Friday, August 31, 2007

Well we did it.

We have been dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th Century. Yes, I know this is the 21st Century – it’s taking us a while to get caught up.
We now have satellite TV in our home. My assessment so far? We have just begun paying for more commercials.
In a couple weeks, we’ll have internet access from home as well.
I remember when I was really young and started becoming aware of man made things in outer space, like satellites and rockets and manned flights to the moon. I cheered each step of progress that was made, but I never dreamed I might be able to understand the equipment involved; such as satellites and computers. If you had told me then that I would someday have a device in my very own front yard that receives a signal from a satellite in space, I would not have believed you. Furthermore, if you had tried to convince me that the ONLY reason I have this device is for entertainment purposes, I would have asked, “Why? Are they going to stop printing books?”
When the two young men (Jordan and Michael) who installed and activated the receiver left yesterday, I just stood there and looked at it for a while. I thought about these two young men, who were very polite and efficient, but each of them had only a high school education and company training to do the job. Yet, they knew exactly what to do so that my receiver was getting the correct signal from the correct satellite somewhere out there in space beyond the southern sky. Didn’t it used to take a rocket scientist to know how to do this stuff?
And if you had told me that I would have not one, but THREE computers in my home and that I would know how to operate them as easily as I can operate an electric mixer, I would have laughed at you, hopped on my bike and pedaled away to my friend’s house to share the laugh with her. And then, to hear of the computer in my home having access to information on computers all over the world through something called an internet? I would have looked down the street at the telephone and electrical poles and wondered where in the heck they were going to string up all the wiring it would require to get that done. I thought radio signals were only for farm reports, weather outlooks and big band music.
I used to marvel at the advances in transportation made in the past 100 years, but that progress, as impressive as it is – is dwarfed by the advances in information technology over the past ten years.

9 comments:

Sue said...

I am probably one of the last people to not have a computer in my home. I am hoping to have one before the end of the year.
Sue

Janell said...

You'll like having it. I use mine a lot and Jack & Em, of course, use theirs' for school.

LaDawn said...

Imagine what the future holds....

Mary Connealy said...

If you allow yourself to think about it, without going nuts, just imagine, moving your mouse around on the start up screen. Imagine the computer is reading all those movements, detecting when the mouse rolls over an icon, detecting a right or left click, opening it, tossing letters up on a word document, changing the font, the color, the size, centering it all.
How can it possibly know all of that. How, in this relatively tiny computer tower are there enough instructions, enough bits and bytes to tell that mouse everything, to store all that info.
It just beyond boggles the mind...if you allow yourself ot think about it.
So mostly....I don't. I just use the spooky thing

cdroses said...

So Wi-Fi and laptops would have just totally blown you away! :)
Now you can access computer info from your cell phone (with the right service)
Our church was getting daily blogs from one of our mission trips to Tanzania, thanks to laptops and wireless internet.

LaDawn said...

And bringing all of us together. Can't get any better than that, eh?

LaDawn said...

PS Which is why is get frustrated when people get scared of computers and won't use them.....

stephanie said...

This made me chuckle and reflect.

Mary Connealy said...

Hey, guys, I'm going to be in the Omaha Lit Fest on September 15th. It's down town at the W. Dale Clark Library, which is at 15th and Farnam, so right in the Olde Market if you need an excuse to spend a day down there.
The panel is about inspirational fiction, but the theme of the Lit Fest is Depraved Woman Writers (and others)...
I think it's a reference to

Okay, I checked Dostoyefsky. We're really not depraved...at least I have no plans to be!!!