I hear ya... don't get me wrong... the telecommunications revolution and information revolution have REALLY measurably improved our lives... I grew up in the 70's when it seemed that for the better part of a decade all there was on TV was the Watergate hearings, ABSCAM, the winddown in Vietnam, Cambodia, high gas prices, Middle East turmoil, OPEC, and Cold War nuclear war scares... I remember rotary phones and party lines, and being in the country, my grandparents phone high on the bedroom wall, the ONLY phone in the house, a huge rotary monstrosity the size of one of those old phone booth ones... (how many here remember phone booths!??) I remember when we FINALLY got off the party line system and didn't have to have the nosy old Czech neighbor ladies listening in on all your calls, when the first touch-tone phones started coming in out in the country, and new fangled "video games" like the Atari 2600 and such came out... when I was in 7th grade a friend of mine in school got something called a "Coleco-vision" that played video games and he lived, eat, and breathed nothing but video games. I remember that being a big deal, because prior to that you had to go to the pool hall in town that had some video game machines in the back... "quarter eaters"... and that's all there was (well, I remember having "PONG" back in the late 70's and thinking THAT was the pinnacle of entertainment... sure wish I still had the original PONG console...) Getting to play video games nonstop over a weekend sleepover at a buddies house-- unheard of! When I was a freshman in high school, *I* bought the first VCR in our family... a "top loader" VHS model from Sears that I paid $350 for, way back in about 1986... and believe me when I tell you-- $350 in '86 was BBBBIIIIIGGGG MONEY back then!!! (that was my farm income share for the YEAR!) The rest of the family liked renting tapes SO much that they'd come over to Grandma's house (where I lived) and watch movies to the wee small hours of the morning and keep us awake all night while I was trying to get sleep for school... don't know how my brother and sister managed to go to school... (Dad worked a weird shift with 4 days on, 4 days off, 3 days on, 1 day off, 3 days on, 4 days off, then repeat... so he was off every other week most of the week and would stay up all night at will). FINALLY after a year or so they bought their own VCR after nearly wearing mine out... We got a camcorder that year too... a big honkin' VHS one the size of a professional camera that the local TV station reporters use nowdays... recorded a lot of stuff on that old bugger... When I was a senior, I bought a DIGITAL Toshiba VCR... you could "freeze frame" regular TV shows as they were broadcast (without taping them, like a DVR today) which was high-tech in 89 for a country boy! Went in partners with my mom on the family's first computer... I put in $500, she put in $500 (which was HUGE money in 88!)... an old Radio Shack Tandy 1000... had a clock speed of a whopping 4 MHz, 512 K of RAM, and dual floppy drives... the only thing I used it for was flying "F-19 Stealth Fighter" Microsoft simulator game on there, bombing the heck out of Iran and Libya and Eastern Poland... (fun game... wish I could find it nowdays!) After high school when I was in mechanic's school, I bought a pocket color TV that my buddies and I watched the Gulf War 1 on (Desert Storm) back in early 91 while we ate our lunch (supper actually, since I went to the 1-9:30 PM sessions). Paid like $150 for that, which wasn't too bad... found it in the attic a couple years ago, apparently in good shape, but there's no signals for it to receive anymore...) I remember back when CARPHONES were exactly that... for the CAR... had a buddy of my dad's that I was partner in a hay meadow with (he owned the land, I provided the work, we split the hay) that had a carphone in his little Toyota pickup... this was when a carphone came in a big pack about the size of a small softsided lunch cooler nowdays (about big enough to hold a six pack). Thought that was pretty cool, but INSANELY expensive at the time!) I remember when my folks first got internet in the early to mid-90's, the old dial-up that was PAINFULLY slow (14.4 baud modems and all that, and then came 28.8 modems and we thought we'd died and gone to heaven... LOL
) I remember when my mom got addicted to ICQ (instant messaging "chat" type thing) and I started "computer dating", and ended up getting married to my wife in 2000 after meeting her on the internet and being 'penpals' for a year via email, and dating "IRL" for a few months... which was a good thing for someone who is fairly shy and was PAINFULLY shy at the time!
Nowdays, it's a whole different world... I can read messages on here from various rocketeers from around the WORLD who share the same interests and have interesting stories to tell, questions to ask, or information to share, and I can ask my own or answer as best I can to try to help out... I remember when "research" was going to the library and checking out every Bill Gunston book you could find on rockets, missiles, and military hardware, and trying to glean as much information as you could to build a new or interesting design for a rocket that caught your eye... NOW I can go look at stuff written by Von Braun and other luminaries of the space program on the NASA Technical Resource Server of actual stuff they thought about, modifications they proposed to existing hardware, designs they tried to get approval to build, or things that sadly never got beyond the paper... Heck I can look up North Korean missile designs, Red Chinese nuclear missiles, look at India's nuclear weapon and missile designs, the latest Russian space booster projects, heck even thier proposals that never got built, all without leaving the computer chair across the room... it's AMAZING... and its TOTALLY taken for granted by kids nowdays... heck by most of us adults to, who, if they're like me and only about 41, should remember the days when basically the only information you had any realistic access to was probably in the reference section of your local library, which for us country folks was 5 miles away for even the "branch" library and 15 miles to the county library... and beyond that...??? I didn't get a cell phone of my own (used my wife's sometimes) until around 2001/2, after I was married... my folks had gotten them, but I was behind the curve on that one... still not thrilled with them (seems the more advanced they get, the more mucked up they get-- but then I'm getting older and "more crotchety" with technology than I used to be...) I remember when a phone call was something you did from home, or if you could beg the person behind the counter at the store to let you make a LOCAL call... (back when they weren't so afraid that they put an inch of bulletproof glass between you and them...) I remember a LOT of midnight runs to town to get a gallon of milk after forgetting it at the store and NOBODY having any way to call and remind you... and I helped more than a few people with flat tires that broke down in front of the farm, when your only choice was thumbing a ride, begging a stranger for help, or walking to the nearest house and asking to use the phone... (and hope you didn't get knocked in the head or something). Had to knock on a few doors and beg to use the phone myself a time or two in the "old days" when the truck or car crapped out... Now we call or text without thinking... about the SILLIEST things sometimes...
It's all amazing, to see how far we've come in just the last 30 years or so... and kinda hard to fathom where we'll likely be in another 30... BUT, like everything, it's got its good and bad points...
Later! OL JR
