Today at Best Buy, I was talking to a young (20ish) man about computers and other technology. He was amazed at the technological changes I'd seen in my lifetime. I was surprised that he didn't know what it meant to format a hard drive or that he hadn't heard of MS-DOS. Such a puppy! When it comes to technology -- computers, phones, TV, photography, and vehicles -- I've seen a lot, a lot of changes, but I guess that's true of the generations before me. After all, my grandparents witnessed the transition from horse to automobile and the beginning of air travel.
My first vehicle was not a horse, it was a used 1970 Datsun (not Nissan) pick-up truck. It had manual windows and door locks and no air bags or other safety features. Of course, it had manual transmission. I remember having to "pop" the clutch when I couldn't get it to start. Learning to drive a stick shift was memorable. No one could teach me. I had to do it myself. My first new vehicle was a 1984 Chevy S10 pick-up truck. I was so excited. It cost $13,000. Everything was still manual, including the transmission. Of course, it was much nicer than the old Datsun. I traded it in in 1994 for my next truck.
It was hard to find manual transmission in my next truck (I like manual), a 1994 Ford Ranger. It also lacked the features of more modern vehicles. Manual windows and door locks. No air bags. I still have the Ranger. It's 30 years old and still runs great. I don't ever want to get rid of it. I had a car for a few years. The Ford Probe was meant to replace the Mustang. It was my first car with a computer in it. The console remined me of the cockpit in an airplane. Over the years, I've had several Ford Escapes. My current one (2019) has many features that did not exist years ago. I push a button to start it. It tells me when I am tired and should take a rest. It lets me know when I've crossed the center line. The windshield wipers come on automatically. It beeps if I'm close to another vehicle. The only thing it can't do is drive me, and there are vehicles than can do that.
I took a computer class in college (PASCAL); we fed cards into the computer. I must admit I never had an aptitude for this kind of computing. My first PC was an NEC Multispeed laptop (c. 1987). I paid $1300 for it. That was a lot of money for a grad student. It had two 3.5 inch disk drives and no hard drive. The screen was monochrome. I got an external monitor for it. It was thick and heavy compared to today's laptops (notebooks). Not one you'd want to carry around very much. But it was a "workhorse." I used it for 5 years until it went kaput; wrote my thesis on it and did the Maryland Sheep News with it. I still have my "vintage" NEC laptop on a shelf in the basement.
My first personal computer: NEC Multispeed
After the initial laptop, I bought mostly desktop computers. I saw computer companies come and go. Now, desktops are almost obsolete, as people favor laptops and mobile devices. When I learned to use a computer it was with MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System). When the internet came along, we accessed it with a modem (dial-up). We had programs like Telnet and Gopher. I used Word Perfect and Lotus 1-2-3. I miss Word Perfect's reveal codes. The first Windows version I remember using was Windows 3.1. I started with 5.25 floppy disks, then 3.5 inch. The even bigger floppy disks were before I started using computers. Zip disks were a thing for a few years. They predated CDs. After CDs came Blue-ray disks, now memory sticks (flash drives) and cards. Computers don't have disk drives any more, not even CD/DVD drives unless you pay extra for them.
During the early part of my career I did a lot of teaching about computers and the internet to farmers. It fit right in with farm management and marketing. I got surplus computers from the government, mostly old USDA computers. The hard drives and memory had been removed. I bought hard drives, memory, and modems from E-bay. I put the computers back together and leased them to farmers. I had received a grant from the Maryland Grain Producers Utilization Board to do this, since one of the goals was for farmers to use the computers to access grain marketing information. The project got me a national award from the National Association of County Agricultural Agents, and I was recruited by USDA for the Polish-American Extension Project. USDA was impressed with my computer skills. I served as the farm management specialist as part of a two person team assigned to the Jelenia Gora province for six months. What an experience that was!
I grew up listening to records (45s and 33s). I've still got my childhood collection of LPs. Now, records are making a comeback, due to their purer sound. I never got into 8-track tapes. Next came cassettes. I did a lot of recording with cassettes. They jammed a lot. The cassette technology lasted for a long time. I still have my collections of both music and audio book cassettes, including some that I recorded myself. We listened to cassettes on our Walkmans, in our cars, and on our "boomboxes."
Along came the compact disk (CD). The next generation of Walkmans played CDs. For computers, CDs were a big deal because they held so much more data. MP3 players were the next trend. The first Apple iPod was introduced in 2001. Now I stream most of my music. I listen to it on my iPhone, using blue tooth headphones. I still have my CDs and cassettes that I can and often do convert to digital. I'm bummed that my current vehicle doesn't play CDs. I either have to play music from my phone via blue tooth or stick a memory stick in the USB port of the center console -- which means I have to convert stuff from analog to digital (ugh!). My old Ford Ranger pickup truck has a cassette player, but it stopped working a couple of years ago. I have to listen to the good old radio when I'm driving the truck.
When I was growing up, television was free. We had an antenna, "rabbit ears." We got local stations from Baltimore and Washington DC. I still remember most of the channels We thought there were plenty of choices. My mom took us to the movies a lot. TV was black and white. That didn't bother us. There weren't remote controls. You had to get up to change the channels. Imagine that.
I bought my first video cassette (Crocodile Dundee) in 1986. I bought many more video cassettes (movies) in the years to come. Everyone had a VCR and could record whatever they wanted. Next came DVDs. I bought many of the same movies over again. The quality was so much better. After that it was Blue-ray disks, even better quality. I replaced some of my DVDs (the best movies), but certainly not all of them. Video stores like Blockbuster came and went. Not sure if you can still rent movies from Redbox. Now most of what I watch I stream from Netflix, Amazon (Prime), or other streaming services. Thankfully, I still have my DVD/Blue-ray collection for when I want to watch a certain movie. The streaming services are always trying to get more money out of you.
