THE DIGITAL AGE

 

Me on rotary telephone

I was a terrible typist--  typing 23 words a minute, with 23 mistakes proves it. (Grandma Isabel was Grandpa Claude's secretary before they were married so she must have been a good typist.)   But now I can type on a computer or even talk to a computer. My spelling and typos will be corrected easily.  No longer do I have to type a report or an article over several times.  No memorizing telephone numbers or addresses needed.  They are all in my contacts list on my phone.  No broken or damaged tapes to deal with on a recorder or video camera.  So because of my interest I decided to publish this discussion Chris had with Heather and Jes.  I thought you would enjoy it too:

Here is what Chris said:

"I have wondered about our dependence on digital. Both of you were born when digital was starting, more so for Heather. I was quite happy back in the day before digital anything, well electronic digital anyway. Got along just fine with my slide rule and rotary dial phone. Now I am online seemingly all the time, and then, if not one of my computers I am watching digital TV or reading my Kindle. Or when I cook I use the digital microwave or get out my digital cooking thermometer. I have resisted getting a digital kitchen scale as the 80-year-old (give or take 20 years) inheritance from Grandma Grace works just fine (although we do have a digital scale in our bathroom).

I do remember the joy I had when Texas Instrument came out with the digital calculator in the late 1960s as it could calculate third roots and that is something I did all the time actually. Then in the early 1970s the programable HP calculator (I actually took a day off work to mess with it). And then, when I was working at HP in Santa Rosa I read an engineering document about the soon to be implemented GPS and the excitement I felt with that. I was given one of the first Magellan marine units in the early 1990s. I took it on a flight to Japan.

I had it in the window of the 747 (I was careful to select a seat facing south as there were more satellites). One of the flight attendants stopped and asked me what I was doing and I told her I was making sure the airline captain didn't get lost. 15 minutes later the captain came to my seat and wanted to see it. I was flying in the business class on the upper deck and the seat next to me was actually vacant. I let him have the window seat and he played with the GPS for a good 30 minutes and kept exclaiming how cool it was. 

Of course, my grandparents and for certain my great grandparents wondered why we'd want an automobile or want to fly across the country. Horses were just fine and the train would get you across the country or a ship across an ocean."

So I'm thankful for all the brains God has given innovators and inventors to come up with this stuff.

Proverbs 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.