A Taylor’d Approach for Aug. 31, 2022
Technology evolves
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As I helped my 83-year-old grandfather set up his new VR headset recently, I thought about how much technology has changed in the last 30 years alone.
As a ‘90s kid, I was a child of the “Tech Boom,” exposed to constantly and rapidly changing technology at a key time in my development.
My mother got her first cell phone, complete with a pull-out antenna, during a year when my grandparents still had a rotary phone in their kitchen, which I loved to use. All of our movies were on VHS, until the DVD player was introduced to our living room. I was an expert at fixing the loose tape in my cassettes with the end of a pencil when my Walkman caused some trouble. My mom’s CD collection grew as the first MP3 player was brought into our home with its whopping kilobytes of storage. We had a heavy box TV with an antenna in one room and a flatscreen with satellite in another.
Wound watches turned to digital and then evolved to smart. Phone calls moved to emails which progressed to texts.
In what felt like the blink of an eye, I suddenly had an advanced computer in my pocket called a phone, far more powerful than the room-sized computers my parents learned to program with cards back in school. With my phone every question I can think of can be asked and answered in seconds flat, even though I never used to Ask Jeeves much of anything. I can read a map, but now GPS can get me where I’m going via the fastest possible route with just a quickly typed address. Somehow, the technology feels like it’s always been there.
I don’t fear changing technology and maybe that’s because it has existed in constant flux in my lifetime. The next new thing has always come along quickly, coexisting with the older without a fuss. I still own DVDs and even VHS tapes, despite spending most of my time streaming movies instead of getting up to put them in the player myself. There’s a map in my car just in case my signal gives out when I’m roaming in unfamiliar backcountry. While I still read books, video games are yet another version of immersive storytelling I enjoy.
I wonder how things will change from here. A member of my family is younger than iPads and has never known a world without constant connectivity. What will emerge in her lifetime that I could never have been imagined? Will it be intimidating? Scary? Or, I wonder as I watch my grandfather enjoy his VR headset and his smart phone full of useful apps, will it feel natural, like it was always meant to be there?
