The other day my parents and I were talking about how much technology has changed in the short time I have been on this earth.
I remember the first computer we had. My dad, an engineer, rigged up a computer with one of those 13-inch televisions for the screen. We have a picture somewhere of him using it.
And remember the printer paper that was one continuous sheet you had to tear the edges off when it came out?
Now I can print from my phone or tablet to the printer without even plugging anything in.
When I was a freshman in high school I got my first cellphone, because of the Internet.
At the time we just had one phone line and dial-up Internet. If someone was online it tied up our one phone line.
I was in the high school band and our directors decided to let us leave the basketball game we were playing at early.
I tried calling my parents to get me but kept getting the busy signal because someone was on the Internet. The band teachers and everyone else left ... I was sitting outside alone in the dark when my mom finally came to get me.
The next day we got a second phone line and I got a cellphone.
Nowadays you don’t even need a phone line to get Internet. I should know, we don’t have a home phone at all but we do get DSL.
We were reminiscing on that story the other night as we pondered all the electronics we have now. My dad pointed out that they have three high definition satellite boxes running off the Internet, two desktop computers and a couple laptops. Not to mention at the time we were all on our cellphones, iPads and Kindle Fire at the same time.
Gone are the days of driving down to the local video store, picking out a movie and going home to watch it. Thanks to today’s technology, all I have to do is pull out my phone, tablet, computer or video game system to stream a movie from Netflix or another provider. I can watch wherever I want.
One of my favorite things is FaceTime on Apple products. We use it almost daily so my sister, who is in college in Huntsville, and my brother, who is in college in Arkansas, can see their niece. They’re there to watch London eating solid food for the first time, to see her roll over or even bath time. It’s almost as good as seeing her in person.
I’m sure somewhere down the road we will laugh at that technology and think its outdated. But for now we are on the top of the line equipment.
