1-1-2010

OK... I just can't help myself.  2010.  Whew. While,  statistically,  I should see 2040 arrive, something about 2010 strikes a cord.

I fondly remember my Grandmother telling me stories of crossing the eastern plains of Kansas in the back of a covered wagon.  The small wooden and cloth rocker she sat in as a child in the back of that wagon sits now in our bedroom. She fascinated me with stories about getting electric lights in the house for the first time, piped running water INSIDE the house, and of learning how to drive the "Tin Lizzy" (Model T)  in the fields behind the farm house.

I, on the other hand, remember my family sitting around the radio in the living room listening to The Shadow and The Lone Ranger.  My dad was a pre-geek... he was fascinated with technology.  We were the first family we knew to get TV. I remember our first TV - a fuzzy black and white round-screened monster that needed a 25 foot pole to get an antenna the size of a Volkswagen high enough to get signal from the next state.  The neighbors would stand outside our living room and watch through the window. Sometime in the late 1950's we got our first color TV, I don't remember exactly when.  Color programming was limited, but always drew us to the set as a family.  I recall my 1953 Chevy Convertible that a drunk driver totaled (some things haven't changed) as I drove home from a high school function one night.

I started my digital career with the military. I remember eight of us huddled around a small screen in the R/D Section of USASA Field Station Berlin on July 21, 1969 as we watched a direct S-band feed live from the moon as Neil Armstrong took his historic step. PPM was "high tech" back then and 24 bps phase shift keyed digital vocoding was considered "unbreakable".

My biggest fear in computing during college was dropping the box of job cards on the way to the reader. My first PC was a Kaypro II.  It had 64k of RAM and sported TWO 195k floppy drives! If you couldn't write in assembler, you were limited in what you could do.  Programming was recursive to say the least!

Today, I marvel at how facile my 5 year old grand-nephew Collin is with a key board.  His father had to hide his cell phone when Collin was 3, because three times the Munchkin completely whacked the OS by somehow hitting the right key combination playing with it.

The CGI in the movie Avatar is a bit more sophisticated than the "special effects" we used to marvel at while watching Buster Crabbe fight the evil emperor Ming in the Saturday morning Flash Gordon serials at the local theater (entry cost 5 cents, by the way).  The grand-kids use my Nuvi GPS system as entertainment when we take them in my car, proudly announcing where I am to turn and how long it will be before we arrive.

I'm now working with memory chips smaller than a postage stamp that hold many GB of memory - more than the main-frame I worked with when targeting the Soviet Union in the 1960s for the NSA.  I surf the web on my cell phone and exchange instant messages with friends around the world in seconds. 

Where will we be technologically in 2040?  What will I get to use before I end this journey? What will my grand-nephews have at their disposal in 3000?  I cannot imagine.  But it will be exciting and adventurous.

I recall my then 92 year old Grandmother's response when I asked her what she thought when she compared her covered-wagon trip across the plains of Kansas to her 27" color TV and the pacemaker in her chest that kept her alert and alive.  Her reply is part of the legacy she left me:

"I don't think much about it.  Life is what it is. The secret is to embrace and enjoy now and look forward to possibilities."

Go Grandma !!!