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Last week, in August of 2009 I was sitting in my mechanic's waiting room getting an oil change for my 1972 Nova, reading the SFWA Bulletin while listening to Mongolian throat singing on my 16GB mp3 player that is about twice the size of my thumb.
In 1972 no one knew what a gigabyte was.
This leads me to think about how interesting of a time we live in and how small the planet has become.
What odd juxtapositions happen in your daily life?
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How about sitting in a 400-year-old reading room reading 400-year-old books and taking notes on my brand new MacBook Pro while listening to my iPod?
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Lol, no I was referring to the Duke Humfrey Reading Room of the Bodleian Library in Oxford (random trivia - they filmed one of the Harry Potter library scenes there). And I was reading many things, all of which were in English.
I get the oddest shivery feeling sometimes, when I'm reading old manuscripts. I'm literally holding a piece of history. The person who put pen to paper and wrote those words is hundreds of years dead. Sometimes, I wonder if I'm the only one in the world who knows they ever existed.
All this while I listen to the newest Linkin Park or Hadise song blaring out of my iPod.
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They say the guys entering college this year have never known a time when The Simpsons wasn't on the air.
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I remember watching the Tracy Ulman Show and seeing these odd, poorly drawn, cartoon characters at the end of the show. It seemed out of place at the time. Who knew?
Kitti, there's a book that I tout on occasion for people interested in history and fantasy - The Historian. Your comment about sitting in an old library reading ancient documents reminded me of it. Warning: it is about vampires and is on the literary side of writing (OSC would love it ).
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I remember, back in the 1990s, going up to the counter at the record store (a CD shop by then) and, rather abruptly, realizing I was going to ask a question I never though I'd ever get a chance to ask---"Have you got the new Beatles album?"
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If you compare the word rates of the Big Three SF magazines with what their predecessors paid in the 1930s, then compare them with the rate of inflation, you realize they're paying less now than they did then.
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We used to have a guy at work, long since retired now, but at the top of the seniority list then, who started work the day after Kennedy was assassinated. Besides thinking, "Wow. They were open that day?" I had the usual chill of coincidental crossreferencing.
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We've gone from recording sound on wax cylinders to downloading digital files in, oh, about a hundred and twenty-five years.
The old Edison cylinder technology worked---it was the first thing that could record and play back sound---but, in my life, I've only seen one Edison cylinder player that actually played. (Not-so-coincidentally, it was at the Edison Home and Museum in Ft. Myers, Florida.)
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Remember when nobody had a cell phone?? remember when no had a pager? I feel retarded that I can't get through a day without having to use a cell phone. I was a teen when pagers started becoming the big thing, but never thought twice about needing one. How the hell did people conduct business without cell phones before? Or email for crying out loud. I think my life would come to a blissful stand still without these things.
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I watched a DVD of the first season of "Mr. Belvedere" a few months back...at the time I was struck by things they didn't have. They still used typewriters, not word processors...phones were still attached to the wall, not cell or even cordless...even popcorn still came from one of those tinfoil pans you put over the stovetop burner and shook to even it out...
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Yesterday I spoke to a gentlemen who graduated from college doing math on a slide rule, before calculators existed. I wouldn't know a slide rule if it hit me. He learned to program in Fortran on a room-sized computer. He didn't keep up with the programming languages as they came out, so he got way from writing software. Its hard to keep up. I'm a software developer, graduated seven years ago, and see myself becoming obsolete.
I do noy own an I-Pod, Blackberry, or similar gadget. My husband and I share a cell phone for emergencies only; we still rely on a landline at home.
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I haven't read the Historian yet, though it's on my reading list.
I HAVE read The Last Witchfinder. And in the spirit of that...
Today, I held a first edition of Netwon's Principia Mathematica in my hands. It was a beautiful moment. I'd say my life is complete, except then I'd probably be struck by lightning or eaten by dinosaurs, or some other suitably action-adventure movie death that always befalls someone who says that. ;-)
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Today I was asked what my favorite cartoon was as a child and I said the Simpsons, then I realized I could remember a time when Bart was older than me. It horrified me to no end.
I've also been thinking lately how writing has changed over the years. First we wrote on walls which were huge, then we wrote on little pieces of clay, then we moved to scrolls that could go on as long as we could make them, then we moved to pages that had their limits, and now we write on computers which are essentially scrolls again that could go on for practically ever. I just wonder how the size of the medium affects our pacing.
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I remember 2000 years ago when the first computer came out, it was used to calculate the time of day, time of year and time of the lunar cycle.
Ahhh the glory days of Rome, I really miss them.
So who wants to help me build my time machine? I have figured out how to build one, unforchently, it is powered by a nuclear reactor, and will only work in space or in the close proximity of a black hole. And I need about 500 trillion some odd dollars to build it, and permission from NORAD to launch it, and some how get around the no nukes in space treaty. Yes I looked it up, nuclear reactors are banned from space. Damn cold war politics.
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I tend to be jarred when I notice anachronisms in historical movies or books. Nobody seems to do anything to lose TB vaccination scars, for instance, no matter how visible.
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I got a "B" in my college computer course, despite never being able to get into the lab to run the programs I'd assembled and punched out on computer cards. That meant I never turned in most of the homework assigned for it, and also meant I never really got an opportunity to work with the computer.
Believe me, it's a lot easier working on these newfangled modern computers...
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The post office likes to rub the workers nose in their obsolescence. I was told from Day One: "Welcome to the US Postal Service. Your job is already obsolete."
I was hired to work on one machine there. That kind of machine is no longer there...I've worked on several others, until I was dumped into my current position.
(I miss that job. I got to sit two-thirds of the time, and also got to use my brains---neither of which I get to use right now.)
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My first car was a '68 Chevy Impala. After going through that, and a few others I came back to the idea of simple. My Nova has no computers on it, thoug I did upgrade to an electronic ignition because the points were just a nightmare to keep set. And I can even do some of the repairs myself. There's tons of space around the in-line six cylinder engine so it's easy to work on and costs less to repair.
Charlie currently has 244,000 miles on him. I'm throwing a party when we get to a quarter million.
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I was recently discussing old video games and I talked about a game named LORD (Legend of the Red Dragon) on old BBS systems using Telix. The kid I was talking to lit up and said, "Oh yeah I learned about that in my History of Technology Class. When did they start that? And since when is my life a part of "history"
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