There are a lot of things that I use each day to which I now give little thought, but at one time, I either did not have them, or they had once functioned in a more primitive manner, and once the technology advanced I was quite impressed by it. Here are some examples:
The first time I saw a computer monitor displaying a photographic image I was mesmerized. It was only 320 x 200 x 256 colors, but still, nothing like I had seen before.
I liked being able to punch up a radio station with the push of a button and getting it right on the correct frequency without having to mess with a knob to tune it in.
I remember when my sister liked it when she could press buttons on a phone instead of use a rotary dial for the first time.
The first time I saw a printout from a computer in color I wanted to get one and print out all the color drawings (onscreen, that is) that I had made on my Tandy Color Computer (instead I had to print them out in black and white on a 9-pin dot matrix printer).
So, what ordinary, everyday things we use now once had that “gee whiz!” effect on you?
I remember my brother commenting after my Pop died that in his lifetime Pop had seen both the development of the electric light and man landing on the moon - it’s hard to wrap your head around a time when electric lights, radios, and telephones were a source of constant wonder.
Remote control. I was my dad’s remote, but today, I can’t watch TV without it, and I have kids.
Internet. A good friend of mine’s dad sold IBM computers, and he had internet conection in 1982 or83. It was very very slow and very limited, but I was amazed.
Still am.
Cable TV. I was 16 or 17 when we got cable. We went from 4 fuzzy chanels to 20 or 30 crystal clear. MTV, CNN, Weather. It was amazing.
Cell phones. I remember when a cell phone was only for the well off, and weighed about a pound. I now can not imagine living without my 4 oz cell.
CD’s. Remember 8 tracks? Ahh, those were the days.
“Oh you can tell by the way I use my walk, I’m a [ker-chunk] woman’s man, no time to talk.”
The World Wide Web, of course. Mosaic was the first graphical browser. Before that the Internet experience consisted of FTP, Gopher, Telnet and e-mail. On-line documents with pictures and embedded links were completely new.
I also remember being impressed by streaming audio. I think RealAudio was the first streaming audio player that became widely available. Before then you had to download a huge WAV file, and wait for the download to finish before you could play it.
I’m with you, dwc1970. Was big into computers in the mid-80’s, and today’s bottom-of-the-line models would seeem like scifi to those of us that toiled over our Apple IIs. Remember when a computer’s might was measured not in it’s processing power or clock speed, but its K? 64K was the standard circa 1985- the Commodore 64 and the Apple IIe were considered powerhouses. When the 128K Apple IIc came out, it was like the Rapture. We had daisy-wheel printers, soon to be replaced by dot-matrix! 28 baud modems! And some of our computers could even talk- It sounded like recycled sound effects from “Lost In Space,” but we were thrilled nonetheless. Megabytes and gigahertz were left to the dreamers in Popular Science. Comparing those computers of yore to todays’ machines is like comparing stone cartwheels to F-14’s. People who are just getting familiar with computers today usually don’t realize how good they have it.
Back when I started tech support, Windows 95 had been out for a couple of years, but we were still supporting 3.1 too. When doing an internet connection test, I got used to asking the callers, “Do you have one phone line, or two?” Many of them didn’t understand what “two phone lines” meant, and answered yes because they had two phones in the house.
The first caller I had who answered that question with “I have THREE!”…I was floored. He coulda told me he had gold-plated faucets and I wouldn’t have been more surprised.
Oh, and I’ll always have a special place in my heart for the phrase “a gig of RAM.” Made my toes curl first time I heard it. Someday that’ll be old news, though…
The computer. I remember gazing at the old (well, new then) Apple computers that came to our school. I still have a kids programming guide for BASIC as well. I knew right then and there that I had to have a computer. Sometimes, I’m still amazed by it. I never could have imagined doing things with the computer that I now do everyday.
Push button phones. I remember thinking that only rich people must own those. When I saw my first cordless, I was almost speechless.
Ditto with microwaves and VCR’s. I mention those in the same sentence because for a while, both families I knew that owned one owned the other. Each item was thousands of dollars. I could barely fathom the idea of heating food in seconds. And watching movies at home, whenever you wanted to… WOW!
The first Nintendo I saw. The first time I saw it, it was on a big screen TV as well. Arcade games, at home, and you could play as many times as you wanted for free. I didn’t think I could ever afford such a luxurious machine.
CD’s. I can still remember the first time I went to a friends house, and they had a CD player. We listened to Bon Jovi Slippery When Wet.
Typewriter. Portable typewriter. Electronic typewriter. Golfball typewriter (gosh! Different fonts!). Daisywheel printer. Dot matrix printer. I’d seen and used them all. Then came the day I first saw someone print out a page on… a laser printer. Almost silent, eerie, fast, smooth-as-silk. We take 'em for granted now, but that was a wonderful moment for me, after decades of noise, rat-a-tat and clatter.
The Internet of course, and Search Engines in particular. Hear an interesting song on the radio. Catch the hook. Mmm, wonder who that is? And what the exact lyrics are? 30 seconds with my preferred sengines and… instant answers! Wonder no more!
Microwave ovens. I quite like baked potatoes. Couple of hours in the oven? Or 12 minutes in the micrwave? Just couldn’t believe it when I first saw one. It loked pretty Star Trekky to me… no apparent heating elments, nothing glowing red, just that subtle hum and the sight of food visibly getting cooked.
Online banking. If I were not a devout atheist, this would be my proof that there is a God and He loves me. After all the years having to traipse to the bank and wait in line just to do trivial stuff like pay a bill, being able to do it myself online has made a huge difference to my business and my life.
I remember thinking in 1976 or so that digital watches were a neat idea, thereby dooming Earth to its eventual destruction to make way for a hyperspace bypass.
Atari.
Microwave ovens
Apple IIe
VCRs
Usenet
Automated toilets with about a dozen buttons and dials on them (see The Simpsons go to Japan. Ours doesn’t have a camera, fortunately)
I remeber talking to my Great Gandfather about some of the changes he saw in his lifetime. He was born in 1898 and went from the horse and buggy to cars that could break the sound barrier airplane flight to space flight, the electric light nuclear power and Saran wrap ( cling wrap for the Brits). I will always remeber him saying that eventhough all of the changes that he saw in his lifetime were amazing, I was going to see more in my lifetime than he ever did.
He never did explain why he was amazed by Saran wrap but it was something that he would light up any time you mentioned it.
Computers. It’s no big deal to me now, but in the bygone days I used to become starry eyed reading Byte and Creative Computing. Tinkering with a microcomputer to make the darned thing work was a favourite pastime of mine. Then there was the first time my Fortran program worked as expected. Ah, those were the days.
Angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors to treat hypertension and heart failure. We used to admit patients to the hospital just to start them on the stuff! Monitor their blood pressure every 15 minutes for the first 4 hours, then hourly after that for 14 hours, then every 6 hours for a day. Then discharge them. Now we give them a prescription and say: “here. Take this stuff.”
I first saw a computer mouse at a computer store when I was in elementary school. I was so impressed! Not by the mouse itself, but by the way you could use it to move the cursor all over the screen at will. Wow!
We had a computer with a CGA display. I remember looking at photos of VGA graphics in magazines and being so envious of the lucky people who had those expensive new computers.
I was also pretty impressed when we first got a computer capable of playing REAL MUSIC instead of the old vaguely melodic beeping.