Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Ten on Tuesday -- 10 Changes

This week on Ten on Tuesday, we explore 10 ways the world has changed since you've been in school. I'm going to focus on the time since college, but since I graduated in 1992 and 1998, I get some extra time to play with.

Internet Access: When I was in college the first go around we had 3 computer labs -- for 25,00 people. Internet? What internet. I know you could get a dial up modem and maybe get to some bulletin boards, but in 1992 there wasn't a whole lot to see. By the time I went back things had changed a lot, and now, forget it; I can get on the internet from my iPod.

Digital cameras: I took a journalism class around 1991 that dealt with layout and design for magazines. I remember the professor talking about these cool digital cameras things that were coming out. No film! No color! Extra grainy! Now I can take an great picture and print it up in 20 seconds. Oh, and we also had a scanner that we had to use to import a photo into our magazine. It took 20 minutes to scan and import a 2 inch by 2 inch photo. And it still looked like garbage.

Portable music: In college my then girlfriend, now wife, bought me a portable CD player to use while walking the campus. It was huge and skipped a lot but I could listen to music while walking for 25 minutes. Now can Carry several hours of music on my Shuffle and I don't even know I am wearing it. WE just need to get some implants in out heads so we don't need headphones.

DVD/HD DVD/BluRay/DVR: We have so many ways to watch TV now. No more forgetting to set the VCR. If you miss something, rent the season of the show on DVD. At least Sony is probably happy since the won the HD format war. They can forget about losing the Beta/VHS war.

Video Games: I had a Nintendo at college. We loved it. You could spend hours playing Super Mario 3, then die and have to start all over again. Now, you can play online with people all over the world with games that are so realistic you almost feel bad about shooting someone in the game. Almost. Oh, and you can be a rock star now, too.

News: It is always on; even when there is nothing to report.

Cars: The cars are so sophisticated they can tell you were to go. Most of the time they won't make you drive into a lake.

Banking: I can do all my banking right here. I don't have to see, or talk to anyone. Driving to the bank to deposit a check before you bounce one is a thing of the past. Just the driving part, not the bouncing part. That is still possible.

TV: Now your TV can be hung on the wall and look almost as good as a live picture. Know you can tell how old Barbra Walters really is.

Computers in general
: I had a computer during my last year of college. It had a 8086 processor running at 8Mhz I believe (It was out of date at this point, but that's all I had). All I could do on it was use the word processing program. I think it was Pro-Write. Now a calculator is more powerful than that, with more memory. Much more memory, the computer had less then a megabyte.

OK, I feel old now. Time for a nap.

8 comments:

Florinda said...

We said the same thing about Sony when the high-def "wars" were declared over. Too bad we had bought an HD-DVD player.

And that is way too true about the news.

Cookie said...

Great list!

Remember how free double prints seemed like such a great thing? What was wrong with us?

Mike said...

Florinda: Atleast you can still get some on HD DVD. I'm surprised I didn't buy the wrong one. Actually, I'm surprised I waited. :)

Cookie: I didn't take pictures very often, but I know what you mean. Now you can put them on Flickr and share with family and friends for free.

storyteller said...

Yup … I felt old when I made my list at Small Reflections this morning too. I’m amazed (reading the lists of you and others) the many things I neglected to include on mine. It was early and I hadn’t had coffee … so perhaps I can be excused?
Hugs and blessings,

LA Nickers said...

Looks like we shared a few memories. ;-)

Blessings,
Linda


TEN WAYS THE WORLD HAS CHANGED SINCE I WAS IN SCHOOL, at Practically at Home

Teena in Toronto said...

It's crazy how much things have changed!

Thanks for stopping by!

DC said...

I still remember playing Pong on my Atari. And my first computer, before laser printers, where it took like an hour to print one page!

Mike said...

DC: The good old 9-pin dot matrix printers. Yeah, I remember those. I remember my first 24-pin printer. Near letter quality!