I was thinking about this earlier - listening to my mp3 player, I realised I had about 800 tracks on it. Imagine the space that would take up in, say, LP’s. And yet it can be all put down into a small box, with better sound quality!
So what things still amaze you? This is probably more aimed at the older members of the board, seeing as how you’ve had more expirience of new things introduced to the world, but hey, i’m 19 and I can think of stuff. What things ( it doesn’t have to be technological) still amaze you, even after however long a time?
How beautiful Lauren Bacall was.
That may not be technological.
I’m only 34, but am still frequently amazed by:[ul][li]the internet[/li][li]how much I use computers for my grad school work (as an undergrad, I wrote papers on a typewriter and went to a library for research)[/li][li]remote controls[/li][li]thunderstorms[/li][li]men[/li][li]the ability some children have to make everything ok, if only for a while[/li][li]animals[/li][li]instant messaging[/li][li]a really good piece of writing[/li][li]online shopping[/ul][/li]
[Audio guy hat on] I hate to rain on your parade, but it is physically impossible for mp3s to sound better than records or CDs. They have had a great deal of information removed from them to make the filesize small enough to put 800 tracks on your player. A full resolution wave file is approximately 11 MB per minute. A 3-minute mp3 at 128 runs about 3 MB total. Where did the other 30 MB of audio information go? Out the window! [Audio guy hat off]
The beauty of nature still amazes me. I live in a sub-tropic climate now, but I grew up in a very cold place. So now, I see all kinds of flora and fauna that I had never seen up north. Lizards and chameleons and geckos and exquisitely beautiful butterfiles and moths, huge dragonflies, tiny, bright green frogs, incredibly beautiful birds…palm trees, orange trees, all kinds of exotic plants that can’t grow where I used to live. I suppose the folks who were born here stopped noticing it at some point, but I see critters all the time that I’ve never seen before. I have to stop and watch. It’s like I’m a kid again. Florida is a stunningly beautiful place. I’m so glad I came here!
I’m a young-un. I’m an engineer. Technology doesn’t amaze me, it’s how the idiocy, greed and bureaucracy of mankind throttles it’s use. Things still amaze me, though, every day.
I can’t skip commercials automatically on my cable-company provided DVR because such functionality was explicitly disabled.
I still have to pay cash for a lot of things.
I can’t register my car online. In fact, even those government things that CAN be done online are done in such a cumbersome manner that it’s not worth doing.
Bank transactions still take days to clear.
Portable media players don’t come full of preloaded music or movies in the genre of your choice.
My computer takes a minute to boot up, just like in 1991.
The 2006 honda civic hybrid gets 50 mpg, a 1989 honda crx hf got 56 mpg and cost a lot less and, according to EPA, polluted less. Sure it was tiny, but I’d expect better results in 17 years.
It still takes 6 hours to fly to NYC from SF.
Mail still takes 3 days on average to get across country.
My car maxes out at 120 mph, the speed limit is still mostly 65 mph.
Non-technological things that amaze me:
You have to show ID to get on a plane. You get searched, your things get touched. The only alternative is driving or the sea, or owning your own plane.
You need prescriptions for almost anything, including syringes and nitroglycerin.
People pay about third to a half of their income in taxes and that’s considered to be a western democracy low.
The drinking age is still 21. In fact, there’s still a drinking age.
The library would be a barren wasteland if they didn’t carry movies, music and grocery store paperbacks.
It’s now politically incorrect to imply that people deserve what they can get.
My university traded President’s Day for Cesar Chavez Day, then cancelled both.
Wow, groman, it sounds like you have really high expectations for the world and are amazed that it doesn’t live up to them. 
I prefer to set my expectations lower and be pleasantly surprised.
In answer to the OP, here’s the first thing that springs to mind: I’m amazed at big, complicated buildings. How, where there used to be just a big empty field, there’s now a big building with rooms and stairs and electricity and plumbing and funky architecture and stuff.
I guess the internet amazes me–especially the way it made researching term papers so easy. I actually found lots of primary sources online to use in history papers and by now I can’t remember how I survived without it.
