Many years ago I used to do a semi-regular post about technology, explaining the new technology in use or coming down the road. Some was groundbreaking while some was an upgrade to older technology that made it better. After a number of posts in a local forum dealing with the differences between the different Internet technologies in use or being installed here in New Hampshire, I remembered that I used to post about such things here and that maybe it was time to start doing so again. Maybe it’s the lecturer in me or maybe it’s that so many people have absolutely no idea how the technology that people use every day actually works. It used to be that most people had at least a basic grasp about how things they used daily – incandescent lights, cars and trucks, radios, TVs, telephones, and so on – actually work.
It used to be that our cars and trucks were something most of us could work on, performing oil changes and chassis lubrication, doing tune-ups which often included installing new spark plugs, plug wires, rotor, distributor cap, points, and condenser as well as setting the ignition dwell and timing, changing out wheel bearings or brake shoes, replacing a starter relay or a defective generator/alternator, and so on. A lot of people were “shade tree mechanics”, handling a lot of car maintenance on their own. Those days are long gone as cars and trucks have become much more sophisticated, more complex, and for the most part, a lot better. Oil changes and tuneups were done frequently, usually every couple of thousand miles for oil changes. Now oil changes are required every 7 to 10 thousand miles and tuneups as we knew them might be done every 100,000 miles and that usually entails just changing the spark plugs. Back then cars were ready for the junkyard after 100,000 miles on the odometer. Now they’re barely broken in with that many miles.
Telephones used to have dials rather than buttons and were connected by wires to the wall or baseboard in our homes. There was no such thing as caller ID, speed dial, or voice mail. Only the wealthy had mobile phones, not to be confused with cell phones which only came into use in the 1980’s. Those mobile phones and 1980’s cell phones could only make calls. There was no texting. These days cell phones are ubiquitous and landlines are fading away. Cell phones are also ‘smart’ which allows you to text, browse the web, take digital photos, shoot HD video...and make phone calls! While cell service isn’t quite ubiquitous (and won’t be unless such service becomes available by way of low earth orbit satellites) they are more numerous than landline phones.
Television was analog and you were lucky if you could pick up TV stations from the three major networks – ABC, NBC, and CBS – and even luckier if you were able to pick up PBS or some of the ‘independent’ TV stations. Some TVs used so-called ‘rabbit ear’ antennas located on top of the TV. You were lucky if you had an outdoor antenna mounted on the roof, and even luckier if it also had an antenna rotor so you could steer the antenna to point in the direction TV station’s transmitter. Cable TV didn’t really come into play until the 1970’s and satellite TV until late 1980’s. Digital TV started replacing analog TV in the 2000’s and analog TV transmissions ended in 2009. Today TV service has so many options between ‘traditional’ cable TV, Fiber To The Home (FTTH) offered by the telephone companies, some electrical utilities, increasingly some cable TV operators, and satellite services like DirectTV and Dish. Traditional “over the air” transmissions still exists, but not quite the same as back in the Good Old Days of analog TV as the new digital transmission format allows more than a single channel to be transmitted simultaneously.
Having dealt with technology in a number of areas over the past 50+ years or so does give me some small insight into that subject, past, present, and future. Hopefully I can actually make my posts interesting, and most important, understandable and relevant.
Look for my first Tech Tuesday post next Tuesday, September 10th. Be mindful that these posts will not occur every week, but will happen more often than not.
