It seems like just yesterday
It’s easy to take things for granted, but it really isn’t so long ago that there was no Internet and faxes were the coolest communication tool going.
Growing up in a small city stuck on the far west coast or Australia, it’s also easy to remember a one newspaper town, a heavy black Bakelite telephone (yes with a dial!) and my local library as the only sources of information from the outside world.
But how times and means of communication have changed. As has the ease in finding information that was beyond my imagination just a short while ago; it is now just an everyday normality. All my wonderful cookbooks and recipe books are gathering dust as I use an iPad in the kitchen now and have access to a universe of recipes and cooking ideas. I’m watching television from not only around the world by cable, but also watching programs I have downloaded from my hometown. Not bad seeing as I live a half a world away now.
I now read opinion, ideas and beliefs from every corner of the world in an absolute instant from the time they were written. Newspapers from around the world publish their articles and they are on my iPad, iPhone or laptop seconds after publication. From being under-informed and hungry for information in my younger days, I’m now almost overloaded with it.
Then there are the multitude of ways of communicating. While I recall the mobile telephone of the 1980’s being a revelation, I now find myself talking to my kids, grandkids and family in Australia, from where I live in Switzerland now, on a daily basis via free audio and video calls from my mobile phone, Macbook and iPad. Incredible. In between, we exchange free text messages via iPhone and I get photos of my grandkids seconds after they were taken. All of this is so new and wondrous, but to my grandkids, it’s just normal.
My older grandson asked my younger one recently:
Where does Granddad live?
In the ‘puter!
Welcome to the new world. And ain’t it just wonderful!
Now, if only transportation would progress at the same rate Derek. :D
We had the old wall mount bakelite phone at the farmhouse. It was on a party line. Remember those? If you got bored with your two black-and-white tv channels, you could pick up the phoneand see what the folksdown the road were talking about.
“Get off the line, Mabel, Tim got caught in the thresher and we need an ambulance…”
Ahhh, the good old days…
Even worse Andrew. I still remember my grandmother’s telephone number!
I think my grandmother’s number was eight.
Actually, she lived down the road from Lucy Maude Montgomery whose Anne novels are still a part of the Japanese school system.
Funny old world…
I remember the first number I had – easy – it was only 3 digits long. My uncles number was 2 digits long. Two channels? Our TV had one. I remember 78 rpm records and gas street lights. When I was eight my family moved to a farm with no electricity and worse – no flush toilet.
Ah but those were the ‘good old days’ – err not really!
I most certainly do recall those old phones. Although we have an ipad we are still using our treasured collection of cookery books!
Apologies for not calling by to comment very often, time just seems to get swallowed up by real life at present!