You have to admit we live in an interesting age – the technical revolution.
These days you can’t even comprehend what we would do without our computers, tablets and cell phones.
In fact, those “housebound” weeks as we muddled through the pandemic era, were less boring since we could change channels, buy movies or just watch one of the many channels on the TV, read our Kindle or Nook, or view Facebook and browse the internet on computer, tablet or phone.
Of course, Jack’s absolute favorite activity now that he is retired, is taking a nap while I work on the computer here in the office. Some things simply never change, but at our age, they do slow down…
Not so when it comes to technology. A few years back our grandson had his cell phone stolen and with all of the information he kept on that thing – just about his whole life and career were taken too. Since he was self-employed and was going to college at the time, all of his assignments, appointments, messages, and important personal information was … just gone.
Luckily he did have quite a bit “backed up” on the cloud, (another innovation) but he still had a time sorting everything out.
Since then, Jack and I have been “hacked,” but fortunately, we didn’t lose any vital information. We did however have to back up, then “wipe our hard drive, change all our credit cards and close our Amazon account, before we could get back to normal.
Times like those, I really felt my age. Just a few years ago, to steal that much information, you would have needed a U-Haul truck and a couple of beefy guys with dollies to carry the file cabinets… now it is all in the computer, usually a laptop, or in the cloud, on memory sticks or on a disk.
When I was growing up, we didn’t have any of that. We didn’t even have a TV or a phone because the telephone line ended about a half-mile south of our house, which was only 4 ½ miles outside of town.
We did get a TV when I was about 12, but it only received two channels – Bay City channel 5 and Cadillac channel 10. It (the TV) was only black and white but we thought that was wonderful.
After graduating, I went to work for General Telephone as an “Operator” with lines to plug in and connect one phone to another. Back then (and it really doesn’t seem that long ago) you had to call the operator to reach anyone.
When the South Branch Ranch, a couple of miles north of us, had a telephone line put in that summer of 1964, I took advantage of it, got my folks connected, and got them a phone. It was a party line, but still a connection to the outside world for my aging parents, since soon after that I moved downstate to go to college.
We were married with three kids before I had my first computer, and I was working for a newspaper for some time before I had my first electric typewriter.
Then things went pretty crazy.
Suddenly there were big old clunky machines that printed words out one letter at a time. Then came a “Compugraphic” typesetting machine that actually printed whole stories out almost as fast as you could type them. (Google that to see a picture of one of those huge machines…)
Around the time we moved to Clare in 1983, the first personal computers (Remember Radio Shack’s Tandys?) showed up on the business scene. When Wilcox Enterprises bought the “Farwell News and Review” in 1988, they put in the first Fax machine in the area, connected to another one in Clarkston. Next we had brand new computers, and information systems much faster and easier to use.
From that time to this is a blur of changes. Computers got faster and faster and smaller and smaller. The internet connected the whole world and suddenly you can talk, even face-to-face, or send email to anyone and they see it almost instantly.
Cell phones made an accident on a lonely road less of a nightmare – but of course they still cause a few accidents as well.
Like I said, It is an interesting time to be alive…and for the last 15 years I have been practicing another “first” – social distancing – doing all my writing right here at home!! Even that is faster than ever now. We just got cable, fiber optic cable internet, no less.
Makes you wonder what is next …Why, AI of course.
