It seems we take technology for granted. We text people on our phones, and think nothing of it. I've seen some people get pissed when they barely get their thumb off a button. I remember a comedian saying "it's going to a fucking satellite, and back to earth.....give it a MINUTE!" Web cams are as common place as martinis at a Sushi bar. We sometimes can't even imagine having a cord on something other than to charge it, or "sync it". We throw DVDs and CDs into $60 players and just expect it to work, with no thought of how we got from a Reel to Reel player to a compact disk. How many kids even know what "DVD" stands for? (And it's not Digital Video Disk, FYI.) It amazes me sometimes when I put almost 4 gigs of stuff on a thumb drive to transfer it to another computer. Right now, on a thumb drive, I have probably 40 or 45 albums from different artists. Figure roughly anywhere from 8.99 to 11.99 for a CD, and that's a lot of money floating around in my pocket, in digital form. BluRay is an amazing technology. A Blu-Ray disk can hold about 50 gigs of information, whereas a regular DVD can hold up to 8 or 9 GIGs. Do they even make 50gig jump drives? DVRs are nothing but a big computer for your TV, but we don't think twice about putting a couple of buttons, and recording a program for later viewing. We don't even think about being able to pause live television. Gone are the days of doing a kitchen or bathroom rush in 2 minutes flat before a show comes back on. Back in the day, even 10 or 15 years ago, if you were still pissing when a show came back on, then you just missed it, unless you had a VHS stuck in the VCR recording it. We were even limited in recording one show at a time, on a VCR, whereas now, we can record at least 2 shows on a DVR, and on different channels, different times, all through the day and night.

The list goes on of technology and how it's changed, but if you think about it, it's still pretty amazing. What still sort of makes you think every once in a while, or amazes you, about technology today, in any regard?

Technology constantly changes

luv4u said:

Yeah, i like to think, that we are always in a state of fluxus with technology. People should just ride out the electric wave.
[Edited 12/13/09 23:12pm]

I still find radios and televisions amazing.

Fauxie said:

electronic instruments fascinate me..
stuff like synths..

baroque said:

Me too. The look of them, the sound of them, everything about them.

Shame I sold my SH-101 last year.

i like how i can argue with and abuse people that i've never met on the internet, and then click on my mouse and see naked ladies a second later

I remember standing on a chair at the drugstore to play Pong with my dad. Now some of the video games coming out now are on the verge of looking exactly like live action movies (they're not quite there yet, but it's gonna happen within the next gen or two I betcha). It's mind blowing, really.

I'm a technophobe and proud of it. I have never had a cell phone, Ipod, or web cam. my family doesn't know how I exist !

My daughter had a cell phone that when she focused it, it would quickly tell her the name of the song playing in the room, and the artist. Impressive.

Wow. Another friend has a mosquito repellent on his cell.

My Dad is 80

When he is up and I show him all sorts of things just on the computer it's great to watch the amazement through his eyes.

I remember when he brought us home our 1st colour TV

And then when we show him something else his cell phone can do

yup, it's like watching christmas through a childs eyes

Fauxie said:

oh god...me too...the supposedly simplest of things amaze me...vinyl records, even...

I'm overly simple tho...these kinda astound me as well....

Dayclear said:

Then why do you own a computer and have Internet service?

"I just want to turn on the faucet to have water. I don’t want to know where it’s coming from!"--Diane Keaton in Baby Boom.

That's often how I feel about technology. I take it for granted a lot of the time until something doesn't work.

TD3 said:

My thoughts exactly.....

o wait don't tell the hamster that it may go on strike and Dayclear won't have the net

Dayclear (I say that with love btw )

Nikademus said:

That is another one for me. I'm not a gamer. I just don't have a desire to have a game system and play these games. But seeing some of the graphics that are out there now....it really is amazing.

It sort of makes one think about Star Trek, and the holodeck, and how 3D graphics are interactive on there. Systems like the Wii literally let you swing your arm to play tennis, instead of just hitting a button at the right time. Gene Roddenberry, Stanley Kubrick, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, showed people talking on monitors back and forth (a la web cam); they showed a funky little flip top communicator (a la cell phones), phasers set to stun (a la Tazers, and Stun Guns). This all at the end of the 60's, when color TV had only been around since 1951 at that point.

All of that very science fiction type stuff is very real these days. I think that is what amazes me. I didn't put that in my original post, but these men who made movies and shows about space ships and aliens, also had the great foresight to imagine a world that was advanced, and somehow supposed to be easier on us and for us.

ernestsewell said:

Ya know, when I went to see Beowulf in the theater I did not really read too much about it on the net. I did not know it was all CGI and did not realize it till about 1/3 of the way in. They did a DAMN good job with that one.

The Wii's potential has yet to be fully discovered, check this out...



There's your holodeck right there!

luv4u said:

No shit?

Nothing will impress me until somebody perfects teleportation.

It's not looking good at the moment...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/h...811785.stm

Single atoms are not very impressive.

Alej said:

True. Even the changes themselves are amazing. We get a 20 gig hard drive 10 years ago and think "Wow, this is the most I'll ever need. I'll NEVER fill this up." Fast forward 3 years, and we're pressed for space, and hunting for the new 80 gig models. Now we're at a terabyte for harddrives. Even some hard drives are flash based now (and pricey as shit for another few years). 10 years ago we were burning CDs like they were going out of style....now some of us can't think of the last time we needed a CD-R, or the need to burn anything, other than some back up stuff. I used to go through a 50 spindle in a couple of months....now it's a year or so, at least, before I need another. Why? Because I have an iPod to carry my music. I have a laptop to carry my files. I have a flash drive to put files on and move things around or have them be portable.

We thought DVD was the best thing in the world, then we had that temporary Super Bit thing. Then HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray came about. I waited that war out, until one won. Voila...here we are, full 1080 HD. In film and some television post production work, 2000 and even 4000 lines are used, but it's not used in broadcast. One wonders if we'll hit a ceiling, or keep going. I think about the efficiency and versatility of things like the computers on Star Trek, where there are no real keyboards, no QWERTY wireless pieces, no mice. Most everything is voice initiated, and only a few buttons here and there control things, more in some places than others (like engineering, vs. the holodeck).

That's hot.

ernestsewell said:

I remember when a guy in my computer user group got a 1 megabyte hard drive for his C-64. We were all sooooo envious

I remember when Minority Report came out and the moving the images across the screen scene was amazing to me..I knew that would come out eventually.Now with the Iphone and seeing touch screen boards on the news (CNN and some weather boards)..that amazes me.My mom is in her late 70's and when I showed her my Iphone to look at some pics of her grandkids,she was shocked.Told her to move her finger to scroll to the next pic and she said she was thankful to be around to see such technology.I can only imagine what will be going on when I get that age and I say the same comment...O yeah that Wii leaves me speechless sometimes too.

Do you guys ota-ass remember floppy disks?

ernestsewell said:

A few months after I got my PVR/DVR I actually tried to "rewind" someone walking past my window! True story....

mcmeekle said:

Oh buddy, I've went to grab the remote when I missed something on the radio.....IN THE CAR.

ernestsewell said:

yup!! been there, done that too...

RenHoek said:

It's so easy to get spoiled w/ that!

My roommate tries to use the remote for his car on the door to the apartment building, or his office door. haha And he's six years older than me, so he knows the "old days".

Alej said:

Which ones? The 8", 5.25", or the 3.5"?

.
[Edited 12/14/09 16:11pm]

Nikademus said:

3.5 I didn't get to use the other fuckers.