Somewhere during the reading of the second half of the book, I realized that I have lived through much of the explosion of technology that we take for granted today. Even in doing this assignment, I am using the technology that was written about in the second half of the book. I am writing on a PC clone (Dell), using Windows Explorer to open the URL of my blog, typing on an ergonomic keyboard and seeing it appear on the flat screen monitor, and posting my comments after previewing my work. These innovations were impossible a few decades ago but today we take it all for granted. Some of these "new" innovations were created after years of hard of work, some were fluke ideas that took off and were accepted by the populace, some were improvements on previous inventions of people past but all have become second nature and integral in our daily routine.
Being that I am older than most in this class, I still remember the Commodore 64 and still have a Apple IIB or C up in my attic. There wasn't anything written in the book about the size of the disks that held the memory in the Apple but they were gigantic 5 1/2 " bendable floppy disks that were heat sensitive and easily breakable. I remember the games that you could play, made up of mainly crude graphics made with dots and dashes but we were so excited that we could play anything at home we didn't care. I also recall that for one Christmas, Santa brought me an Atari. It was the hottest new toy, and to be able to play Pong with a friend made me the coolest kid on my block. Through the years after having children of my own, Santa has brought various Nintendos, beginning with the 8 bit grey box, the 64, the GameCube and now the wii. We have also received from a very generous Santa Sega, several versions of Xbox, not to mention Gameboys, Gameboy colors, Gameboy advances, DSs, and PSPs. The video game market has had a very strong supporter in our family. With that said, I have seen firsthand the progression of technology that has gone through the years, and I can attest that the improvement in the realism and interactive ability of each new generation of game system has surpassed the previous and the will so again when the new systems come out, probably in time for Santa to strike again. What I am trying to say is that we don't ever question the improvement of technology, we just purchase the next new thing that comes out, assuming it is bigger and better than the one we already have. This mentality is pervasive worldwide but especially prevalent in the United States, and is one of the reasons why many families are in debt and young people find themselves more and more in serious financial straits even though they may be working and making a "living".
Towards the end of the book, Computers, the Life Story of Technology, Swedin and Ferro say, "By improving the means by which we communicate, entertain ourselves, travel, calculate, and do a thousand other things, the computer will be an essential tool in reaching for the stars and our quest for all that might follow." I believe that the computer and all related technology is already an essential tool, all encompassing and invasive in our lives and we can't live without them even for a day. Even if you were to ignore your personal computer, there is almost nothing that you can do in the course of a day that does not touch some form of technology. It is here to stay whether you like it or not.
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