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Sunday, February 1. 2009
Plus Ca Change
Sometimes I just sit here in the middle of the night, Grateful Dead in my ear, reliving the days from the past with memories of Gina Lollobrigida and watching the Midnight Special and In Concert when rock music exploded, becoming the big business it is today.It’s a common occurrence when any of us gets to a certain age. We watch the young ones getting it on with their exploration, discovering the moments we discovered — as if they were brand new — when we were their age. There’s no harm in letting them believe we didn’t know life existed when we were young.
The moments can be entertaining though, listening to or reading the 20-somethings as they feel new experiences, meet new adventures in adulthood, the fun part of it anyway. A thirteen year old today, coming of age when we can have in the palm of our hand, a device that gives us a telephone, television, radio — or our own collection if music — video games and access to the Internet, will assume, no doubt, all those generations that came before are completely lost with such technology, ignorant of the fact that these generations have been creating and perfecting the technology he or she takes so for granted.
A while ago on MySpace, my nephew introduced me to a discussion forum in which technology was the topic. One of the participants remarked that people my age — the moms and dads in the room — couldn’t possibly understand the universal implications of such a fast and easy communication tool like MySpace, instant messaging and every other form of chatting with each other via the World Wide Web and it’s associated electrons. The exact reply: “It’s cool and I bet some ppl. who are way older than us, are prob shocked when reading on how much 2 guys in there mid-20’s can appreciate the internet for what it really is. 20 years ago, this couldn’t happen.”
Well, for someone who watched the technology of the Internet develop that was a fairly entertaining observation. Twenty years ago, the Internet meant mounting a phone to a modem, then listening to the modem dial and then hoping the person on the other end had their phone properly mounted to a modem and were waiting for our transmission — text only, no photos.
Back in the day we had to connect to someplace like a university or technology company that had the proper computing strength to host a server capable of being a hub for transmitting our information. It was the beginning of the information highway which has now gone past being a super highway to a space-based highway as more and more people connect to the Internet via wireless hand held devices that get their signals from satellites.Most of us already have wi-fi (is that term still used?) in our homes and we look for places like Starbucks that offer wireless Internet access. It draws customers and if you need an Internet connection, you can get it for the price of a cup of coffee, about two bucks at Starbucks, less at McDonalds.
True, for my generation, our worldview of technology was formed by the emergence of quality audio in the 1970’s as we looked to own bigger and better stereo systems. It was hard to wrap my head around the fact that these small speakers connected to the television (among other devices) were better that those 50 pound behemoths that stood four feet tall. But they are.
Technology improves and sometimes it improves our lives. Today, after owning a mobile phone (I hesitate to call it a “cell” phone now, “cell” technology is long out of date) for only … eight years, it’s impossible to think of living without one. A mobile phone could possibly save your life — as long as we can get a connection. As of yet I haven’t upgraded to one of those wondrous devices that connects me to the Internet, the cost is too high for me, but it would be nice to have the full keyboard, if you want to call it that, to make texting easier.The “keyboards” now are becoming virtual. Each key is just an icon on the screen and we can get a device that will give you the click sound of a keyboard, be it a computer or even a typewriter. Typewriters. The favorite man of letters for our generation, Hunter S. Thompson, wouldn’t — couldn’t — write on anything except an IBM Selectric. I no longer own a typewriter, unless it’s collecting dust in storage.
Some technology is better left behind, but not necessarily forgotten. It represents an age when I was young and thought my Dad had no clue what a stereo was and would be “shocked watching how much 2 guys in there mid-20’s can appreciate music for what it really is.”
Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
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