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As I have said numerous times on this forum, I hate all technology invented in the 21st century. And before I get scolded (again), the Internet was up and running in the 20th century, as were DVDs, CDs, microwaves, electricity, etc., etc. etc.
I think my biggest complaint is the prevalence of cellphones and Smartphones -- and I hate texting (and refuse to do it).
Remember "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Space 1999"?
And while we stop to think about all the technological advances we thought would happen by 2001, here's another thought: some of the people posting on this forum weren't even born yet by 2001. Time is passing, where's my transporter beam?
I love technology; I have used it since day one of my career, and it is getting better and better and better. The amount that it makes life easier is not to be doubted, and I don't have complaints about any of it really. Any technologies that I don't like, I simply don't use. People complain about Facebook. Then don't have an account and use it; it is that simple. Problems with smartphones? Don't use one. Problem with other people and smartphones? That is not the technology, it is the social aspect that the technology promoted. Frankly, I can't even begin to delineate the positives that technology provides; Medical breakthroughs, Internet advances, online banking, etc. We are tech heavy in this household. But of all the technologies that I loved watching the changes in (now that I am retired), my favorites would be in:
1) Digital Photography. It was the focus of my engineering career (I had designed digital cameras and medical imaging systems since 1983). Once digital camera image quality surpassed film, it altered my photographic hobby permanently. Switched over from SLRs years ago to DSLRs, and they get better every year.
2) Digital Recording. I have a small digital recording studio, and the quality of the latest 24-bit high speed A/Ds is nothing short of astounding. A month ago, I finally retired my favorite Tascam Analog Recording/Mixing system, and switched over to a Focusrite 2i4 and a software Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). The results of the audio quality literally amaze me, and I am hardly a newbie to tech innovation.
I have to think of my Grandfather who was born in 1889 (we think). 24 years after the end of the Civil War. He lived long enough to see the Moon Landing live on tv.
For myself, being a young child in the 60’s, I thought by time we got to the year 2000 we would all be living like The Jetsons, with flying cars and robot maids.
When I went to college, no internet, no PC, one wall phone which I did not own, cable TV was just re-broadcasting other stations, no CNN, no 100's of stations, typed papers on a typewriter. No phone answering machine either, no ATM's. You had to cash a check from home. When I drove across country, my only communication device was a CB radio. I cooked swanson TV dinners in the stove. Had almost nothing but my stereo and records. Drinking age was 19 for beer and wine. Record stores doubled as head shops, you bought your music and bong at the same place. FM radio was the thing, you listened at night and studied. Often you had no idea what rock stars looked like until you saw them live in concert. All you had were album covers to go off of. No VCR's either, so you either saw Saturday night live - live - or you missed it. You maybe heard from your parents once a week. Maybe. No cameras in phones either, so your drunken parties stayed in the past. Hardly anybody had a camera anyway. News was at 5:30, 3 networks and you believed what they said. Same with newspapers. Journalism was a real profession. I did not know a single college student that was a Republican. We were anti military, nobody even wanted recruiters on campus. You could get lost on purpose and nobody knew where you were. Nobody could find you. You could disappear for days and then re-appear and nobody really thought that much about it. You could just say you were hanging with your girlfriend at her place and nobody cared where you were. In some ways, it was great. And it seems like a lost time now.
Now, with the internet and cell phones people are in constant contact. The internet has destroyed the music business, I can't remember the last time I bought a CD and I sold my records years ago. Commercial radio is a joke, as is AM. Technology has run over everything. And in some ways it is good to be able to call a wrecker from your cell phone and get text messages from friends and family. But Facebook? Re-connecting with a bunch of people you want to forget in the first place? And politics? Everybody going to websites and watching TV that confirms their already held beliefs? Look around at the country and then at our President, who is clearly unfit for office. He never would have gotten anywhere in the 1970's. Jimmy Carter, a decent man as President seems quaint. So technology has been good in some ways, but overall I think it has had a harmful effect on the country. I have a real fear that things are going in a worse direction and technology has had a big hand in that.
I love certain aspects of our new technology (personal computers, GPS, plasma and OLED tvs, compact discs and DVDs, digital animation/GCI, microwaves and induction ranges, digital photography, and of course the internet) but am by no means the person who embraces every new gadget or "improvement" to existing tech that comes down the pike.
As for phones, I have absolutely no desire to ever have a smartphone and don't ever intend to. My 2008 LG flip phone is fine with me and when Verizon eliminates its 2G network a year from now it will be a PITA to find a comparable replacement.
My view of tech is that as long as it's not used in a manner that either harms or impinges upon the rights, privacy, or personal space of other people, it's fine. Someone else choosing to spend hundreds of dollars on the latest smart home wifi gadget is fine as long as they aren't asking me to foot any part of the bill. Some corporation using the technology inherent in that gadget to track or spy on the user of said gadget is not fine. Ditto for smartphones. It's not the technology that's bad, but the uses to which it may be put.
Other than following Moore's Law, 2018 technology isn't all that different from when I was an undergrad in the late-1970s. I had a Unix VAX super-mini in some Electrical Engineering coursework. Everything shrank and got faster but main(){printf("Hello World\n);} hasn't changed. You just need to pull in a million lines of class libraries so you don't have to write everything from scratch. Same with cars. My current car is better in every way than the 1972 Ford Maverick POS I drove in college but it's still just a car. The internet is the only truly disruptive thing but I was working for an original internet company in 1987 as a 20-something. With GPS, my rounds of job interviews in 1980 included a trip to Dallas in 1980 to interview with Texas Instruments Equipment Division for a backpack-mounted GPS system for the military. GPS has been around my whole adult life.
No, but I’m a slow adapter of new technology. But I like online banking, deposit checks online is a plus, unless I want to walk to the local branch for exercise. I share a NETFLFIX account with my daughter, but I still don’t watch a lot of stuff there. Recently, my husband and I did watch Gentlemen prefer Blondes and the French Connection, all free, on PBS, but we enjoyed it thoroughly. I have an Instagram account strictly for communication with my daughters.
My car is where technology has helped me and my husband tremendously. YouTube is also a good way for a lot of DIY videos, if we forget or dont know how todo, there’s YouTube somewhere out there.
Many here have seen it rapidly advance and I am just curious what your thoughts are? Does it bother you? Do you like it?
Nope, not at all.
My career was in IT. Programmer, network/server admin, system architect and database admin.
For better or worse this is the world we, and those like me, dreamed of creating.
My first exposure to computer networking was back in 70s.
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Time is passing, where's my transporter beam?
Good and bad
