Thankful

I'm jumping on the bandwagon here and doing a Thankful Thanksgiving post. :)

Ben and I had a long and interesting conversation after watching Harry Potter a few nights ago about things that we've grown up with and take for granted.  Who could've imagined that something like Harry Potter would be such a big deal to so many people?  That was how the conversation started. 

We got talking about our parents' and grandparents' generations and how it was, I'm sure, just unfathomable to think of a portable phone.  Even a cordless phone that connected to a landline.  I'm sure the idea of a cellular telephone that fit in your pocket so you could dial anyone at any time with push-buttons instead of a rotary wheel just didn't seem possible.  Not only impossible, but no way could it even be affordable.  Now, even elementary school children carry phones in their pockets. 

Now we laugh at a pocket-sized phone that could merely call someone.

The newest technology in the medical world that Ben was telling me about is an app that lets you do an ultrasound with your iTouch.  (WHAT!?!?)  My mind was absolutely blown.  You hold an almost paper-thin device on someone's abdomen and you can see inside of them.  You can connect a little strip of paper through a USB port to your paper-thin amazing pocket-sized supercomputer and test yourself for an STD.  (Granted, I won't be needing this technology, but cool nonetheless.)

My Grandpa Johnson was a computer programmer back in the 70's.  I jokingly told Ben that they probably carved computer code out of stone using a hammer and chisel.  I wonder what he would think of technology now-a-days.

We were laughing about the fact that when we got in the car to move out to Ohio that we didn't even have a map.  We were completely paralyzed without our GPS.  And the fact that we were moving to some place far, far away from home didn't mean we would never see our families again.  We can call them anytime we want.  We can SEE them via Skype.  We can e-mail.  They can read our blog.  We can chat, live, through Facebook.  Heck, we could even write them a letter.  That's the way earlier generations could talk to each other.  They couldn't even call very often because it was so expensive to call long distance.  It was a big deal.  I don't know what I would do if I couldn't call my mom every day.

And then there's the Internet.  I remember the first time I had to use it.  I was terrified.  I was probably in 3rd or 4th grade and I was at the library needing to do research for a project.  My teacher had said that we could only use one Internet source because the information was so unreliable.  I was so scared to type in a search option and had no idea how I would ever find my way back.  The discovery of the "Home" button made me feel so much better.  Do you remember how carefully you had to phrase your search options?  Now you can type in a whole muddled sentence and the computer gives you suggestions on what you are probably looking for.  You can connect to the Internet from practically anywhere.  And we are so quick to get impatient when we can't instantly find what we're looking for.  Heaven forbid we patiently read something in its entirety instead of scanning for a bulleted list of quick, abbreviated snippets of information that will get us by.

There's so much more I could mention, and I hate to sound like Kip on Napoleon Dynamite ("But I still love technology...") but this YouTube video is part of what sparked my train of thought.