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Opinion |
2 Dec. 07 |
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Changing technology There was a TV program I remember from the fifties that predicted how life would be twenty-five years hence. It was mostly wrong, but some of the predictions actually did come about, albeit decades later. It predicted the flat panel television set, which as you know, never appeared in 1980, but today has made it into many homes. The days of the cathode ray picture tube are gone forever. Neither the home computer nor the Internet was part of those particular predictions either. Computers at the time were as big as a house and wouldn’t do much of anything. The video telephone was touted as the coming thing but it never quite came about. There were technical problems in trying to cram both the video and audio signals into a couple of wires with the existing technology of the day. I think the telephone company decided it wasn’t worth the aggravation or expense and gave up. Mobile telephones were big clunky radios that required the resources of a millionaire to be affordable. The telephone company was a monopoly that charged for every little thing. Transistors had yet to be developed and integrated circuits had yet to be even thought of, so it isn’t surprising that the prognosticators of the future missed out on what telephones would become. Today, the Internet and the technology that made it possible have opened up a plethora of electronic options that we’re never dreamed of back in the fifties. Email, to me at least, is the greatest communications innovation ever invented. I can’t imagine ever going back to letter writing. In cases where I absolutely have to write a letter, it has become a huge chore--so much so that I’m running about a year behind in correspondence to friends without email. I’m hoping they will get a computer before either of us dies of old age. An offshoot of email and the Internet is “Instant Messaging.” It exists under several names, depending on the computer system in use, but it works about the same. The registered user can type back and forth to another registered user on one’s list. My daughter introduced me to it. I thought is was for kids, which it is; but once I discovered how useful it is, I use it to converse will my older relatives and old geezers on my list of friends. The best part is that it’s free. No long distance charges, no cell phone minutes; the price is right. As nifty as IM has proven to be; there’s something even better—Audio Instant Messaging. This requires a microphone on each computer. It’s like talking on the phone, except that it’s free. But wait! This is beginning to sound like a TV commercial. There’s something even better than Audio Instant Messaging—it’s Video Instant Messaging. With an inexpensive video camera and the software that goes with it, you can sit in front of your computer and see the person you’re talking to. You need to have a fast connection for this to work properly. I have DSL and it works great for me. A friend down in Houston introduced it to me about 3 years ago. He had an old piece of junk for a camera he got for free somewhere. Presently I have a Microsoft camera with a built-in microphone that I bought at Wal-Mart for about $40. It clips to the top of my monitor. There are three people I regularly talk to with this gizmo. One is an old buddy living in Seattle, another is a friend working in Poland, and the third is another old friend who lives about 300 miles north of Sydney, Australia. This is better than the video telephone predicted back in the fifties. To be able to have a chin wag with friends in various parts of the world is a big deal to me. Being able to look them in the eye is even better. I hope some of my kinfolks will eventually get on board. Setting up video IM on your computer isn’t difficult. Your kids or their kids can probably do it for you if you’re not computer savvy.
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