Wed 18 Jun 2008
As the world changes around us, we tend to get used to the “new”; this is especially true of those who are younger, and never really knew the “old”. Over time, this leads to a situation where it may be difficult to imagine having to live in a world without the things we today take for granted.
With that in mind, the question I pose is a simple one: what recent advancement has “spoiled” you, to the point where you simply cannot imagine having to live in a world where it did not exist?
This does not have to be limited to tech toys and gadgets; it could be social, political, or really anything you could imagine. If pressed for a definition of “recent”, I would say “within 10 years of your date of birth”; so, within your own lifetime, or close to it.
So what is it for you?
Posted by dyslexiaOkay, let's hear it.
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This is going to sound incredibly shallow, but the thing that prompted me to post this was, of all things, online package tracking. I had just received an email that a package I ordered was delivered to my house, and I just thought to myself, “man, it would suck to have to not know that. Having to wonder where your packages are? Not knowing whether they shipped at all? That’s, just, so … primitive”.
But hopefully someone else can come up with something more meaningful.
the corner office.
Constantly available highspeed internet. Ours went down for a week last month and I used my student dialup as a backup – omigod, so painful! I was trying to finish a group assignment overnight with three others, and the student account wouldn’t run any chat programs and it took me 20 minutes to download the document each time it got updated and emailed around. I do my homework from home by ssh-ing into the university servers, and I use email like text messaging or msn, usually checking it at least every half hour on my phone if I’m not at my desk. If I have to go somewhere I check the bus timetable online to see what time I should leave the house. Debates can be solved instantly with google. I keep my calendar in GCal, documents in Google Docs, photos on flickr and use last.fm as a radio.
My sister doesn’t have an internet connection, even dialup. She checks her email at work, and says she’s ‘too busy’ to look into setting one up right now. I don’t understand.
This is bordering on You’ve Got to be Kidding territory, but finally getting a cellphone last year has made me lazy about phone numbers.
I used to be able to rattle off probably thirty to fifty phone numbers from memory. Everybody I called more than two or three times a year? I knew that shit. I had thirty digits of calling card stuff down cold. It was a tiny but satisfying thing to be able to do.
Now I pull up a number in my address book on my little brick of a Nokia, and I feel a little dirty every time.
See also: browsers that remember my password.
Ooooh, I’ll go for the internet and cell phone too. Same problem Josh, my cell means I don’t know phone numbers like I used to. And I can’t imagine life without the Internet.
While I might be able to live without them, I’d say my game consoles are very important, since I often define myself as a gamer.
The Internet. It’s kind of weird since I love camping and the outdoors with weeks without computers/Internet and don’t miss it for a second. But the instant I’m back in the confines of 4 walls and a rood, I MUST have Internet!
For me, it’s specifically the instant at-my-fingertips access the Net provides to every single fucking trivial obscure bit of senseless information in the history of the planet. On TV, hear a bit of a song you know you’re familiar with? Two seconds later — ah yes, that’s “The News from Your Bed” by Bishop Allen (and no wonder it’s familiar since the LP is sitting like six feet from me). Why do I know Ben Whisham from I’m Not There? Of course, dummy, he was in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. Say, where exactly is Needles, California? OK, one more time, was it the Hutus mowing down the Tutsis or vice versa (I finally developed a mnemonic for that one: “Hutu —> Tutsi, goodbye”). And so on.
This shit used to drive me batshitinsane before the Internet. Yeah, I could pull out my big one-volume encyclopedia or atlas for a few things, but the pop culture stuff? You either had to strive to put it out of your head, let it nag at you for the next six days, or make a road trip to the library to lay it to rest.
I’m a heavy user of technology, but for me there’s only one can’t-turn-back-the-clock gadget: my ipod.
I’m on the Internet all day, but I could live without it. It’s entertaining and useful, but it doesn’t feel like part of me. Take my computer and my TV away, and I’d read more books.
But over the last few years, I’ve gotten deeply addicted to being able to carry around my entire music library. Pre-ipod, I tried to do this. I got my first Walkman when I was a teen, and back then I had hundreds of albums on cassette tape. I’ve always been incredibly picky about what I’m listening to, but my pickiness is an in-the-moment thing.
Back in the Walkman days, I had real trouble when going on vacation. Which cassettes should I pack. I’d wind up packing a ridiculous number of them: fifty or sixty. Still, later, I’d wind up on the beach regretting that I’d made the choices I did.
The iPod totally solves that problem for me. I never have to make a listening decision until the moment I want to listen to something. I simply can’t imagine going back to the old days. Stupid as this sounds, if I had to give up iPods, I’d mourn as if a person had died. This is a totally new feeling for me. I’ve never gotten that attached to a machine before. I know lots of people get attached to cars, but I don’t own one, and I’ve never been a car person.
My love-affair with iPods reached its pinnacle when Apple released the 120GB model. I currently own an 80GB one, but it’s almost full. I’ve noticed that though music temporarily goes in and out of vogue with me, I never get permanently tired of a piece I love. So a year from now, I may suddenly yearn to hear something I first heard 20 years ago. I’m 42, but my music collection contains albums I first heard when I was ten.
So 80GB is JUST enough to hold forty-years worth of my music. And I’ve noticed that while I do acquire new music, I do it at a much slower rate than I used to. So 120GB is presumably enough to hold all the music I own — and all the music I’ll ever want to own.