I can remember a high school assembly I went to (approximately 1960, or 50 years ago) where someone came and talked about all the technology we would see come to pass in our lifetime. He talked about what was to become the microwave; he told us Dick Tracey’s video wrist watch radio would some be a reality; and he told us about many other technological miracles that would soon become commonplace. I especially remember he talked about a machine they were working on that would transport us from place to place electronically. We would go into a booth-like mechanism, dial our destination, and it would break us down into electrons that could be transported instantly through wires and reassembled on the other end. He said they had already transported a rabbit from room to room. However, he didn’t say if they had done it successfully or not.To put things in perspective for younger people, in 1960 computers were room-like machines that communicated with punch cards as input/output devices; color TVs were just becoming common. I thought I lived pretty advanced technologically because we had had TV since 1950-1951 (my father was an early adopter of technology), whereas my husband who grew up in rural Southern Idaho, remembers seeing his first black and white TV show as a teenager. In 1963, I worked with computers as a key punch operator (and Ed worked with the Zion’s First Bank’s main frame computer), so we were always interested in technology.
In 1968 we went to the San Antonio Texas World Fair and saw the Future House, with the working video phone, plants growing in water, robot vacuum cleaner and solar heating. Most of these quickly came into use, except the video phone, which is only now becoming widespread with Skype and computer instant messaging. Who would have thought it would have taken 50 years for something that was technically possible (but probably prohibitably expensive, and would need universal technology installed) to become even common.
Other things we didn’t have that I love now, are automatic transmissions and air conditioning in cars. I learned to drive on a stick shift and I remember I had to have an automatic transmission when we got married—we only had one car! Air conditioning was not standard on cars, and I can remember Ed and I driving across Nevada in the summer and put ice on the floor of the car and then turned the lower vent on to blow across the ice to cool us. It worked pretty well until the ice melted!
We were going through flight school in Alabama in 1966, and the only way you could get any television reception was through cable, so we had cable TV way back then. It was very inexpensive there and it later became part of the Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) and when we moved back to Alabama in 1980, we were just in time to see the beginning of CNN.
One of the biggest advances that have made such a difference in my life involved the personal computer or PC, which is called that because it is operated directly by an end user without an intervening computer operator. In researching this, I was amazed to realize that “The first true Personal Computer was the Sphere 1 computer, created in Bountiful, Utah in 1975 by computer pioneer Michael D. Wise.” (Wikipedia, the History of Personal Computers).
Even before I got a PC, I recall taking a DOS programming class in college in the early 1980s, and we purchased our first PC, which was actually an Apple IIE, in Italy in 1985. The computer had no hard disk, and my son Marlowe bought a game for it which went to a book series that he had left in storage back in the states. So he hacked into the operating system, read the answers to the questions that he couldn’t remember the answers to play the game. The first “cheat sheets.”
We bought our first PC running MS Windows 3.1 in 1990, and computers have been a major part of my life ever since. I began using the internet and using email when I was working with the Liahona magazine at Church Office Building in 1993. I was coordinating the magazine work between the editorial and art and production departments of the magazine so I often had to get things from the internet (Church News), as well as to and from the translators throughout the world. I think I was one of the first church office workers who had the internet on my computer, although it was limited. I can’t even imagine life without email!
Ed and I had the internet at home very early, and found it fascinating. In 2000 when I changed jobs and began working for the school district as a school technology specialist, my job was learning how to use all technology available, from Ipods, projectors, Smartboards, and much more. Ed and I got our first cell phones while working there in 2000; Ed had said he didn’t see any reason to get a cell phone before then because if someone couldn’t get in touch with him on the regular phone, they didn’t need to. Now he can’t imagine not having a cell phone, with email, the internet and apps running on it.
I have never gotten into instant messaging, except for their video messaging to see and talk to my grandchildren. That is something I love!!!!! I have Skype on my computer, but most people I talk to don’t have it, so I haven’t used it yet. My phone works through the internet so I can call anywhere in the country without long distance, which I like. I never would have taken up Facebook, except that is the only place where my children post photos of my grandchildren, so if I want to get pictures, that is where I have to go. But I only have 15 “friends” on Facebook, and they are all family members—children, siblings, cousins, nieces and nephews. I have learned a little about some of my long-distance nieces though which has been nice. Athena helped me post my first “E-vite” on Facebook when we invited people to an Open House for Diana and Jason and their new baby for this past Saturday afternoon. People can rsvp on Facebook, and it sends them a reminder. However, I have no use for Twitter.
Even simple things like calculators that we never even think about now, were once so expensive that it blows your mind. I recall when Ed was going through his military Air Defense Artillery advanced course in El Paso in 1974 and they were using slide rulers to calculate the effects of nuclear weapons. Ed purchased a new calculator which could do the same thing as the slide rule, except it had memory and could save the information as well as process it. It cost $135.00 (about $1,000 in today’ money) and we thought it was miraculous, but you get the same thing today for $3.00.
The most personally important technology that we have now is the technology that has saved Ed’s life, prolonged it, and has given him a quality of life he hasn’t had in years—organ transplants, specifically, a lung transplant. This is something we couldn’t even imagine when I was growing up, and has personally affected our life.
[Below, Ed a year ago, before a lung transplant; Ed last May after a lung transplant]
