Personal History - The Onward March of Technology

What would you consider the most important inventions you've encountered during your lifetime?

The Color TV

The first television I remember looked like this, and only showed everything in black and white. If the picture got fuzzy, you had to move the antenna around, sometimes stretching out your own body as far as you could reach...and as soon as the picture got better, your brother said, "There!" and you had to stay in whatever position you ended up in so everyone could watch TV.

Adding color was like Dorothy stepping into Oz for the first time. The world was never the same.

The VCR

For years and years, I had to time my TV watching with the TV Guide (anyone remember TV Guide?) in order not to miss my favorite shows, such as Charlie Brown Christmas. The broadcasters played it only once every year, and if you missed it, you were out of luck until next year.

We weren't the first ones to get a VCR, but we were likely the most grateful. My father went through a phase of blasting through sweepstakes, and he enlisted every kid who could to help him write out entries for these contests. I was particularly good at this skill, and even entered some of my own - won some hair care products and stuff. Still, Dad won a new VCR, when VCRs cost hundreds of dollars.

He went out and immediately started buying VCR tapes, and recording everything he could get his hands on - practically everything on television. We had hundreds of these by the time he was done, and I still have some of his recordings today, even though I have no VCR to play them on anymore.

But once we had a VCR, I never missed the Charlie Brown Christmas special ever again.

The DVD

Before DVDs, there was this thing called rewinding. If you liked a song, and wanted to listen to it again, you had to rewind the tape, or rewind the VCR to get back to what you wanted to see. Sometimes you had a counter, where you could write down where the show started and ended, and rewind to that point.

With songs, you just had to guess...and sometimes the machine ate the tape, and you'd get tape streaming out and getting tangled, and then you had to put your finger or a pencil in the tape, and hopefully wind it all back in and straight again.

DVDs had this futuristic look that was so compelling - as a teenager, I went into a music store and saw them in person for the first time. I would just hold them up to the light, and watch the rainbow reflections on the back, or see my own reflection. Couldn't afford them at that point - DVD players cost over a thousand dollars then.

After a few years, the price came down to where we could afford a player, and then rewinding was gone - heaven! How much of my life had been wasted in rewinding! Never again!

The Internet

Email became a thing in my life a little bit after the 1990s - then AOL and all its wonders. Dad bought our home computer about the same time, and tried to teach us all how to program - boring! Though I did kick myself a little later, but then or now, programming would be just boring.

The Internet has changed my life, probably more dramatically than most other technological changes. I worked online for several years, with a couple of different companies now. Facebook is a terrific way to stay in touch with family far away. I don't get newspapers thrown at my house anymore, and hardly anyone mails me letters anymore, saving thousands upon millions of trees. I was first published as a writer online.

I'm also probably more ADD than I was before, thanks to online.

Heated Seats in Cars

We bought a Volkswagon once...only once. Terrible car, but it did have one redeeming feature - heated seats.

Oh, how I loved cranking up the seats on those early mornings running the kids to their seminary classes.

Air Conditioning

Live in Texas would be impossible without it.

Love it love it love it - every summer.

Yes, I do love it so much I would marry it. If A/C were a person, he would be Benedict Cumberbatch meets the Fonz.


Amazon

My home away from home online - the website that makes it possible for me to avoid the mall entirely at Christmastime - a blessing and a godsend.

Amazon Kindle reader

A library in a box I can carry in my purse - such a beautiful thing!

Penicillin and pitocin

It is with some grudging respect that I make this nod to medical technology, but I would not be alive or human today without either of these drugs.

The penicillin got me through several infections, as well as a hospital infection that I picked up after the birth of my oldest girl.

The pitocin kept me alive after the hemorrhaging I went through after my youngest girl's birth. That was one icky experience, and the pitocin hurt worse than delivering my little girl - but I nod my head in thanks.