I write this blog on a laptop computer from various locations that have Wi-Fi using Google on the internet to find facts and photos. Sometimes I use some of my own digital photos, and I always link my posts to Facebook. Later this week I’ll be taking delivery of a Kindle Fire (Amazon’s version of the IPad).
The bolded items above did not exist when I was born, or when I graduated from high school. They’ve all been introduced in my children’s lifetimes. They’ve also all become commonplace tools for modern living. I use each of them just about every day.
The day I was born it would have cost my parents $.04 to send a birth announcement through the US Postal Service. Today postage would be $.44, or parents can send unlimited digital photos of their offspring with email for the cost of an internet connection which most households have these days already. 
Pictures can be posted to social media sites as well for a mere pittance. In my day being the fifth kid in a five kid pastor’s family meant that very few baby photos of me exist. Evidently the cost of film and photo processing was prohibitive. Or perhaps the novelty of another kid had worn off, or maybe, I just wasn't that good looking as a young child as the sample above illustrates.
My parents were willing, and able, to their credit, to spend money on a set of Encyclopedia Britannica and the Oxford New English Dictionary. Those two items and a library card
served as the information superhighway of my youth. That was the state of the art even through my high school years. Now the combined knowledge of the world is available at my fingertips as long as they are near my laptop keyboard.
Don’t get me wrong; there were computers when I was a kid, it’s just that people didn’t own them, and they couldn’t be carried around. Organizations owned them. They were large, they were loud, and they were not nearly as fast or powerful as the laptop I’m writing this on. They were not easily accessed and were limited in their usefulness.
Jason, I love that you refer to your computer as “The Naked Lady Machine”- and, as such, I can imagine how you make use of it. Kind of amazing what they can do with a series of 1's and 0's isn't it? But I digress.
My first known exposure to computers was in first grade when my teacher asked me to stay in from recess one day to help her with a project. My class would be taking a standardized test on new computer forms with fill-in bubbles.
It was determined that it would probably take too long for a lot of my class mates to figure out the write your name and fill in the bubble with the corresponding letters portion of the test form, so I was asked to help pre-fill them. (I’ve always been a giver!) Now those forms are commonplace for students and they can fill in that portion without even thinking twice.
In the years ahead children who have only known a world with Wi-Fi and IPads to access the internet may not fully appreciate how far technology has come in a short period of time. I’m thinking that with the rapid pace of technology can space travel by commoners like me be very far in the future?
Who knows?
*The title for this blog entry was inspired a lot of years ago. Two Gopher football player friends of mine paraphrased the line, "Ground Control to Major Todd." from the David Bowie song Space Oddity. (Thanks Peno and Donnie)
They were inspired to sing that song the day I gave them a ride in the Pacer that my parents bought, as a second car, when I was a junior in high school. I love you mom and dad, always have, always will, but for God’s sake, a Pacer? Really?
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