The old TVs were bulky. Now the screens are bigger, but the TVs are flat, so they are easier to move and don't take up as much space. They can be mounted on a wall. TV is not free anymore, though you can pick up some stations with an antenna. You can also get some free TV and movies. My Samsung Smart TV provides access to lots of free TV. Most of the stations are crap, but there some stations with good stuff, mostly reruns. Cable and satellite TV are gradually becoming obsolete. Nowadays, most people just stream what they want to watch from the internet. It's gotten a lot more expensive to watch TV. There are many more choices, but you have to pay for all of them. The shows you want to watch are usually spread across several different streamers (don't know if that's a word), each wanting a subscription fee. Thankfully, you can watch some programs using free trials. Streaming used to mean no commercials, but now they are incorporating advertising. Eventually, there will be as much advertising as commercial TV, unless you pay an exorbitant monthly fee.
My first camera: Kodak Duaflex IIPhotography has been a lifelong hobby of mine. My mom gave me my first camera: a Kodak Duaflex II (c. 1949). It was a box camera with a very large view finder. You looked down to take a picture. It used big 620 film. I was so excited when my dad gave me his 35 mm camera, a Mamiya-Sekor 1000 DTL (c. 1968). Eventually, I bought my own 35 mm SLR cameras. Minolta was my brand. The first digital camera I bought was a Casio, followed by several Nikons (Coolpix) with swivel lenses. Point-and-shoot cameras that used 35 mm film were popular for awhile, as were digital point-and-shoots. I used the APS film cartridges for a few years (in the 90s).
Eventually, digital SLRs became a thing. Today, I have a Canon digital SLR, along with a Sony mirrorless camera. I've had several Canon digital SLRs through the years, upgrading as resolution and other features improved. I spent a lot of money on cameras, not realizing the cameras were smarter than I was, and they weren't going to take better pictures; that was my job. Of course, over the years, cell phones have become the cameras of choice. Increasingly, the pictures from cell phone cameras are rivaling SLRs. When I upgrade my phone, it is solely on the basis of getting an improved camera.
At Clarksville Middle School, I learned how to develop film and print pictures in a dark room. One year, I got an enlarger for Christmas and set up a dark room in the basement. I remember when I moved to Salisbury in 1988 and set up a dark room in my bathroom I set the enlarger on the toilet. Darkrooms are now obsolete. Film is now obsolete. Nobody knows what film is anymore. There's a state park in Utah called Kodachrome Basin. I wonder if the younger folks know what the name references. It's not "Kodak moments" anymore, it's photo ops. Over the years, I used many different kinds of film. I used print film (Kodachrome), slide film (Ektachrome), and film cartridges. To save money, I used respooled motion picture film sold by Seattle FilmWorks. Scanning my old slides and prints is a monumental task, but one I am gradually undertaking.
Camera stores are a thing of the past. Digital photography has taken over and cell phones have replaced most cameras. Even professionals use cell phone cameras for some of their work. Some of my best pictures are taken with my cell phone, currently an iPhone 15 Pro Max. The most limiting feature of cell phone cameras is the zoom, and that is getting better with each new release. I have a drone for picture-taking, but have never flown it. I buy too many things that I never (or seldom) use. Bad me.
My Super-8 movie cameraI went through a phase when I thought I wanted to have a career in filmmaking. I wanted to learn the art of cinematography, especially screenwriting. My first major in college was Photography and Cinema (I changed the day before classes started). I chose Ohio State because of its film department. I dreamed of owning a movie camera. The one I wanted was $400. That was too much money for a 16 year old in 1978. Instead, I had to settle for a Super-8 movie camera (Bell & Howell 761XL). I still have it. It uses film cartridges that last a little over 3 minutes. I bought a film editor and spliced my own movies, the old-fashioned way. Who can forget my movie, "Lambs, lambs, lambs!"
Movie cameras became video cameras or camcorders, first using full size video cartridges, then smaller 8 mm cartridges. I have a Sony camera that uses the smaller film cassettes. Never used it much. Like still photography, movie-making eventually became digital, and now everyone has a video camera on their cell phone. The SLRs take videos, too (better than cell phones). Cell phone cameras mean that anyone can be filmed at any time. Better watch what you say and do. Cell phone videos have become invaluable in our culture. Everybody's a videographer. YouTube and TikTok are two of the most popular sites on the internet. They are filled with amateur video.
The first cell phones were car phones. The first truly mobile phones didn't come along until later. Now we can't live without them. We do everything with them. Many people are addicted to them. Sometimes, I am. I can't recall when I got my first cell phone. The university probably payed for it. In fact, the university paid my cell phone bill for the entire time I worked at the Western Maryland Research & Education Center. My first mobile phone was a flip-phone. I just used it to make phone calls. Smart phones came along later. Not sure what year I got my first smart phone. I've had an iPhone for quite a while now. Only once did I have an Android (HTC One). I recently bought a new iPad. I've been using iPads for years, mostly using to read books and surf the internet. Yep, books are becoming obsolete, too.
Wow, all the changes I've experienced in my 62 years. I'm sure there are many more to come. Imagine the changes that 20 year old will see in his lifetime. Some good. Some bad. How we use technology is what's important. I've always embraced technology, but only for its good uses. I fear AI and I don't mean artificial insemination.
