Oh, and if this seems slightly distracted at all, it's because I made the mistake of brushing my tongue this morning after having too hot (as in temperature, not spice) a supper last night, and now the silly thing is shedding its skin in a disturbingly reptilian fashion. TMI? Yeah, probably, but I'm the one who's dealing with tongue chunks rather than just hearing about them so I think you're probably in the better position.
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This morning when I got in to work I took a moment to download a new game onto my 3DS via the free wifi here, and it occurred to me that if I'd said "download a game onto my 3DS via the free wifi here" to myself what, ten? fifteen? years ago, I wouldn't have comprehended a bit of it. Game, maybe. I would have got that it had to do with a game of some sort.
When you step back and look at it, isn't that weird?
Our day-to-day world now wouldn't be at all comprehensible to our own past selves of a handful of years ago. That sort of blows me away, and I tend to think that it's one of the few times in history that it's happened. We forget, too. Because we're living in amongst the whole thing, we forget that less than ten years ago the idea that Japanese companies were putting cameras in cell phones seemed strange (and who would ever want a camera on their phone, anyway?). Our photocopier/printer at work is just barely old enough that it won't accept SD cards over 1G. Tragic, that. Hands up if you can remember when a 1G card seemed like it would last you forever, and it had better last forever because it was going to cost you an arm and a leg to get one. The first card I used in my camera? 64M, if I remember right. And I had to buy that one as a special purchase, because the one that came with it was only... oh, 16M or so.
And to think that a little while after I started working here I got brave enough to shell out the money for an electronic personal organiser (think: before Palm Pilots, even) with a staggering 64K of memory. I think I probably still have it somewhere. I should see if the museum wants it.
It all makes it sound like I'm ancient (and I'm sure that for some of my two fans, after reading this you're probably sure that I'm ancient), but I'm not. No, really. I'm not. It's just that things move so fast these days. So fast, in fact, that unless you keep staring straight ahead you lose your way in the newness. Look off to the side for a bit to enjoy a current technology, and before you know it you're three towns past your exit and the world is all using implanted wrist chips to pay for groceries, or something like that.
By the way, it totally won't surprise me if the implanted chip thing happens.
Ah well. None of this is implying judgment or anything. It just strikes me every once in a while that if I could stand outside of my own skin and be my eighteen-year-old self looking at my forty-two-year-old (yeah, I said it. Whatever. Forty's the new black, isn't it?) self now, I think I'd be fairly bewildered.
Hmm. By more than technology, no doubt, but let's leave some of the other stuff for another post. I'm still in the middle of a work day, after all. Let me just readjust the Sanctuary Hologram so that our visitors can get back to watching the animatronic birds...
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