My wife recently got a new cell phone, a Droid from Verizon Wireless. She's spent the better part of the past week getting to know the phone and all of the things it can do, and what this thing - and any "smart" phone - is capable of just amazes me! For all intents and purposes, this phone is nothing less than a palm-sized computer that has a phone built in!
Which got me to thinking just how far cell phones and modern technology has come in my lifetime, and believe me, it's a long way! For example...
Calculators - I remember when hand-held calculators first came out. They were small enough to fit in your hand (just barely), they did nothing more than simple math, and they were about a hundred bucks a pop. Now you can buy a calculator the size of a credit card which is capable of doing algarythms, square roots, and all that scientific stuff for under five bucks.
Digital Watches - My parents bought me my first digital watch in 1976 for my birthday. It was a large chrome clunky thing with an LED readout, and you had to push a button to get the time to show. If you pushed the button twice, it would show the date. And that's it. Time, day/date. Nothing more. And the LED readout was red and was so weak that in bright sunlight it was impossible to see unless you shaded it with your hand - which was impossible, because when you let go of the button the numbers went dead. Get it wet, and it was sayonara watch. The batteries were five bucks each, and it took two to run it. And the watch set my parents back a hundred bucks. (I still have it, although it stopped working decades ago.) Now, you can go into Kmart or Wally World and buy a digital watch with a light, two time zones, a stopwatch, a timer, two alarms, and a calendar for about ten bucks. And they're made of plastic and nylon, are waterproof down to 30 meters (90 feet for us Americans), and are damned near indestructable. When the batteries die, they cost about a buck to replace.
Global Positioning Systems - When these gizmos first came out for the military, they were not all that big by military standards. You could hold the unit in your hand, although only for a couple of minutes because it was pretty heavy. The screen wasn't all that big and was two different shades of green - light green and dark green - but it was amazing because the damned thing would tell you exactly where you were on the map showing on the screen, and you could use it like a big compass to find your way to wherever you needed to go. This was one gadget that as soon as the civilian community got their hands on it, it took off like a rocket to the moon. GPS systems now not only show you where in the world (literally) you are, but you can use them to find where you want to go and have the GPS make out a route for you. The screens are full color, they talk to you, they'll show you where anything you need to know about such as gas staions, restaurants, hospitals, police stations, museums, etc are and will route you to it, and they're small enough to fit into the pocket - the top pocket, that is - of a jeans jacket. I have one that I use for my motorcycle, and I love it. The battery life is about 20 hours, but of course it hooks up to your car for power also through the power port. (They used to call them "cigarette lighter ports," but not since they stopped putting cigarette lighters and ashtrays in cars.) Once a pricey option on only the most expensive cars, in-dash GPS units are now standard equipment on brands such as Kia and Hyundai.
Compact Disc Players - When these first came out in the mid-1980s my first wife wanted one, and I was a little hesitant. I mean, really, two hundred bucks for something that played a compact disc? Just one disc at a time? But she wanted it, I loved her, so she got it. It was outdated and obsolete within a year. Not her fault, to be sure, but the technology advanced that much, that fast. This unit was big, about a foot wide, ten inches deep, and about three inches high, and played one disc; you can now get an in-dash CD player in your car that will hold up to six discs, and you can program it with the push of a single button to play the songs or the discs at random so you don't know what music is coming next. I had one of these in my Saturn, and when I lived in New Jersey I made several trips to my parent's house in North Carolina. I would load the player up with some homemade discs that had about 22 songs each on them, and wouldn't have to change discs until I got to Petersburg, Virginia - 8 hours later!
Cell phones - I saved what I think is the best for last. When cellular phones first came out in the early 1990's they were big, clunky, had crappy battery life, were expensive as hell, and were called "mobile phones." When the first truly hand-held cell phones first came out they were also big and clunky, and had a crappy battery life. And they were expensive as hell. The first cell phone I ever got was a Motorola flip phone, a gray plastic thing that was pretty small for its day. All it did was make calls - that's it. The readout consisted of a window with a monocolor display that showed the number calling you or the number you were calling. Airtime was expensive as hell, and I know of many a young airman in the Air Force that spent their whole paycheck paying their cell phone bill because they talked too much. There were no "plans" back then - you paid .33 cents or better per minute, period, and the longer you yakked the bigger your bill. And all the phones did was make calls - nothing else.
And now? Jeez...I could talk about what a cell phone will do now for an hour and barely cover it all. Like I said, the Droid my wife has is nothing less than a miniature computer/GPS/datebook/planner/web surfer/camera/video camera/phone that is small enough to fit in the top pocket of a jeans jacket, and to see the thing work just amazes me. And I can't wait until it's my turn to get one in November!
All of this makes me think...if these are just some of the advances I've seen in my lifetime, I can hardly imagine what it must be like to be someone my parent's age - 81 and 79 - and to have seen all that they've seen. I mean, they remember when the telephone was a novelty, and not everybody had one! And television? Didn't exist when they were growing up! Blows my mind to think about it...
...and makes me wonder just what marvels my children and their children are going to see.
IHC
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