The Dawning of a New Age - Volume 2?

This is a post I’ve been meaning to get to for a while now. Excuse me if it’s a bit long-winded, but you’ll understand why in a few minutes. Please, bear with me.

Around late October 2006, a couple of friends stopped by and we were channel surfing because, frankly, everything on my 1200 channel cable box was, well, boring. Not one thing held our interest. So much so, that when we hit upon one of the many shopping networks and they began hawking electronics, we were glued but because we were bashing everything they had to offer.

Finally one of my friends said, “Can’t one of these guys be up on the times?”

And nirvana struck me like a truck.

I said, “My friends, how many of us truly realize that we are living in a historical time? I mean, for all that’s said and done, we are living in what will go down in the history books as the new technological age. Think about it. How many of our kids even realize that radio was our MTV, BET and videos were virtually non-existent? How many know about 8 tracks, and reel to reel, and that if you wanted to carry music around, you had to lug what was akin to a freakin carry on with speakers and hope it wouldn’t pop your 120 minute cassette tape?”

The list goes on and on. Vinyl, cassettes, VHS, beta, Atari, Sega Dreamcast, the Walkman, and dare I even say, the mini disc? The remote control is commonplace. Do you remember what was our parents’ remote control? Us! “Slade, come here a minute.” “Yeah, mama?” “Turn that to channel seven, I’m missin’ my soaps!” Oh yeah, we were the fucking remote. Technics turntables were a luxury. Now, we look at vinyl and go, “I remember pops and scratches. Ha, ha, ha… what a time that was…”

I look at my vast VHS tape and cassette tape collection and even my enormous CD collection and think, “How fucking obsolete this all is.” Especially since I can download all of it or burn it on my computer and store it on an external hard drive that’s no bigger than an avant-garde key-chain. Just two short years ago, everyone thought that 60gigs was enough forever. What a joke. Now, if you don’t have at least 80 to 200 gigs on your PC, you got problems.

E-mail has replaced the answering machine while cell phones have replaced home phones and land lines. The only time a landline comes in handy is, God forbid, a blackout or disaster of some kind. How much you want to bet that give or take a year or two that will no longer be an issue?

Did you know that at least 45% of the general population of the world now does more online shopping than go to the store? And people wonder why obesity is a problem? Because by 2020, you won’t have to get up from your freakin’ multitask recliner to go to the freakin’ bathroom. It will be piped thru, complete with new sanitizer and potpourri scents.

Forget missing a television show, we got DVR’s and TiVo. Our music is so portable; we have a mini hard drive that is no bigger than a credit card with at least 500 to 2000 songs of our choosing on it. Even our portable phones are multitasking now. Can you say “Blackberry Pearl”? What about “Chocolate” and I ain’t talkin’ Godiva either, I’m talking Verizon.

Right now your kid is text messaging someone. Right now, your college child is not going to parties – the house party has returned in full force, and usually now they don’t even care about dancing and sex. Can you beat me in Madden on that PS3/Xbox 360/Nintendo Wii? I mean, the nightlife in major cities are all turning into lounges to lure back in the baby-boomers.

I don’t need to go to the movies anymore. Why bother? It will be on DVD in a couple of months. Hell, in a couple of weeks, it might be on youtube, or I can download it off of iTunes, Zune marketplace, Napster, Connect and those are the legal options. Limewire or Torrent makes even that look late in the game by comparison.

Our “friends” in cyberland know more about us than the people who live with and around us. Everyone is a journal keeper now. It’s called a blog.

It’s a wonder these kids even know how to pro-create given that they only see each other in school and that’s becoming obsolete in it’s present form as we speak. Cyber schools and home training are rapidly becoming more and more popular. Just log in and find the info. Google, anyone? Oh, I’m sorry – that was last year. Ask.com is new hip shit, right?

We now have access to a memory flash card no bigger than your thumbprint that can hold at least 5-10 full-length motion pictures. Magazines are online now, as are newspapers. You can read the news and not get ink on your hands? What a brilliant concept! And everything is in “real” time; so much so that the most decorated show is about “real” time. “24” is the hippest thing out there.

Why buy an air-conditioner when you can have central air/heat? Our water comes in bottles or we attach purifying contraptions to our faucets. Or we have a purifying bucket somewhere named Brita or Pur. And can someone tell me what the fuck is “trans fat”? And “soy milk”? I know about Soy juice, but Soy milk doesn’t exist, people! What your drinking there is a lie.

And we all are being educated at a faster rate. Did anyone really buy that whole “Weapons Of Destruction” bullshit? And where’s Osama? How is it that we can pinpoint anyone else’s location but we can’t find this guy? Are we even looking?

Sometimes nature likes to remind us that we aren’t the big dogs in the pool. But, not for lack of trying. Katrina reminded us of that in a hurry. And what did our so-called leaders do? Not a blessed thing.

Within ten years, the laser gun will surpass a regular gun. Within 20 years, you can order a meal for the each day of the week and it will be beamed to you. We just might even see that illusive flying car. Not that motorized thing with wings that has two wheels, I mean when your SUV can actually take off.

In the last 50 years, our technical advances have grown in number and size and into the collective at a rapid rate. But at what cost? In many ways, our children have lost their common sense and think that television is reality. And why not? “Reality” television is a regular thing now. American Idol, The Apprentice, Bachelor, Dancing With The Stars, and of course, my favorite – everyone’s newest coon show, Flavor Of Love. We have women starving themselves to look like Paris Hilton or gaining weight to look like the video vixens we see on music videos.

Our sports stars have become walking billboards. Hell, our fashion is dictated by a billboard mentality. True Religions, Baby Phat, and Rock & Republic have become the new Jordache, Gloria Vanderbilts, Sergios, etc of their day. You know something is seriously wrong when freakin’ Levi’s cost over $50 a pop.

Look around you. You, yes YOU are living in an ever-growing historical time. So much so that Time Magazine has placed a mirror on their cover for Person of the Year.

That person is you.

Say what?

I won’t even get into medical advances. But you know it’s a bad time when we can cure dysfunctional male erections but we can’t cure Cancer, herpes, the common cold or HIV.

Welcome to the dawning of a new age. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to listen to my iPod, while setting up my DVR for my favorite show and saving this entry on my external flash hard drive.

That hard drive is portable, by the way.

Addendum: The Today Show just did a segment on the last 25 years of Technology. Plus, if you are into anime, animation movies, etc – you might want to follow this link to Newsarama’s “Animated Shorts” by my friend Steve Fritz -

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?p=2938983&posted=1#post2938983

BTW – he was actually in on that conversation above. We’re serious geeks when it comes to our tech.