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| China is working on lessening its air pollution, although this photo of Shenyang, China is quite frightening. The worst culprit for pollution right now, though, is India. Being able to see the mountains in Colorado without the haze of the traffic? Not as common as it was when I grew up there. Our planet is dying and we're turning our backs on her. |
In spite of all of this, it's rather amazing to think of all I've experienced in my 60+ years and how incredible the world might be in the future for my grand nieces and nephews. We've actually come a long way technologically, but have achieved next to nothing to achieve the really important things - peace, mutual understanding, and a world that isn't dying because of our very heavy footprint upon it.
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| This mid-1950's TV in console was put into our den. We never had a television in our living room, and in fact, my husband and I still keep any TV's away from that room. |
Technology has come a long way since the days of my youth. My parents had a TV similar to what's pictured above. It was B/W because we didn't have a lot of money, and they probably bought it used. We watched it together for 1-2 hours a night and it was kept off at all other times. Bedtime curfew was strictly enforced, so I fell asleep listening to my parents watching the nightly news.
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| The 1982 Compaq portable computer was such a radical idea. Being able to take a computer along with you to your job or your home was shocking. |
Computers were large, clunky things that were horribly expensive and took up entire rooms with their processors. After I was married and working up here in Minnesota, I was the Administrative Assistant for an accounting firm. It was considered amazing when Compaq came out with their portable computer and we were able to send our auditors out with a computer instead of a calculator. That was in the early 1980's.
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| This early 1990 car phone is similar to one DH had at that time. I needed to be able to contact him when he was out of town. The partners at the accounting office who had the computers above also each had one of these. Very unsafe to answer these in traffic! Very expensive, heavy, and unreliable. |
Portable phones didn't exist for the general public until the 1990's. Before then, we used corded land line phones and we paid by the minute for our long distance. I had a boyfriend who lived in Tennessee when I was in college and our weekly chats in the 1970's, half initiated by him and half by me, cost me upwards of $60/month for phone charges. That was one hour, two times a month for $60. OUCH! At that time I could get a reasonable bag of groceries for almost $100. Can't do that now.
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| I'm due to upgrade my phone late this year. I'm thinking about getting the new Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, but haven't made up my mind yet. I have time. I know I want to stick with an Android phone, though, and it has to fit into my pockets. |
Now we carry our computers, phones and a lot more on our cell phones and they fit in our pockets. People are getting computer chips inserted into themselves to get automated entry into clubs or have automated payments at checkouts. Babies are growing up with computers and cellular entertainment. It makes me wonder what will happen next. I guess that's what keeps me excited and looking forward to the next day. I hope that minds as brilliant as those who have steered our technology through the past 60+ years will be able to turn that brilliance to our world and come up with a way to save it from ourselves. At least that's my birthday hope. Happy Wednesday to all of you, I'm off to the pool to start my next year of life by doing something I love.
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