The musings of a middleaged workaholic with nothing on his desk #3

[dalt01]

ahh....2010 is here, the biggest thing about 2009 for me is that i lived through all of it, i really consider that a plus. you would think that now i would spend the next few minutes of your time talking about the new year and the old one. what is on my mind however is technology. it seems that we have made a huge jump recently in that area. some of it we are seeing right here. a book that is not a book, a coffee pot that takes all the waste out of it, an "app" that makes your trip to WDW easier. you can get any question answered with the click of a mouse. you can talk to, text to, argue with or just about anything else to someone halfway around the world in real time. it made me think of what may have happened in the past and how history might have changed if this sort of technology had been available then. a guy in the birdcage dance hall texts Ike Clanton and says get the hell out of that corral Wyatt and his bros. are one the way there.......an IM from someone in Japan to the commander of the naval forces at Pearl Harbor.....Hitler does not over run poland cause he is in the middle of reading War and Peace on his Kindle..... Lincoln does not go to Gettysburg to give his famous address, he just blogs it. It is really not about all that though. what it is about is what are we missing now? is all the fun and mystery being sucked out of living? We know everything within minutes of it happening so things cannot develope in a normal manor. intead of normal progression everything is reaction. the other day i was waiting for my daughter in the mall and she texted me and asked me to come over to wal mart which was a couple miles away so i left the mall......perhaps at that very moment Wyatt, Doc, Morgan and Virgil were up by sears making their way towards me..................i will never know......

 

[chaoscent]

I am of an age that when I first started college (1966) I did my papers on a typewriter, then an electric typewriter, then I moved to a selectric (with the balls that moved, not keys) typewriter. I remember my first computer, a 386. I didn't get the 486 as I didn't see the need for it. When I did my dissertation, I did it on a computer. My boss commented that as his was typed, an extra sentence in the middle of the paragraph meant typing all of the pages over again. I just did corrections as needed and the pages moved them selves. Becuase of the computer I could sit in my home office and do literature searches at 3:00 am without leaving the house. I ran and analyzed my own data, and didn't have to key punch cards to do it. THe miracle of electronica has made my life easier & it really is amazing when you think of it.

I do think that advances do have their drawbacks, but I got a kindle for Christmas that I love, I have an Ipod that has turned me onto podcasts and I find out news about far flung friends from face book.

I may be missing something, but I am also gaining something. Now if I could just master texting,
Penny