Progress?

I was thinking today about the things in my home/life that I take for granted... things that amazed me when they first came out.
First of all, I was born in December, 1960. For those of you who can't add, (or don't care to do the math) that means I am currently 45 years of age, and not getting any younger, either.

My great grandfather self published a book in 1978 about his memories over eight decades. In his lifetime, he saw mankind go from horse and buggy to man on the moon. He marveled at the changes he'd seen. That always makes me pause. If we make that kind of technological progress in my lifetime, what amazing things am I going to see? I've seen some pretty amazing ones already, actually.

The first item in my house that I think of when my thoughts drift in this direction is the microwave oven. When I was a 12 year old, my family visited OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) in Portland, Oregon. For only two dollars apiece,(1973, folks... a whole damn package of hot dogs was what? 39 cents?) my dad purchased four hot dogs cooked in a microwave oven. The guy in the booth took them from a refrigerator, and placed them on a paper trough thing inside a shiny metal box about the size of a compact car. He adjusted a dial and a couple minutes later, we had hot dogs. They were terrible. Cold in the middle, split on the end, and the microwave made the bread about as tough as a nice, fibrous bamboo leaf.

Here's another totally amazing thing in my house today that I did not have as a kid growing up. A pocket calculator. When I was in the 7th grade, a kid named Glen Simonsen (he grew up to be an accountant... if you had known him, you wouldn't be surprised. He was meant for it. Glasses, geeky, pocket protector, loved Elton John... hey wait, I love Elton John, too!) brought a calculator to school. It was made by Texas Instruments, was almost as big as a paperback book, used six AA batteries and was horrendously expensive. I don't have total recall, but I think it was over a hundred dollars. We all gathered around it and watched him use it. It was very impressive. As I write this, I have a calculator in my wallet. It's the size of a credit card, cost me 49 cents at Goodwill, and works on solar power. If the light's on, the thing works. Amazing.

Here are more:
When I was a kid, we had a rotary dial telephone, a harsh honking noise as a dial tone, and had to stand within three feet of the wall where the telephone was mounted to have a conversation.
Now we have cordless telephones! No more dragging a dripping baby from the bathtub to answer the phone. :) It's also really nice to be able to continue a conversation by going into another room and closing the door when the kids don't recognize that object I'm holding to my ear is a telephone and want to interrupt. (Mom! Hey, Mom! Mom! Mom! Where's my clean socks?)

8 Track Tapes. I remember when they were the NEWEST THING. I resisted getting cassettes when they started becoming popular, because I had a lot of stuff I liked on 8 track and it was damn hard to come up with the money to buy the same stuff on cassette. I really liked it when technology advanced enough that I could record the stuff I had on LP to a cassette, though. Now if I want a cassette, I can get them for 49 cents at Goodwill. My vehicle does not have a CD player, so I do still buy cassettes.

Now, I have a big CD collection... and everyone else is heading for the MP3 format. I still own a working 8 track player. It's not working hard, however, since I don't own any tapes to play in it. The last one I bought new was Cornerstone from Styx. I was 18. In a strange parallel , sort of like bookends in time... my 18 year old son just purchased Cornerstone on CD at the local CD/Game exchange. He loves it. So does my daughter. She's 12.

This is turning into a really long entry. For the sake of brevity, here are some other techno-wonders (at least in my opinion... feel free to add more. I'm sure I can't even think of them all.)

Cell phones
Computers
DVD players
VCRs
Electronic cards that open doors
Digital cameras
ATM cards
Audio Books
Answering machines... they used to have little micro cassettes, but they're digital now.
GPS systems. Even on your car! You can call for help in an instant. If you're incapacitated, your car can call for you.
The WWW. What would your computer be without it?
Video Games! Remember Pong? Atari?
Add yours to the list!