How has technology changed your life? Well that really depends on how old you are. For someone that has grown up in the last twenty years its not so much. But for someone older that can remember a time before cell phones quit a bit.
My father was born in 1935 and he past in 2017. He didn’t have a email account or a computer even. There was one in the house but he couldn’t even turn it on and log in. I was born in 1957 and my first computer I bought was in 1995. I have slowly worked my way up to IT manager for my company and have seen the advancement and rolls the technology has had in the world. Well my world which is pretty limited compared to the rest of the world.
Growing up we had land lines that you had to sit next to to talk to the other person. You were limited how far you could carry the phone by how long the cord was. Our tv was black and white and that was about it for the tech at the time. The first video game I saw was pong. Even back then I spent hours playing that game. Then the personal computers came out and I really didn’t get to involved with them until the 1990’s. They were suppose to start making people’s lives better and take the world into the future. Well for most of us it was not so straight forward. Then windows came along and it got a little better we could play solitaire. For a lot of people getting into the computer age it was pretty expensive and not a lot of us could understand it.
Then they started rolling out the internet. You could connect and start interacting with other people. You’ve got mail ! Things started to change. The first cell phone that I remember was a brick that you had to mount in your car. I never had one as it was to expensive. It soon became a brick that you could carry but not many did. They quickly became smaller and more areas supported them so more people started using them. I would say that in the last 20 years things have really taken off. Tech has gotten smaller, faster, more advanced and is now in everything we do. For better or worse we can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
As I look at my family I see my son on xbox a lot. My wife is on her phone or computer with Facebook or searching for discount coupons. I Iike to work on my web pages I am a news junkie and I like to play clash of clans on my phone. We did cut our cable line and only use over the air for the TV. As we use the internet to get our news for the most part we still use the TV for local stations.
For the most part the tech boom has made life better and I see that if the things coming out in the future pan out . We could see AI doing more to help our lives and robotics in our work. Not sure how it will all play out as there is down sides to it also.
But as a whole I feel that it has helped and if we could deal with the issue of keeping the government out of our lives we could have something good come of it.
People have to know what they are giving away when they sign up for the services that are out there most of them will take your data and use it to target you with adds or sell it to other companies. They make money off of you and you have no say for the most part. Things are changing a little but not enough.
Today you can open your smart phone and have the worlds information at your fingertips. Thirty years ago it was nothing but a dream. What will the next thirty years bring us? At that time will I be like my dad and not know how to use it. We’ll see.