Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It’s interesting to watch how fast things are moving. Solid media (tapes, records, CDs, DVDs, etc.) are giving way to streaming sources. Desktop computers have given up a lot of ground to tablets using cloud based data. Things are overall getting smarter, faster, smaller, more capable, cheaper.....interesting to watch. I like a lot of it.
What I miss, and would like to see before I check out of this life, is the next real revolution. The singularity/conscious AI, fusion energy, something that is a truly once in a lifetime event. What we’re seeing now is extremely rapid evolution of existing technologies. I wonder what the next thing will be that none of us really see coming. Those are the exciting things to me.
I find our new personal tech interesting. Watching all the "screen-heads" on their cell phones and personal electronic devices makes me wonder about human discourse -- and literacy. Glad I grew up when I did..
Sure, I see some benefits of cell-phones and such, but the addiction and over-use is worrisome to me.
Me, I spend way too much time on the 'net, so I am not immune by any means...
What's amazing is the ease we have in retrieving virtually any kind of information in our pockets.
Fifteen years ago, there's no way I'd have the ability to find a great restaurant in an area I know nothing about while literally driving through town on an interstate. I can do that now.
I spent years acquiring a massive digital music library. I have around 300GB of music. My $9.99/month Apple Music subscription covers basically everything in my personal library, and I don't have to spend the time hunting what artists released what, downloading it, throwing it into the right directory, tagging/getting album artwork, etc.
I uploaded my personal library into iTunes Match, and now have great quality audio in place of what was sometimes poor legacy audio.
I also have a DVD library with hundreds of movies. Many of those are available on Netflix or similar services. I actually sold most of those. I still have lots of BluRays, but anything older than that is gone.
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.
Hope I am around for a long time.
I often wish we would have had digital when my mother was alive. She was the picture taker in the family and would have taken many, many more if paying for developing would have been eliminated. She would have loved the Internet and the research made possible by it. She was born in 1908 and would have gladly embraced today's technology.
Me, I'm a Tek_Freek. lol I think that explains it pretty well.
When I was a child and everyone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up I had no answer.
That question was answered in 1981 when we bought our first IBM PC-1. 33 years old before I knew. That led to a career in computing and finally, my own consulting company. I'm still cleaning up problems for my retired friends and enjoying it immensely.
I often wish we would have had digital when my mother was alive. She was the picture taker in the family and would have taken many, many more if paying for developing would have been eliminated. She would have loved the Internet and the research made possible by it. She was born in 1908 and would have gladly embraced today's technology.
Me, I'm a Tek_Freek. lol I think that explains it pretty well.
When I was a child and everyone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up I had no answer.
That question was answered in 1981 when we bought our first IBM PC-1. 33 years old before I knew. That led to a career in computing and finally, my own consulting company. I'm still cleaning up problems for my retired friends and enjoying it immensely.
I remember the first mass market digital cameras back in the early 2000s and costing hundreds. An average phone today can take much better pics than that.
Many here have seen it rapidly advance and I am just curious what your thoughts are? Does it bother you? Do you like it?
With social media as an aspect of this question, I think the young generation and their parents haven't been careful enough about how much time is spent on devices.
I like the fact that lies are not as easily hidden when there is an iphone taking video.
Cameras on cops is a good step. Being able to use my computer as a media server is awesome and casting YouTube to my TV is great. Streaming video is tops..
Since many of us began using computers very extensively at work 30 years ago around 1987 and then at home shortly afterward, it has seemed like a natural progression of technology.
And since our jobs required using a computer extensively 30 years ago, it is commonplace, along with having a computer at home shortly afterward.
You are right. Long before Microsoft came up with Windows I used a computer at work and eventually bought a home computer using DOS commands. I remember using the Netscape browser and how Microsoft jumped aboard with Internet Explorer. In hindsight boss and I looked at buying Microsoft stock, we blew it!
What I did not keep up with is cell phones. I had a company cell phone big old clunker in a case and a pager. Advanced to my little handy flip phone which was only a phone and held on to it with Alltel until Verizon bought them out. Received my first iPhone this year a gift from hubby. I am still lost with the iPhone and have kept my flip phone just in case. But I still have my landline phone too.
I am "only" 84. I remember when ball point pens first appeared. The first computer that I ever saw used punch cards in the form of government pay checks. It was incredible to see $$s moving that fast. When I was a teen, I only knew one person that had a car with an automatic transmission. My first 7 cars were all stick shift. I was 19 when my parents got the first TV, B&W, remotes had not been invented yet. I was retired 5 years when I got my first computer. I just got my first cell phone last July, learning to use it is a PITA.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
