Amazing technology

[vito]

I know that as an old guy, who grew up before cell phones, computers, color TV and much, much, more that I have a sense of amazement at some of what we now have in terms of technology, things that young folks take for granted. The first computer I ever bought, as a gift for my then 11 year old who was fascinated by the thought of a computer, was a Radio Shack Color Computer which had an internal memory capacity of 64 Kilobytes. Yes, kilobytes. That computer, by the way, cost me about $800 and that was in 1979 or 80. A year later we updated the memory to 96 Kilobytes as a gift to my son.

The idea then of a Megabyte was amazing, and to my knowledge the term gigabyte had not even been formulated. Yesterday I needed to pick up a micro SD card for a device given to me as a gift. This storage device is about the size of the fingernail on my pinky. For the device I was getting it for, the maximum size I could get was 32 gig. Initially I downloaded 150 photos to this card, which used up just over 400 meg of space, meaning that the 32 gig card could likely hold about 8,000 photos. But what really amazed me is that you can now buy a micro SD card with a 2 terabyte capacity! I estimate that you could store 5,000,000 photos on that tiny chip. I am blown away by this incredible technology and do not have a clue as to how this has been achieved. Makes me wonder what awaits us in the next few years.

 

[GunnyGene]

Makes me wonder what awaits us in the next few years.

The sum total of human knowledge, with room to hold 10 times that. On a chip the size of a grain of rice.

Or perhaps starting over again with cave paintings and scratches on rocks.

 

[Kevin]

My daughter is 11 years old. Yesterday we were trying to imagine what sort of job she might like as an adult. I made an off hand remark that it’s very possible the job she has later in life is one which hasn’t even been invented yet. Or at least working with technology which hasn’t been invented yet.

 

[Watchman]

My 'Magic 8 Ball' says "Ask again later." :lol:

I think technology will end up the bane of mankind, not it's savior.
Why learn or retain anything, when you can always just ask Siri?

 

[Colonialgirl]

It is SAD when grocery shopping to see a 3 or 4 year old in the shopping cart with a cell phone holding its entire attention.

 

[arfmel]

“Why learn or retain anything, when you can always just ask Siri?”

Sarcasm//And get an entirely truthful answer from an unbiased source//end scarcasm

 

[gasbag]

Makes me wonder what awaits us in the next few years.

The sum total of human knowledge, with room to hold 10 times that. On a chip the size of a grain of rice.

Or perhaps starting over again with cave paintings and scratches on rocks.

From what I've seen of 'humans' lately you could write it all out in cursive on a piece of
paper small enough to fit in my wallet.

 

[caryc]

I remember my first computer. It was a Tandy. It had no hard drive, only a 320 kilobyte ram chip. But I bought another 320 kb chip to make it 640 k. I also had another one of the big floppy disc drives installed. That way, I could leave the one floppy with the program in it's drive and still have one open drive. Even had a CM5 color monitor along with a daisy wheel 230 printer.

That was really living. The next one I got had a 20MB hard drive in it. But I had someone remove the 20MB drive and install a 40MB drive. Man, I was really cooking then. I had a dot matrix printer too. I believe I still have both those computers packed away in a storage shed.

 

[GunnyGene]

Some of those old antique computers have become valuable collector's items now. Check Ebay for "vintage computers". You might have something worth $20k or more.

 

[fiasconva]

Yep, and some of today's video games and smart phones have more computer capacity and capability than the first space shuttle.

 

[coach]

And to think it all started in the 40s when they reverse engineered the crashed alien spaceship at Roswell. I wonder if we’ve caught up.

 

[DeletedMember275]

A smart phone has way more computing capacity than the Apollo rockets or the Space Shuttle had. Think about that for a minute. The phone that your kid plays games on could conceivably take him to the moon and back!

 

[kramden]

My 'Magic 8 Ball' says "Ask again later." :lol:

I think technology will end up the bane of mankind, not it's savior.
Why learn or retain anything, when you can always just ask Siri?

Got one for Christmas as a kid. My first "Google" device, LOL. The Bible says in the end times knowledge will increase at a rapid rate. Years ago I wondered why that would be. Today it's easy to understand why that would be true.

 

[Mobuck]

My Mother pushed me to get a computer for the kids about 1990 and it cost a LOT at the time. It was EONS ahead of what I'd worked with in 1970 but literally "cave man" stuff vs these days.
The bad part is that people don't learn to use their minds beyond what it takes to run the newfangled devices. I was in a store yesterday and the checkout had to look at his phone to figure out how many quarters to give me as change when he ran out of one dollar bills(but he sure knew how to find the calculator function on his phone).

 

[blume357]

The first computer I bought for my business actually saved the data on a cassette tape... then I upgraded to an Atari..... Years later I bought a used Macintosh..... for 2K..... then years later thanks to a stupid computer tech person (redundant in my opinion) I lost all my customer records and needed to enter something like 4 thousand ..... I bought a second computer for a friend to do this with.... I think I paid $400 for it .. it was a 3 year old Apple.... the interesting thing was when it first came out and I think it still is the most expensive personal computer ever sold... retail when it was new was over 8 grand!

As for technology.... y'all should try to figure out the technology that goes into a professional quality drone.....

 

[protoolman]

My first was a membrane keyboard Times Sinclair 16 mb? With an external chip plugged into it which made it 32. You could save your programs on a casette player plugged into it and you used a black and white tv for a screen. At work renting cars I used one of the first Tandy TRS80s with the big floppy disks. (Remember those) and they were external drives that got too hot to touch while you were running them!