As we reflect, this New Year’s Day, on the speedy passing of time, I attempted to remember what was happening a decade ago in my life. To my shock, my handy smart phone did not travel back in time that far as we were not as apped to app in 2010. I figured out how to time travel on my phone, but was greeted with the message, “No events or reminders found.” That jarring statement force me to use a long-lost muscle—my memory—to attempt a recall of years gone by. I failed that endeavor and immediately defaulted to the universal memory bank: The Internet.
Way back in 2010, we still referred to The Internet as the World Wide Web or www.something.com/org/gov/etc. Now the www is assumed, and you just enter a few letters of your topic of interest and the internet reads your mindful intentions. No need to spell search items correctly, distinguish between homonyms, synonyms or antonyms as everything appears in pages of listings to peruse for information. Accuracy and truth are no longer relevant as Wikipedia, as hard as they try, allows most information to be posted as fact. While encyclopedias were still in vogue in 2010, 2020 brings a new wave of research destinations.
Augmented Reality was the buzz way back when; Artificial Intelligence is now part of our daily life. Alexa and Siri are constant companions in daily routines. Cars drive themselves, no one pushes a vacuum, televisions are smart, watches watch more than time, and folks are now planning vacations to the moon. Ten years back I was still driving a gas powered monster, but in the midst of that decade I discovered the electric vehicle and have been plugged in ever since. My current vehicle is smarter than my television, and I am smart enough to let the vehicle tell me how to get to my destination. My television may suggest what I would also like to watch, but it is usually wrong. I love the Simpsons are going strong regardless of decades, but the American Horror Story has the Walking Dead playing the Game of Thrones into a Breaking Bad coma.
In 2010, my landline phone answering machine handled all my business. Nothing like coming home to a blinking red light and the announcement of ‘you have four messages’ which were actually calls meant for me. Caller ID was a new-fangled option and sharing phone numbers did not require the area code for dialing. Phones were just for verbal communication and screening calls through the answering machine was often hilarious history. Today, kids have no clue how to operate a rotary phone and prefer to text a connection rather than voice a human connection. Most of the calls I receive need the BLOCK button before they are done.
My 2010 mobile phone held a charge for days, was easy to operate and sometimes was lost for days before it was needed. My 2019 phone is now my wallet, rolodex, photo album, map locater, alarm, email resource, social media connection, weather reporter, news alerter, calendar, bill payer, and of course, phone. I live in constant fear of providing access of my total life to someone who acquires my phone by intent, accident or just tosses it because who wants some old lady’s outdated phone?
I do miss the good old days of cable television. Ten years ago, the game was to pit the limited cable companies against each other for the best deal on upgraded channels and/or pirating free cable from a neighbors unsuspecting line. The newspaper listed the daily shows for easy locating and your VCR recorder shows to your tapes for convenient viewing at your convenience. Commercials could be fast-forwarded, and you could irritate you significant other by taping over their too long saved shows. Power outages always reset the digital clock and canceled any programing you thought was being recorded.
Today, streaming and binge-watching has captured the mindless entertainment necessary to avoid human interaction. No more network television, cable wars or VCR’s. Videotainment comes commercial free through your streaming device of preference and can be done anywhere, anytime. Who has not seen a football game broadcast sneak into a church service? YouTube is now the instruction tutor to anything you need done: cooking, home repair, computer trouble shooting, Years ago, it was simply a way to watch sports injury crotch shots.
The arrival of 2030 will come as we all enter life 10 years older than we are today. What fun artificial adjustments await us in the next decade? Ask a 10-year-old as you show them how to put gas in an SUV tank so they can tell their younin’s about the olden days when people drove cars to get from place to place. Time travel will change our who, what, where, when and how. No one will read as we absorb information through our retinas. . . and I can only hope the gang at the dementia center will be serving a nightly martini. Some things should remain timeless.
