15 Current Technologies A Child Born Today Will Never Use

Yahoo/Laptop Mag ^ | 5.14.12 | Avram Piltch

[DemforBush]

From the moment that I found out my wife was pregnant with our first child, a son, I’ve thought of his development in terms of tech...

[BlackElk]

Not only do I like your opinions, but I would have liked to have met your grandpa and to have seen his work. God bless!

[HiTech RedNeck]

Maybe they’re worried about how many people can call 911 for something like a heart attack and still get through to someone who knows where they are?

[BlackElk]

Roger THAT!

[Windflier]

Not only do I like your opinions, but I would have liked to have met your grandpa and to have seen his work. God bless!

Why thank you, my friend. That goes double for me.

I wish you'd write a book. I'd buy it and read it in a heart beat. I find your commentary on FR to be some of the best that's posted here, and that includes published authors. It sometimes astonishes me how many excellent writers hang out here, and you are in that cadre.

As for old Granddad's work, he worked for the War Dept. building every imaginable military facility up and down the west coast during WWII. Anything you see on a military base out west from that era would be indicative of the type of work he did. After the war he spent the next couple decades building homes and commercial properties in Los Angeles, but alas, I don't know where any of them are.

Fortunately, my dad has all of my Granddad's old tools. He and his brothers sold off most of the modern equipment after Granddad passed, but the old stuff was precious to them. I think they felt his soul in those implements, and I'm sure it is. I hope to one day inherit at least a couple of them myself for that very reason.

Please keep me on your ping list. I very much enjoy reading your posts.

[cynwoody]

...anyone else find it interesting that the CDC KNOWS THE NUMBER OF homes with landlines?

Duh!

CDC is supposedly interested in Disease Control. Landlines must be a disease. Who knew? (For those of you in Rio Linda, it's called Mission Creep. (TSA is next.)).

My landline is a total joke. It rides atop my FiOS connection and costs about a third of the bill.. It only exists because I'm too rich and too lazy to cancel it!

[98ZJ USMC]

It was fascinating to think that when he first learned the trades, everything was done by hand. Those old fashioned ways came through in all of the work he did, too. It was all sturdy, and built to last. Wonderful stuff.

.......

I’ve dabbled in finish carpentry and have done quite a bit of framing. When I look at what those guys produced using nothing but hand tools, and primitive ones at that, I am in awe.

[USARightSide]

Still have the land-line that was installed 43 years ago, and we’re not about to give it up.

Garbled words and sometimes a kind of hum when folks use cell phones to leave messages on the answer machine. We play the message over and over to understand, and then don’t always.

When we speak over each other using a land line, our words are not clipped, and we generally know what each has said.
Try that on a cell - constantly cut-off, and have to repeat and repeat, and no one knows who should speak first.
CONstant cutting off - time waster, patience trying.
Always think we should say “over” each time we’re ready to listen to the other person - like using a walkie-talkie.

Are there better cell phones than others -?

[JCBreckenridge]

I’ve never owned a landline and never will. For me, skype is far easier and far better. Plus, if I can’t hear, they can type to me under, and we can do conference calls that actually work, etc.

“HTRN thinks the nostalgia factor will probably count for a lot. Operations that manage to be economical will survive.”

I doubt it. Really the only reason to go see a movie now, is to take a girl out somewhere, and spend some money on her. That’s it.

[R. Scott]

I tell my own kids about the differences between the technologies of my youth …

Same here. When I talk with young friends – 20 somethings – they often wonder how we did it. Only three TV stations? My nephew has a gadget on his Harley that holds 20,000 tunes, I had a stack of single song 45s. Today they all have smart phones, we had a party line. When I first went on the internet I was amazed that I could communicate with people all over the world, my daughter just said, “So? It’s done with computers.”
My father saw the first automobile in town. Before he died he saw man walk on the moon.

[Quality_Not_Quantity]

Hey, do us all a favor and give us at least a little clue as to where your links lead, okay? Some of us would appreciate having an opportunity to decide beforehand whether or not we want to go somewhere...

Thanks.

[Future Snake Eater]

Yeah, that “wired internet” prediction is just stupid. Wired is far faster and more secure than wireless internet. I wire up everything I can in my house for those reasons.

And the mouse is going away? I don’t think so. Touch interfaces are cool, but the computer mouse is still better for many different tasks.

[Future Snake Eater]

Yeah, that “wired internet” prediction is just stupid. Wired is far faster and more secure than wireless internet. I wire up everything I can in my house for those reasons.

And the mouse is going away? I don’t think so. Touch interfaces are cool, but the computer mouse is still better for many different tasks.

[Fresh Wind]

I’m surprised this guy didn’t declare the keyboard dead along with the mouse.

Just try to write a serious document using only a touch screen. Good luck with that!

But then I’m a confirmed Luddite, so what do I know?

[Fresh Wind]

Hey, do us all a favor and give us at least a little clue as to where your links lead, okay?

If you "mouseover" the link, you can see the URL at the bottom of the browser window. No click required. That, of course, assumes you are still clinging to ancient technology, and still use a mouse.

[tomkat]

That was an excellent post .. solid reminders of proper perspective .. thanks !

[LearsFool]

Your post reminded me of the old Sprint commercials (for land-line)...To illustrate how clear their signal was, they showed a pin dropping.

How far we’ve “progressed” since then.

[Raycpa]

Things my kids never used:

Electric hairbrush
Electric knife
Polaroid Camera
Plastic cover to make BW TV look like color
Walkman
Pong
Record player
Reel to Reel
Oven cleaner
Electric cords made of cord
Party line phone
Lighted princess phone
Tube tester
Wooden screens

[ladyjane]

My grandfather was born in 1899... I don’t believe there were social security numbers yet.

There wasn't even any social security! Not until 1935.

[Fresh Wind]

The sad thing is that generations of kids are growing up thinking that music is supposed to be corrupted with digital artifacts, and sound like the speaker is under water. Give them a wide-band analog signal, and it doesn’t sound right to them.

[Cowman]

He was born in 1906, and witnessed the advent of nearly every technology of our modern world. He told me that when he was a boy in Sardis, Mississippi, the kids would chase any car that happened down the street, because it was so rare to see one. He talked about how flying machines, submarines, computers, televisions, the power grid, satellites, manufacturing, skyscrapers, and men on the moon, had all been considered science fiction when he was a boy. He honestly marveled that all of those things, and more, had come to pass, and that they were now the common building blocks of our world.

Something to consider; The greatest periods of technology adoption and development occurred in times of least government intrusion. The automobile was around but was not widely in use until the twenties. In the same period air conditioning, airplanes, electrification, radio, sliced bread, the home refrigerator, and even zippers were brought into general use. The next great technology explosion was in the eighties when computer technology took off and influenced almost everything we use.

My question is how much advancement has been lost due to the meddling nature of government? Would we be using the flying car now had it not been for the government tinkering with the economy?

something to think about.