Amazing technology

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For my kids, electronic high technology is something that just *is*. It's been around their entire lives, so it's nothing really amazing to them. Amazing would be levitation, or perhaps invisibility, but things like smart phones, X-Box, netbooks, iPods, and even satellite or cable TV are about as commonplace to them as a toilet and air conditioning are to me. My, how the times have changed.

I feel fortunate to be alive right now. Aside from the obvious reasons (being addicted to breathing being foremost on that list), it's because in my lifetime, I have seen truly amazing things and have watched mankind transition from terrestrial technology to true space-age tech. Heck, we went to the moon in 1969 when I was two years old!

I am always amazed by technology. Even stuff I use every day like cell phones or the Internet; it still makes me smile like a loon. Why? Aside from the aforementioned, it's because I remember what it was like to imagine a lot of this stuff before it was available. To be able to realize and experience the technology I used to read about in sci-fi books is like finally getting to open presents on Christmas morning. Yeah, it's that flippin' awesome!

Let's take the Kindle as an example. This item is something that, to me, is most similar to what Douglas Adams wrote about as The Hitchhiker's Guide. The similarity was not lost on the writer of XKCD.

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I love reading, and now that I have a Kindle 2, I read all the time. Every day. For the past few years, most of my reading has been limited to Foreign Affairs magazine, TIME, Entertainment Weekly, or the odd newspaper that would somehow cross my path as well as a bunch of Internet browsing. Now, I'm reading sci-fi again, reading newspapers every morning, and I've got a bunch of books on it waiting for me to read. All that in a device that's about 1/3" thick and the size of a large paperback.

GeekWife said it reminded her a bit of the PADD's in Star Trek, but ended up naming her's Hitchhiker's Guide while mine is named Trillian.

As I read the Kindle, I marvel at the technology within the device: 3G wireless network, epaper, 2GB storage, and decent speed in a form factor that would be laughably impossible only 5 years ago. Heck, I remember when epaper was first being discussed as anew technology over 10 years ago when I worked at Egghead Software in Irvine, CA (part-time while I was stationed at MCAS Tustin in Orange County). It was future-talk; stuff that sounded cool and had great promise, but that we wouldn't see for a long time.

Well, here it is.

I could list for days the number of technologies that make me smile, but the list would get boring after the first few pages. Suffice it to say that when it comes to tech, I'm still like a kid at heart, and I bask in all it's wondrous glory.

I wouldn't have it any other way.