by
Mark Ollig
During
this week of Thanksgiving, many of us will be among family and friends.
We
take time to pause and think of the people and things in our lives we are
thankful for.
Being
this is a technology column (with a sprinkling of self-deprecating humor yours
truly likes to throw in), I thought it would be fitting to reflect upon some of
the technology we can be thankful for.
When
one pauses to think, it is surprising how immersed we have become with using
technology in our daily lives during the last 20 years.
These
days, the number of high-tech devices might seem overwhelming; however, here is
an interesting perspective I would like to share with you.
Not
long ago, I saw two photographs; one displaying high-tech devices used in 1993,
and another showing what we regularly use today in 2013.
The
first photograph showed eight devices sitting on a table we commonly used in
1993.
It
displayed an OmniBook 300 laptop computer, a portable (although somewhat
clunky) VCR recorder, a Motorola cellphone (otherwise known as “the brick”), an
LCD watch, Walkman cassette AM-FM radio, Apple’s Newton Message Pad (or
Notepad), a belt-worn pocket pager, and what appeared to be a Polaroid Vision
Instamatic camera.
Those
of us who used these devices usually had one concern in the back of our minds:
did we have an ample supply of batteries on hand?
The
second photograph displayed only one device: an Apple iPhone.
Of
course, the two photographs deliver a message which makes perfect sense.
It
causes one to realize just how far technology has come in the last 20 years;
with the point being the small hand-held iPhone (and similar smartphones) has
made things much easier in our lives by performing all the functions those
eight separate devices provided for us in 1993.
Here’s
a list of various technologies and popular devices we’ve seen during the last
20 years that some of us may be thankful for:
Talkboy
cassette recorder, 1993
Sony
Walkman WM-EX606 (cassette model), 1993
Internet
search engine: ALIWEB, 1993
DirecTV
Satellite TV, 1994
Google
Blogger, 1994
Facebook,
1994
Bluetooth
wireless, 1994
Sony
PlayStation 1, 1995
GPS
devices (public use), 1996
Motorola
Flip-Phone, 1996
Pioneer
DVD-R disc, 1997
MPMan
F10 Portable MP3 player, 1998
Panasonic
portable DVD player, 1998
HP
optical computer mouse, 1998
TiVo
Digital Video Recorder, 1999
IBM
USB flash or “thumb” drive, 2000
IBM
multi-core processors, 2001
Apple
iPod, 2001
Mozilla
Firefox Web browser, 2002
Blackberry
smartphone, 2002
Microsoft
Pocket PC , 2003
Samsung
OLED TV, 2004
Microsoft
Xbox 360, 2005
Twitter
, 2006
Apple
iPhone, 2007
Kindle
e-book reader, 2007
Roku
Internet video-streaming receiver box , 2008
Apple
iPad, 2010
Trakdot
Luggage Tracker , 2013
Sony
Smartwatch 2, 2013
Google
Glass , 2013
Let’s
also not forget the technology which allows us to navigate over the
network-of-networks: The Internet.
Many
think of the Internet more as a place, rather than a complex arrangement of
physical technological devices; however, the operation of the Internet is made
possible in part because of the technology contained inside these devices.
Gateway
devices such as routers send data messages through the network connections
inside the Internet.
Fiber
optic cables provide the physical transport layers and signaling pathways
needed for us to access the Internet’s many interconnected networks.
We
need to be thankful to Sir Tim Berners-Lee for his creation of the HyperText
Markup Language (HTML) software code, which brought the World Wide Web onto the
Internet.
Vinton
Cerf and Robert Khan can be thanked for designing the TCP/IP (Transmission
Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) communication software code. TCP/IP ensures
data is not lost while being transmitted between networking devices and
computers over the Internet.
In
March 1976, the telecommunications industry was thankful as it celebrated the
centennial of Alexander Graham Bell’s contribution of a technology called the
telephone – which, of course, changed how the world communicated.
Bell’s
invention was also responsible for the founding of many locally-owned rural
telephone companies all across the country.
Thirty-seven
years ago, in March 1976, when my hometown’s telephone company was owned and
operated by our family, my father was asked by the local paper to make a
comment about Bells’ invention.
“I
am thankful he [Bell] invented the telephone. If he hadn’t, I would have
probably ended up in the Pony Express business; and that would have presented a
problem for me because I can’t ride a horse,” I recall my father jokingly
saying as the reporter smiled.
Happy
Thanksgiving, everyone!