Commercial airlines also amaze me even though they’ve been around all my life. It just seems weird to wake up, get on a plane, and 4 hours later be 2000 miles away in a completely different environment. I guess I’ve never gotten used to it (My great grandmother, who was born before the airplane was even conceived but who lived into the age of commercial jets, never got used to them enough to set foot on one.)
Non technological things I find amazing? My ringneck parrot’s ability to listen very carefully to sounds in the house, discern which sounds are indicative of food preparation, and move in to beg food off me. I doubt he does this by sense of smell, as most birds are poor at picking up scents. Yet this bird never misses a meal.
The dappled pattern of low evening sun through the trees.
The halo in the backlit fur of a fluffy cat in the sun.
The way dew in the grass in the morning, when the light catches it just right, looks like a field of diamonds.
“Talking” to somebody halfway around the world instantaneously via the internet.
I’m amazed that people still smoke. I see somebody smoking and I do a double-take - People still do that?
The way that every single sunset out here in Santa Fe is just mind-bendingly beautiful. I will never get sick of it.
How incredibly bright a full moon can be in a desert sky.
(over a year in New Mexico and you’d think I’d be used to it. And just when I’ve had it up to here with this place [buy a watch and use it, dammit!], I go and look out the window at sunset.)
The fact that I can lie in bed at night and listen to coyotes howling, then get up in the morning, hop on my bike, and be in a shopping mall in twenty minutes.
The number of hours I’ve spent in a car driving practically cross-country, and yet I’ve still only been in about half the states. Two major trips, totalling something like 4 weeks total, and I’m still missing a whole lot.
That Greek, Roman, and other pagan/polythiestic beliefs are immediately written off as “of course” they’re just myth, while modern Judeochristian beliefs are accepted without question.
There are so many people in the US who have never been to New York City.
Also, how unbearably, torturously gorgeous this guy in one of my classes is. It should max out, but the ‘oh god, you’re so devastatingly attractive, please let me ravage your body right here and now’ quotient just keeps increasing.
The Grand Canyon.
A really good tiramisu.
When you’re really down and somebody actually has your back no questions asked.
What I can do when I fully commit myself to it.
Not quite true.
-foxy
Not really, no. Most of the things I listed were the way I expect before I was born, which means that somebody somewhere (somebody who might still be alive) went and changed them. I’m not disappointed, I resent these people for doing so.
Well, maybe not too true, but I can’t walk into my local Walgreens or Safeway and buy them nonchalantly along with some chips and dip, now can I? You could before. You can in other countries.
The fact that I can go downstairs, get in my car, and, travelling alone one bigass continuous piece of pavement, end up in New York, Florida, Texas, California or Washington. What’s more, once I get to any of those places, I can travel along that same pavement to arrive at any specific destination I so choose.
Gotta love a good transportation network.
Knitting - someone actually sat down and worked out that you could weave a garment by knotting a piece of thread with two pointed sticks.
Mathematics.
The myriad of things that can come of the human brain…a piece of “hardware” made out of monkey meat, that was designed by trail and error.
The impermanence of a single moment in time.
I am not feeling very poetic today, but I am always amazed by commercial airplanes. I understand and accept that something so big can fly, but how the heck does it roll at such high speed on such tiny wheels?
Biography amazes me. Every successful person seems to have been a failure at a dozen things before making it big. (Tecumsah Sherman survived two ship wrecks.) Other people seem to just give up.
Fresh fruit and vegetables in the middle of nowhere are remarkable. Makes you proud to be on Planet Earth right now.
Language and how we learn it is mysterious and remarkable. It uses funny muscles in your head.
Like I said, my Muse is not upon me today.
On this same topic, it amazes me that earlier this year, I was able to get up from my own bed, go to Washington DC, give a several hour business presentation, and still be back home in time to eat dinner, watch television, and sleep in my own bed again.
Men walked on the moon before I was born.
Sorry dude, we were going to wait, but what the hell kept you?