I think you’d really enjoy this book.
I’d recommend it to anyone whose interested in the human side of modern supply chains
Yep. Highway 99 is Aurora inside Seattle.
Ok this was a while ago (25 years) but I was working as a sales clerk and remember taking an order from a company in Perth (I was in Melbourne) and being amazed that this was all happening over the phone and fax. To a boy that didn’t grow up with a phone until he was 16 this blew my mind, you have to remember that in those days a flight to Perth was beyond our families finances and it seemed a world away. It was then that I realized that distance was no tyranny to doing business, I have made a career in telecommunications and still look back with amazement how cool telephones and faxes were at the time.
So for me today it is still the phone that continues to amaze me.
Photocopiers. I think they are magic.
Motherfuckin’ Magical Magnets - how do they work?
(Sorry; a nod to the Insane Clown Posse…)
An iPod. I remember, back in the 80s, when the first Sony Walkman came out. You could put in a cassette and take your music anywhere you wanted. Magic! But now, you can put thousands of hours of music on an iPod, which is a fraction of the size of a Walkman, and has better-sounding music. And you don’t have to play them in order.
And the distance that our unaided eyes can see. On a clear night we can see the Andromeda Galaxy, which is 2.5 million light years away. This means that light from that galaxy began traveling 2,500,000 years ago, and in all that time, nothing got in its way . . . until it crashed into your eye’s retina.
Roads, indeed. I can (and have) pulled out of my driveway, and driven to my buddy’s place. Thing is, Buddy lives 2000 miles away. My wheels don’t touch dirt/gravel until I pull into his driveway, which is unpaved.
I was going to recommend that book - it’s an excellent look at cheap consumer goods, and what really happens to create them and get them out to the consuming masses.
They aren’t?!? 
When I first started working full time in 1985 I was asked to fax some diagrams to our corporate head quarters. I had no idea what was being asked of me. The person on the other end of the phone explained that I could take the engineering schematic to the receptionist and she could send a facsimile of the drawing over the telephone wires to my contact. You may as well have told me that we had landed on Mars at that point.
We have these awesome plastic ice trays that shape the cubes at an angle. On each end, there is a plus or minus sign.
If you stack the trays with the plus/minus on the same side, they nest for convenient storage. If you stack the trays with the plus/minus staggered, they stay far enough apart to be filled with water for freezing.
It’s so simple, but so clever.
Lasers. They used to be the stuff of science fiction. Now, they’re used in surgery and in manufacturing. Most everybody has several CD and DVD players. You can even buy a pointer that shoots out a laser beam.
The gizmo that plugs into the car’s block-heater cord then into an outside socket. Using the gizmo’s remote control, I turn the block heater on and off from a kitchen window — with or without plugging the gizmo into a timer (that’s questionable at best in extreme cold), then into the power outlet.
The vacuum - the kind you clean carpets with. Seriously. I think it’s way cool. Don’t understand how it works, but it does.
Yeah - I’m easily entertained.
Goo Gone. That shit is the bomb to get off glue-y stuff that will not come off any other way. When I was a kid, the best you could hope for was using nail polish remover, and it was sketchy at best. Whoever invented it, I hope they are a bazillion, gamillionaire. They soooo deserve it.
On an individual, human level, it always amazes me that everyone got potty trained. I mean, no matter how bad some parents can be, someone stepped up to the plate and prevented the rest of the world from watching you poop in the lobby. Totally awes me on an almost daily basis. Good job, whoever you all are, and thanks!