Down a lonely hall at my work, hanging on the wall between two cork partitions to help limit noise, is a telephone. I don't think that I have seen anyone use it in ten years. I remember the outside telephone booths I would use as a teen. The only possible use would be calling a girl. Why in the world would I call a friend to talk.
As I grew older and was in the army, I recall waiting to make calls from the the long silver lines of telephones at various airports. The phone receiver that I used (once) to call home from the other side of the world came out of a box and you had to say over at the end of your statement and wait for the other party to repeat over after they had responded.
The back of our television was always off as we had to pull the tubes and take them to the hardware store for testing when problems arose, which was often. My music came from a record player, a table radio or a new and exciting Flavor Radio transistor from Radio Shack that you could take anywhere with you. Not that we were without high tech games as the little football players vibrated along the field until touched by an opposing vibrating player.
I remember being amazed by the curved screen in the Cineramic film How The West Was Won in 1962. Bowling was my passion. Whether in my younger days in Buffalo, New York or my teens in Pittsburgh, I would walk miles with my ball to the alleys. I walked into a bowling alley twice recently just to look it over and was disappointed. We put men on the moon, send cameras through the bloodstream and constructed Nancy Pelosi with such intricacy that you cannot even see the battery pack in her back or the wires giving her movement and speech, but we have gone downhill in recording a score at a bowling alley. The alley I was in last week had a television screen right up with the overhead scores.
Did President Obama order televisions everywhere so he could communicate instructions and I didn't hear about it? Worst of all the score only went five frames back. More than five frames back must be unreliable ancient history in this postmodern culture. And when you took pictures with your camera, you were reasonably certain they would be there for future generations to see. Today, I check the news or research a question on my Iphone at least 40 times a day. I talk back to my GPS. I'd rather forget my wallet than my XM satellite radio on vacation. And I'm a Luddite. Where are we going? Londoners are photographed 400 times a day on their streets on average. The ultra rich are taking short vacations to space. I saw a picture of Al Gore in an overcoat. Things are going crazy. You can vote almost anywhere, anytime you want, "I'll take a Big Mac Meal and cast a vote for Obama in 2012." "Would you like to "biggie size" that, it comes with two votes?" The "C" virus is due in two days. My computer may crash, all computers in the world may crash. No more teleprompter for Barack Obama, no more Wall Street, no more instructions sent from bin Laden, no more hearing the guy at the next table telling tell his buddy how much he has to pay for child support. Ah...wishful thinking.
On a serious note, The Conficker C virus that may activate on April 1st is disconcerting in many ways. It may seriously damage computers and even extend into the internet. The fact that the most knowledgable computer experts in the world, and law enforcement agencies, have so far been ineffective in finding the originators is more disturbing than the virus itself.
As I grew older and was in the army, I recall waiting to make calls from the the long silver lines of telephones at various airports. The phone receiver that I used (once) to call home from the other side of the world came out of a box and you had to say over at the end of your statement and wait for the other party to repeat over after they had responded.
The back of our television was always off as we had to pull the tubes and take them to the hardware store for testing when problems arose, which was often. My music came from a record player, a table radio or a new and exciting Flavor Radio transistor from Radio Shack that you could take anywhere with you. Not that we were without high tech games as the little football players vibrated along the field until touched by an opposing vibrating player.
I remember being amazed by the curved screen in the Cineramic film How The West Was Won in 1962. Bowling was my passion. Whether in my younger days in Buffalo, New York or my teens in Pittsburgh, I would walk miles with my ball to the alleys. I walked into a bowling alley twice recently just to look it over and was disappointed. We put men on the moon, send cameras through the bloodstream and constructed Nancy Pelosi with such intricacy that you cannot even see the battery pack in her back or the wires giving her movement and speech, but we have gone downhill in recording a score at a bowling alley. The alley I was in last week had a television screen right up with the overhead scores.
Did President Obama order televisions everywhere so he could communicate instructions and I didn't hear about it? Worst of all the score only went five frames back. More than five frames back must be unreliable ancient history in this postmodern culture. And when you took pictures with your camera, you were reasonably certain they would be there for future generations to see. Today, I check the news or research a question on my Iphone at least 40 times a day. I talk back to my GPS. I'd rather forget my wallet than my XM satellite radio on vacation. And I'm a Luddite. Where are we going? Londoners are photographed 400 times a day on their streets on average. The ultra rich are taking short vacations to space. I saw a picture of Al Gore in an overcoat. Things are going crazy. You can vote almost anywhere, anytime you want, "I'll take a Big Mac Meal and cast a vote for Obama in 2012." "Would you like to "biggie size" that, it comes with two votes?" The "C" virus is due in two days. My computer may crash, all computers in the world may crash. No more teleprompter for Barack Obama, no more Wall Street, no more instructions sent from bin Laden, no more hearing the guy at the next table telling tell his buddy how much he has to pay for child support. Ah...wishful thinking.
On a serious note, The Conficker C virus that may activate on April 1st is disconcerting in many ways. It may seriously damage computers and even extend into the internet. The fact that the most knowledgable computer experts in the world, and law enforcement agencies, have so far been ineffective in finding the originators is more disturbing than the virus itself.
