The Electronic Future

When I think about how much technology has changed our world over the last thirty years (my lifetime, essentially), I wonder how much more the world will change during the next thirty.  Thirteen years ago, I spent a semester in Mexico.  At that time, the internet was available in internet cafes and SmartPhones weren't around.  In fact, even cell phones weren't dominating the world at that point and the house where we stayed in Mexico had a landline,  on which I would occasionally receive phone calls from my parents.  The trick was that you actually had to know when they'd be calling and be around to take the phone call.  Electronic communication was blossoming and for a brief period of time my dad embraced it by using the call letters of his radio persona to create a hotmail account. This account died the minute I stepped foot back into the US and we still can't get him to text, but he will at least read them.

There are a few divisions like that between my parents and myself.  I'll compare and contrast my dad today though.  Let's take a look at telephones first.  The first difference between my household and my dad's is that I have zero desire for a landline.  In fact, we didn't even have the electricians run a phone line in the house we built in 2012.  (And we've had no desire for that connection).  However, my dad and stepmom still employ a house phone, which I may call after I have called both cell phones, texted both of them, and called or texted my sister to see if she had heard from either of them in a couple of days; however, it's not even programmed into my cell phone.  The reason I don't want a landline stems from the brief period time where I did have one.  I received two types of phone calls: one from telemarketers, and one from my mom and my mother-in-law (by this time, I'd trained my dad to just use my cell phone).  In addition to the physical ownership of a landline, the way that we utilize our cell phones is quite different.  My cell phone is my lifeline to the world.  I receive email on it, use it for Facebook, play virtual games on it, and about 1% of the time use it for the intent of actually calling someone.  Contrarily, my dad uses his phone 99% of the time for calling, and 1% of the time for checking the time. (Oh, and it better sound like a telephone ring, because it is after all, a phone).  With an age difference of less than 30 years, the way that we use a telephone is quite different, which makes me wonder how will my children's use of the telephone (or whatever it morphs into) look like 30 years from now.

Next, let's look at television.  My husband and I own two television sets, my dad and stepmom own three.  They have cable television.  We have a trilogy of Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, and refuse to pay for cable (because it has 15 minutes of commercials in an hour long TV show).  The majority of our multimedia viewing takes place via one of the three online subscription services and could be on our iPad, SmartPhones, iPods, or blue-ray player. And our blue-ray player isn't even hooked up to a television set.  It's hooked up to a projector, which projects on the entire living room wall.  Again, I wonder how will my children view entertainment in the future.

What will the electronic future look like for our children?