and games, and could send a text message with "Hi" and her name.
What, I can only shake my head and wonder, will the world be like for these little ones as they grow up with all this - taking it for granted as part of the universe they command? Where will they take it? Prometheus comes to mind.
Wish I was going to be around to watch it all unfold!
And today, a friend sent me an hysterically funny link to a website devoted to those funny, embarassing, Freudian, wish-you-could-take-them-back, "did they do that on purpose?" auto-correct moments that have only existed as long as the iPhone has been around. (I still insist that iPhone auto-corrects "Harvard" to "garbage" on purpose!) http://damnyouautocorrect.com/
So I started cataloging things that we now take for granted as part of our lives that when I was a child - heck, when I was a young adult! - didn't exist.
Of course, email. And the horror of "reply all." All you have to do at a cocktail party now is say, "Did you ever hit 'reply all?'" to be inundated with funny, sad, blush-inducing moments.
Of course, nobody "googled" anything in 1995. Now, there are those among us who would probably give up our beloved dog, not to mention first-born, before we gave up our Google.
We take for granted, no matter where we are, what time of day or night it is, that we can get money, check our balances, listen to our favorite songs (you can't possibly know what deprivation is unless you lived in a time when the only way to hear your favorite song was to wait for it to occur randomly on the radio... you know, the radio. A funny little device with knobs. Knobs? Oh... never mind...), watch a movie, talk to a friend anywhere in the world. Instantly. No charge.
We can shoot, edit, and share our own movies. High def.
We can download ten or twenty books onto a device the size of a notepad and carry them around with us. With tons of room to spare.
We can share our thoughts, dreams, hopes, and plans for lunch with our 1478 best friends instantaneously - with photos! We can watch a tv show with our family members who are 500 miles away, and comment on the action via text messages with all the joy of sharing our reactions and none of the annoying noise. And we can point our smart phone at the show as the credits are playing a great new song and invoke the app Shazaam and find out what the song is, go to iTunes and buy it and download it and listen - all in about 5 minutes. Or if we're not quite so nice, we can check for a torrent of the song. Torrent? Well, that's a file that broken up into little bits and spread out over so many different computers it can't really be said to exist anyway, effectively bypassing copyright issues.
We can buy groceries, cosmetics, clothing, sporting goods, books, drugs, office supplies, and a boyfriend, and never leave the house. Heck, never leave the chair, or our comfy jammies. We can PhotoShop 10 years or 10 pounds off our image, diagnose our fainting spells, and have a Skype conversation with family members whom we'd otherwise never get to see.
We can play games, research a term paper, settle an argument, and chase down the truth about UFOs all with the flick of a wrist. And all at the same time. Oh, the power!
I watched a one year old play with my iPhone recently: he grabbed it in his chubby little hands and wasn't going to give it up. He already knew how to flick the screen to move from one "page" to another, and to push the button at the bottom to return to the menu screens. His four-year-old sister could play music and games, and could send a text message with "Hi" and her name.
What, I can only shake my head and wonder, will the world be like for these little ones as they grow up with all this - taking it for granted as part of the universe they command? Where will they take it? Prometheus comes to mind.
Wish I was going to be around to watch it all unfold!
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