So...anyway, here's technology in 10-year intervals as I experienced it over my life span PLUS one heretofore unknown bit of technology I predict will be part of everyday life 10 years in the future!
1st 10 years: automatic transition in cars or portable radio--meaning you could lift it off the ground.
2nd 10 years: television! (yeah....i was a junior in high school when TV arrived in the Dwyer home in Fargo)
3rd 10 years: stereo or LP records or color TV
4th 10 years: computers! The computers at work were room-sized. My first computer-related job was proofreading data cards before they were inserted into the computer to be tallied.
5th 10 years: personal computers
6th 10 years: cell phones or portable video cameras or lasers.
7th 10 years: cochlear implant or Kindle or Nook or iPad
8th 10 years (THE PREDICTION): houses and cars go solar--all of them--or gene repair (curing illnesses by tinkering with or replacing genes)
I'm leaving out a lot of things like automatic coffee makers and washers, electric clothes dryers, crockpots, nylon/orlon/polyester fabrics--things we didn't have when I was very small but are ubiquitous now. Cars have gotten swankier and fatter and hungrier, but there's not been a whole lot of change in their basic operation (burn fuel to go).
Make your own list...it's fun to think about these things. Find a way to share it with the rest of us.
I can't help but think that if antibiotics had been around, Greatgrandma would have not died of TB way too soon! There have been some marvelous leaps in medicine. Louise Brown, the world's first test tube baby gave hope to millions of couples with fertility problems.
ReplyDeleteI've heard it said that it was your mom's generation--and my mom's mom's generation--that really saw the world change. This group went from buggies to space flight, barely pausing to travel on trains and in cars. Antibiotics were another biggie...and the first computers were actually hatched in the 1950's. The Web is really, I think, the only major change in technology that we can claim. (Thank you Tim Berners-Lee who like Jonas Salk never took a dime from his invention). But you are right that while they lived through these inventions, many of them did not actually experience them. That was left to us. No wonder who chunks of our psyche are in arrears and the Right wing's screeches echo on our tv sets. We are folks with "creeds outworn." And, despite the Palins and DeMints, we keep on marching.
ReplyDeleteMy friend's older sister died at the horribly young age of 30 in 1980. Every now and again when I use an iPod or a cell phone or a digital camera, I think of her and picture her asked what in God's name I'm doing with that 'little box.'
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother (born in 1876) immigrated to Canada from England in 1908 or so and, as far as I know, never actually spoke to any of her family again. My daughter lives 3,000 kms away from me and we talk on the phone whenever we want for as long as we want at no charge beyond our monthly phone package bills and text daily. Kinda freaky, huh?
And America went to the Moon (using imported 70 yr old foreign technology) and they then lost the ability to do so.
ReplyDeleteDumbing down... :-(
I have gone from listening on one of the first telephones when I was a baby to the digital age. The many changes are awesome. Women used scrub boards to do laundry, then wringer washers and now automatic ones. My mom cooked on a coal stove while I have an electric one with a glass top.
ReplyDeleteMedicine is perhaps the most welcome change. Like you, I have a cochlear implant and would be completely deaf without it. I also have a steel hip and would be unable to walk before that invention. I am so grateful for most of the changes in my lifetime.
We hope the future includes green energy in all countries, thus saving the planet. We hope that cancer and other devastating diseases will be eradicated, and that justice will actually triumph in the courts and in the legislatures.
Most of all, I hope that the populous become better educated and learn to think critically.
This is fun! I've done the same on my site with a link to this post.
ReplyDeletehttp://bit.ly/bV9AN9
ronnie
Peggy: I should have put penicillin in my list for the first 10 years, but I didn't think of it as technology, per se. Before penicillin came sulfa, with which you had to consume seemingly gallons of water!!
ReplyDeleteWrath of Dawn: Wonder about what our descendants will say, "Gee, wouldn't grandma be surprised?"
Stu: Sadly, you won't have seen anything yet if the Tea Party Republicans get into office and abolish the Department of Education
Darlene: It's interesting that much of the technology we can think of replaces simple everyday events: going from hither to yon faster than a horse or our own two feet can take us, washing clothes and dishes, hearing, talking to other people, seeing (so far, nobody has mentioned contact lenses), home entertainment that does not involve listening to aunt sadie play the violin or gathering around the piano to sing....
Ronnie: visited and enjoyed your list...but did I miss cochlear implants?
Wellll, we definitely need a device to make dumb people smarter and the internets will not be the answer. Something in the water supply, perhaps?
ReplyDeleteModern technology has left me in the dust. I would like to go back to the days of Victrolas and telephones where you ask the operator for the number. I have no idea what to do with an I-pod or a blackberry.
ReplyDeleteMy dad was born in 1882 and died in 1977.... just imagine the changes he saw in his lifetime!
ReplyDeleteshammy: 95 is a nice, round number. my aunt mary lived to be 95, too.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good meme... I don't think I could do it so well, but I often remind myself how different the world was when I was a little girl. I think the 20th century was extraordinary.
ReplyDeleteFor me I would say that the internet changed my life. I live thousands of miles away from most of my family. Now they are close in a way that would have seemed impossible only 30 years ago.
NDB: making dumb people smarter sounds very dangerous to me. they'd still be dumb but more clever.
ReplyDelete20th century: i agree....i think my blackberry has torpedoed my intelligence.
DO: you're so right...but most of my siblings avoid internet like the plague. It's largely my grandchildren and grandnieces & nephews that have leapt over the distances, thanks be. they make an effort to stay in touch even though i've *gasp* quit facebook!