With the recent hoopla surrounding the unveiling of the iPhone 5, I can’t help but take a look back at how far we have come in such a short time and what that means for the future. I still remember the first cell phone I ever saw. It was one of those chunky black flip phones with a long extendable antenna, and I marveled at how far the human race had advanced.
No more than a year later, my life course was forever altered when my mother brought home a Nokia phone featuring the game Snake. I probably spent more time playing games on that phone than I did reading, and yet, despite all odds, I made it to college. If that is not the American dream then I do not know what is.
Several years after that, the flip-phone made an improbable comeback. The Motorola Razr made everyone re-think what they thought sleek meant, and I suffered from my first serious case of phone envy.
Then, just a few short years after that, the smart phones took over. My first smart phone was a Blackberry, which I thought was truly the pinnacle of human innovation. I mean, the Internet on a cell phone? Even though it was incredibly inconvenient due to painstakingly slow speed and impossible navigation, it seemed so awesome. Around the same time, the first iPhone dropped, and so did my Blackberry fascination level.
So now, some 15 or so years after my first encounter with a cellular device, the current product outshines its first model by leaps and bounds. If you do not have a smart phone, you are pretty much out of the loop. It is hard to believe we have advanced so far in such a short span of time.
I love to sit around and wonder what will happen in the next 15 years. Will we all be wearing Google Glasses and talking through a tiny earpiece? Or will we just all have tablets that replace everything? Maybe someone will invent something new altogether, or Western Civilization will crumble. I do not know, but whatever it is I am willing to accept it.
I always hear people talk about how technology is making us dumber, but I imagine people said that when things like the telescope and the printing press were invented as well. As I get closer to graduation, I have also faced the realization that I am one step closer to being that old guy who complains about how the kids these days do not know how to drive cars, or whatever. Either way, I am excited to see what they will come up with next. Who knows, maybe it will be someone I graduate with? Let’s hope the Mayan Calendar is wrong and we all get to find out.
