Start the Fire
It’s 2024!!! We are almost a quarter the way through the 21st century (and isn’t that still confusing – how did we get the centuries so screwed up that 2000 was the beginning of the 21st, not the 20th). Just a thought: the kids born on 9/11 are now the first responders to the next emergency. Another thought: Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire (1989) has been “updated” by a group called Fall Out Boy (2023).
I’m now an old retired guy, and that’s a great “gig”. But I was born in the Eisenhower Administration, thirteen Presidents ago. As a youngster I watched the Mickey Mouse Club in black and white on a big box TV with a tiny screen. In fact, the family lore is that I was named for a character on that show, part of a boy’s adventure series called “Spin and Marty”. Thank goodness I wasn’t called “Spin”!!!
Generations
As a history teacher, I was always amazed with the technological change that my father’s generation, the World War II “Greatest Generation”, went through. Dad was born near the end of the First World War. They had cars (Model T’s), electric lights, airplanes (biplanes) and gas stoves. In fact, a gas stove of my parent’s youth is still in use in our kitchen today, a 1929 Magic Chef eight burner, four stove, half-a-ton, cast iron “beast”. It works great, and it’s back in “style”. That same style stove appears both in the movie Oppenheimer and in the Yellowstone series 1923.
But in the near-century of Dad’s life – from 1918 to 2016 – technology changed so much. And Dad was a part of that. He got into television in the beginning, the early 1950’s, when most homes did not have a TV. And he changed what people watched; from selling syndicated shows like Highway Patrol, Sea Hunt and the Everglades, to pioneering the news/talk show with Phil Donahue, and getting way over the top with another guy named Jerry Springer.
So Dad got tech, at least for most of his life. Now I’m not approaching a century, in fact, I’m still a few years short of three-fourths of a century. But today, on New Year’s Day 2024, let’s look at what the tech of those early days of 1950’s and 60’s television promised, and what’s been delivered.
New Tech
Dick Tracy was a cartoon and TV detective in a trench coat and fedora hat. But he had a secret weapon, a “wrist radio”. He didn’t need a lot of bulky equipment to check into the station, he simply talked into his wrist watch, and was connected.
We can do that. Apple watches can not only talk, but they can carry messages, read your blood pressure, tell you when to drink water, and, well, run your life. I don’t have one of those, but it’s not because I’m a Luddite. Apple watches can only be so big, and at my age reading small print isn’t my favorite task. An Apple watch would require constant reading glasses. Better to leave all the messages on my phone – I can make the font big enough to read on that.
And speaking of carrying computers in your pocket: every smart phone is way smarter than the computers that landed men on the moon in the 1960’s. My parents’ joke was that Mom was Dad’s memory, especially in the last few years of her life. Well, I have my memory, right here beside me. If I don’t have a picture of it, I can check it on the internet. Don’t remember something, it’s all out there, and within minutes I can remember what year Billy Joel wrote “We Didn’t Start the Fire” and which group did the new version.
Replicators
And what about the “replicators” of Star Trek? We haven’t got quite to that point where a kitchen, with a button, produces any desired food – but we do have microwave ovens, and we do have “three-dimensional” printers. So we are working our way to being able to produce a given shape and form device on a “home replicator”. The problem with that is; in our society the most produced 3-D products are “ghost guns”.
And about that food thing – today we don’t have to shop for food anymore. We can sign up for a “meal service”, delivered to the front door. Want “foodie” food – Hello Fresh, Blue Apron, or even Martha Stewart will take care of all of your needs. Want groceries? Get on your phone and order them (it’s a “click” thing, not a “talk” thing), they’ll be here before day’s end.
And Christmas shopping has a lot more to do with the computer I’m typing on, or the phone in my pocket, then getting in the car and heading to the mall. In fact, there are three malls left here in Columbus; Easton, Polaris, and Tuttle. Easton is still making it, because it made itself into a “destination”, that has some stores. Polaris is trying to do the same thing, though they’ve been through one bankruptcy. And Tuttle – well – I wouldn’t invest any money there.
And what of Eastland, Northland, Westland, or City Centre? Eastland’s still there, Westland and Northland are now strip malls, and City Centre closed fifteen years ago, and is mostly new urban “green space”.
Cars
We didn’t get the flying cars promised by the Jetsons. But we didn’t get the drab, lifeless ground of the Jetson’s either. Maybe that’s why they all were in the sky, things don’t look so great for the homeless on the surface.
We are gradually shifting to non-gasoline cars, though my twenty year-old Jeep is still running strong. And cars are doing so much more: automatic braking, parking, lane assist and, just beginning, self-driving. In another decade, I expect drivers will be the exception, rather than the rule. Soon we will all be plugging in. And the 1950’s designed highway system around Columbus, Ohio is being rebuilt. Maybe a decade from now, it will be a lot easier to get around (though they’ve been building the I-70/I-71 interchange downtown longer than it took to build the Panama Canal).
Intelligent Machines
My grandmother had a vacuum cleaner. We do too, but it doesn’t look anything like the hose, tank and broom that Grandma Dahlman (or Mom for that matter) used. Our vacuum looks like a turtle, and does it work without supervision. It knows where to go, on what day, and even knows when to empty itself. And if something goes wrong – it sends us a message on our phone – “help!” It doesn’t answer to its name – Roomba – but the dogs sure know who she is. Roomba is unrelenting when it comes to cleaning, and the dogs have learned to get out of the way – or get “bumped”.
Technology has a way of incrementally changing life. And we are on the cusp of a whole new generation of tech, artificial intelligence. AI will write for us, think for us, fool us, and maybe decide for us. “Everything”, from teaching to medicine to manufacturing, will be “better” with AI – I guess. An I guess most of the folks pushing AI never watched 2001 – A Space Odyssey or worse, The Terminator (one of Mom and Dad’s favorite movies – really!!).
So Happy New Year to you!! May 2024 be pleasant and prosperous and peaceful – oh wait – it’s an election year. The fate of our Democracy is on the line. So have fun!!!
