Technology Musings
This post is probably like one of those walking uphill through the snow both ways stories that people like to tell and that children roll their eyes at then promptly forget. As I sit in my house surrounded by a laptop, a tablet, a macbook, a desktop with a cell phone processor that does not need a fan, 2 traditional desktops, 3 cell phones and a “smart phone”, 2 iTouches, 6 iPods and 7 digital cameras, it is hard to think back to even when Catherine was born 19 years and 51 weeks ago and how different things were.
No one had a cell phone. My ICU attending claimed to know where every pay phone was in all of Lansing so he could stop when paged and see what was needed. (Pagers, unfortunately, were well estabilshed by the time I started my medical residency). Another attending, Dr Mike Zaroukian, was way ahead of his time in his efforts to bring computers into medicine (he is, by the way, still trying) The computers were pure DOS with a shell overlying to make it work. There was a program that attempted to generate differential diagnoses given symptoms which was always good for a laugh when the results became available. Our television in our apartment was color, and had a rabbit ears antenna on top (that we hung a nerf ball on during our first Michigan New Years Eve so that something could fall as the clock struck midnight.)
My first computer had a hard drive that was upgraded from 20 mb to 32 mb. It had a brand new device, the CD Reader, which was also upgraded to double speed, in addition to the more standard 5.25 inch and newed 3.5 inch floppy drives. (USB not yet invented). We wrestled with whether or not to get a color monitor, but eventually opted against and went with a green screen. Every new progam installation ran the very real risk of crashing the entire system. The first attempts at connectivity were phone line modems, slow enough that web sites gave a choice of whether to show images or not given how long it took to download.
We got our first cell phone for the practice in 1991 or so. It was like carrying around a medium sized lunch pail but it was liberating. The practice bought one and we passed it around to whoever was on call.
In 1995 Catherine and I joined our first Indian Princess tribe. Less than half of us even had an email address (and I think they all worked for IBM).
Our first Raleigh house had a TV antenna outside mounted to the fireplace. Sharon’s brother John was staying with us, and he used to go up on the roof some times to turn it for better reception. He also had a big antenna that he used to listen to CBs and police scanners. Truckers were about the only ones that knew what was going on when you were on the freeway, on what amounted to a giant party line. (Remember them? My Aunt Edith was on a party line in rural SC and I remember the rules for it- don’t say anything you didn’t want the neighbors to hear as they were almost certainly listening, and don’t call unless it is really important. None of this “the flight just landed and we are taxiing along, I’ll call again when we get to the gate” stuff.)
When my father was in Vietnam he sent us tapes instead of letters. Reel to Reel tapes. Car entertainment when I was in High School was 8 track tapes. Cassette tapes were everywhere in College, along with the Vinyl Albums they sprang from. CDs became prevalent when I was in Med School- my graduation present from Sharon and her folks was a CD player (My first CD? Flim and the BBs Tricycle, followed by Bach’s Brandenberg Concertos) Jogging in Med School was by Sony Walkman, eventually supplanted by portable CD players. iPods hit the scene- The Jacobs household acquired its first in perhaps 2004, well after they were well established in the rest of America.
I have a collection of journals that I have episodically kept over the years. Most are stories about the kids and the goings on they engender. Catherine in particular likes to sit and read them (maybe because, like most parents, there is lots in there about first-born her, less about Middle Child Mary, some about The Baby, Julia). Hopefully this can pick the slack up and get me back to writing. It’s certainly not like nothing is going on!