Re: My iPod
I'm hundreds of miles from home doing some general contracting. I didn't bring a laptop. I brought my iPod. It is less than half the thickness of a pack of cigs. Slightly smaller too.
Just a couple of minutes ago, a man stopped and asked me for directions. I'm in a strange city. I pull out my iPod, open TomTom, and within two minutes had a map he could see and written instructions to his destination.
A couple of days ago, I was at the home of Mickey and Minnie. At night, I took a cool HD video of the monorail rushing through the Grand Californian Hotel.
Later that evening, while my chum was playing hot and heavy with a German / Australian Shepard, I was talking to the humans. They said their daughter was renting a house for $1,700. a month. I said that was crazy. Pulled out my iPod with my HP 12 C app. ( Hewlett Packard 12c, a real estate calculator that I have used for decades). I quickly punched in some numbers and showed them with a monthly payment of $1,700., she could be owning a house worth $350,000, and getting a tax write off.
I collected their contact info, took their picture, noted their dog's name on my iPod as we talked.
Later I went on line (with my iPod) found house that matched their daughter's needs and income, sent them our mortgage broker's contact info and an introduction.
While I'm working, I have my iPod hooked to a sound system. I listen to everything from Bing Crosby to Jimmy Buffett, Don Ho, the Byrds, Beatles, Elvis, Buck Owens, and the Ronettes.
In an instant, I can find a nearby Chevron station, a Starbucks, or anything else.
With a couple of clicks I can view weather on Haiti, check traffic on the freeways, or watch a live cam of the breakers at Steamers Lane or the skiers at Kirkwood.
I listen to live streaming of my home radio stations, and with my Slingbox, watch my own cable TV.
Not that long ago, pre Netscape browser, pre Yahoo!, pre google, I was thrilled to visit far away libraries on the Internet with my Mac desktop with black and white screen.
To top it off, I can read a couple of books a week on my kindle app.
I haven't even scratched the surface.
Size matters. I have everything I need IT wise and it also has a level app for when I'm building a fence.
This is absolutely incredible. I remember as a teenager, from about 1954 to 1956, I bought Popular Science magazine every month, read the Auto Road Tests first and then went to a section on how things would be in the future.
Every issue had a section which projected what things might be like in 30years, 50 years, 60 years. The magazine staff were way off. The things projected didn't really come to pass but things they never even dreamed of are now commonplace.
WHAT POPULAR SCIENCE PREDICTED - They were mainly limited to cars being able to fly or being able to convert to boats. This was the type of stuff featured in the earlier James Bond movies such as "Goldfinger". Popular Science also foresaw color television and they envisioned manufacturers being able to send sample products over the television to vending machine type apparatus which would be placed under the TV and dispense sample products.
They also predicted that a person could get in their car and preset a destination and that the car would take them there without the driver actually having to drive. This was to be possible only on special major highways to be set up for this.
They predicated something like the Dick Tracy Two - Way wrist radio where there would be a speaker and microphone in one's wrist watch whereby people could carry on a conversation at some distance, usually within the same city. Telephone service with a video picture was also predicted. Something akin to a FAX machine was predicted. People flying in jet planes was predicted. It was also predicted that we would land on the moon and set up a permanent base there. THAT IS ALL THE MAJOR THINGS WHICH I REMEMBER.
WHAT POPULAR SCIENCE DID NOT PREDICT - No personal computers at home and no lap top computers. No Global Positioning System, No Cell Phones, except for the wrist radio type of thing. Computers were thought of as just large Mainframe computers, servicing offices and perhaps aerospace and aeronautics. NO HOME USE WAS FORSEEN. NOTHING EVEN REMOTELY LIKE THE INTERNET WAS FORSEEN.
Since no personal computers were predicted, the internet and all the technical explosion which has taken place base on computing WERE NOT PREDICTED.
What Carmelo described in his post as now being quite routine was not even conceived as being possible only 55 years ago!
We used to say that our grandparents, born in the 1880's and 1890's were born into a horse and buggy world, without electricity and running water and plumbing in their homes. Many of these people lived into the 1970's and 80's and they had seen so much change in their lives we thought it was overwhelming. Horse and buggy with no aircraft in 1900 and a man on the moon in 1969.
But my generation has seen even more change than theirs. Growing up as a kid in the 1940's with not even a television in our house. We did have radio and we loved it. Music system? A crude 78 rpm vinyl record machine with one simple speaker. Taking a picture? How about a Kodak which took pictures in Black and White. Color was just coming in around 1942. How about the family car? A 1941 Chevy with a Stovebolt 6 engine, 3 on the tree transmission, no radio and no heater, about 80 horsepower and a top speed around 65 to 70 mph. AM radio and a heater were available but our car did not have them. The most high tech toy? Gilbert Co.'s Erector Set (no it was not a sex toy). You could get an erector set in levels from about 1 to 12. From a certain level, maybe 4 or 5, the set came with an electric motor. A kid could build something that could be plugged in and ran, such as a windmill.
Clothes were washed in an archaic washer with a wringer on it and dried on a clothes line and we had an ice box instead of a refrigerator. Refrigerator's did exist but due to WWII going on, they were not being sold so a lot of families still had ice boxes until 1946.
Compare this scenario from about 70 years ago to the scenario Carmelo described. What a difference in tech in only 70 years! It is truly amazing!! None of the experts even came close to predicting the tech that is now available.
Lakey
