During the actual match itself I was pressed into service verifying the math on score cards, and while I could do most of the math in my head, courtesy of my elementary school teachers, I took that same cell phone out of my pocket to calculate strings of numbers.
Later I was wishing I had a camera to take a photo for the blog, then remembered that my cell phone has a camera, so I took it out and snapped a few photos. While not nearly the quality of a good pocket camera, nor nearly the quality of my SLR, the photos I took were sufficient for the purpose.
Here's a picture of the range master, taken from my cell phone. Not a great photo, but certainly good enough for the internet, and taken from a tiny device I carry in my pocket.
The fact that I can carry a phone in my pocket still amazes me. When I was growing up, such a feat was possible only in the comic books. But, with that same device I can perform mathmatical calculations and take photographs. Unbelievable! When you couple that with the idea that I'm putting that photograph on a world wide information network, using a computer the size of a notebook (I saw my first portable computer in 1990 and it was the size of a suitcase and weighed 30 lbs) it's truly remarkable. Consider that the computer I'm using isn't connected by a wire-cable to anything and we are truly living in a stunningly rich age.
What would Ben Franklin have done with the resources that are commonly available today? Or Issac Newton?
I am simply stunned at the technology that almost every American has available for use every day.
4 comments:
I was just thinking about the same thing recently. My son, who is nearly nine, takes all of these gadgets for granted. I, on the other hand, being 50, can still be amazed at this stuff when I stop to think about it.
Whether or not this makes us a better people as a whole, I can't say, but it does make life easier. No, I take that back. It's just more stuff to learn and think about.
Amen!
I tell my (younger) children that when I was their age there was no such thing as a digital watch. And the watch I wore had to be wound up, by hand, every day.
Of course, they don't believe me.
Back in the early 70s when I worked for IBM I maintained two 1130 mainframe computers. They had 32k memory each, IIRC, and rented for around $1,000 a month each. Rented.
One was located at NSU in Natchitoches and the other one at Tremont Lumber Co in Winnfield.
On the right days, I imagine myself with all the goodies in a Dick Tracey cartoon. Then I realize it's not imagination, I have all that and more.
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