My daughter was born almost 44 years ago. Today, when I was walking by the credenza, on
which I keep a few framed photographs, her newborn baby picture, the one taken
right in the hospital by one of those professional outfits, caught my eye.
Why, you ask? Well,
firstly because it’s black and white.
And secondly, because I started wondering how many people still keep
framed photographs on display in their homes.
Then I started thinking about how much this world has changed during my
lifetime. Who woulda thunk it?
My daughter arrived during ‘the transitional decade’ in the
photography field, about three or four years too early, before colour became more
common place and more importantly, economical for the average ‘Joe’ to afford.
Now, modern technology, is as I like to describe the world I’m
living in now, offers so much. It’s
quite bewildering and somehow, to me, somewhat incredible, yet not. It also, I believe, could very well be the
end of society as we know it.
At least my daughter was born during the time that people
actually still took ‘pictures’ and got them developed. They would occasionally enlarge one or two of
their favourites and have them framed, showing them off around their home,
sometimes completely covering the top of that old, massive, heavy-as-hell
stereo/TV cabinet combo.
You know the kind I’m talking about – big, old black and
white TV in the lower middle of the unit, sometimes concealed behind swanky
sliding doors. The record player would
be in the top centre and sometimes, there would also be a built-in am/fm radio,
usually on the right-hand side. On the
left side, there may be a handy bar area, with built-in compartments for a
fancy, crystal decanter and matching highball glasses.
My middle grandchild, her nose out of joint, once asked why
there were so many pictures of her older sister on display and hardly any of
her. I told her to ask her mother about
the coming of the digital age.
With the availability of affordable computers, cell phones
and digital cameras, our world has changed, and not necessarily for the
better. Oh sure, cell phones come in
handy, especially when you slide off the road during a blizzard but it’s only
really helpful if you know where you are.
That’s where a GPS comes in handy, although, these days I think ‘smart’
cell phones have a ‘find me’ feature. My
cell phone, is a little ‘flip’ phone which I get teased about, a lot. The only thing smart about it, is the person using it.
My newest GPS (I only buy GARMIN), gives me verbal directions
to wherever it is I’m going and it also has a small field at the bottom, which
tells me where I’m at – bonus! I
frequently don’t know where I am when I’m out jaunting, even with this great
feature, because I forget that it’s there.
In a way I think I liked it better back in the ‘olden days’. I used
to get so mis-directed that not only did I not know where I was but I didn’t
even know what direction in which I was travelling. Somehow, being so totally lost was an
adventure and, eventually, I always made it home.
Luckily, if I slide off the road and don’t know where I am, my
GPS has a ‘WHERE AM I?’ feature. This not
only tells you your elevation but also and more importantly, it gives you your
coordinates in longitude and latitude degrees, which pinpoints your location
precisely. Useful to have, so emergency
services can find you. That particular
feature came in handy a few years ago when I slid into very deep tire tracks,
cut into a muddy road, used mostly by farm tractors, in the back of the beyond,
around Glen Huron. That experience
taught me to never go off-roading (not intentional believe me) during a rainy,
spring season. I was in those muddy ruts
up to my hubcaps (nowadays called wheel covers, I believe) and even my friend,
a homegrown farm girl, who drove tractors from the time she could reach the
pedals, couldn’t chivvy us out. The
tow-truck operator used the coordinates to find us and was able to tow us out
from about 100 feet away (about 30 meters) from where we were stuck. There was no way in hell he was going to
drive his freshly washed white tow truck through the muck to get any closer. That’s one adventure I will always remember. I have not been back to that road since.
I also have a digital camera, which is slowly, but surely,
being challenged by smart phones, which have a built-in camera and some even take
high quality images. Even my little
flip phone has a camera but I can tell you that downloading the photos and
sending them is quite complicated and it makes my head hurt trying to figure it
out, so I rarely use it for shooting.
The days of having to pay for developing are
dead and gone. Now we have free software,
which enables us to fix (edit) our images, and then transmit them immediately to
all our friends and family. Talk about instant
gratification. I can tell you that makes
me very happy, since I describe myself as an enthusiastic amateur photographer
and rarely go anywhere without my camera at my side. I have discarded hundreds if not thousands of
images, which just aren’t very good.
Back in the ‘olden days’ I had rolls of film developed, good and bad
pictures alike and paid a good buck for the service, only to throw out half the
photographs.
Nowadays, if anyone has a question, the resounding response
is, “Google It!”, and I do, for any number of topics. Over the weekend for instance, I was able to
fix my toilet seat and feel very proud of myself for being able to do so, after
I 'Googled It' to figure out how.
I have a weird kind of soft-close seat I’ve never had the pleasure
of adjusting before. It was pretty
simple, once I knew how. I’ve
also printed out the instructions to keep for the next time I think I’m going
to toboggan off the porcelain.
So many inventions,
so little time, especially when you’re in your early 60s. But along with all the inventions, comes
change, big change. Good, bad or … Stay
tuned.
© 2018 UNDERCOVER CONFIDENTIAL aka PHYLLIS MAHON … IT’S UNLAWFUL TO REPOST, COPY OR PUBLISH CONTENT FROM THIS WEBSITE WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION.
You know the kind I’m talking about – big, old black and
white TV in the lower middle of the unit, sometimes concealed behind swanky
sliding doors. The record player would
be in the top centre and sometimes, there would also be a built-in am/fm radio,
usually on the right-hand side. On the
left side, there may be a handy bar area, with built-in compartments for a
fancy, crystal decanter and matching highball glasses.
Nowadays, if anyone has a question, the resounding response
is, “Google It!”, and I do, for any number of topics. Over the weekend for instance, I was able to
fix my toilet seat and feel very proud of myself for being able to do so, after
I 'Googled It' to figure out how. 