Changes??

After I picked up my daughter from softball this afternoon, she showed me on her cellphone a 7D image that she download from the internet. That got me to thinking, not about the 7D video, which was awesome by the way, but about things now versus then.

I am not an old man by any means, and every grey hair I have on my head I've earned, but it's crazy how things change. Think about it. When I was in elementary school the best thing going was Pong, Atari, and the Sony Walkman cassette tapes. I even remember having a record player and an 8 track player at my house. Then move on to High School, The best thing then was having my 1988 Ford Taurus,  used of course. Nintendo, Mario Brothers, and Tecmo Bowl was the best thing ever,  Seeing my dad come home with this phone that was the size of a hairdryer and weighed about 7 pounds. It was the 1st cellular phone I'd ever seen and If I used it he'd kill me because it cost $3 per minute. Then college, I moved from a Taurus, to a Pontiac grand am, and I saw my 1st CD player. and then the Bag phones. Remember those. The phones that looked like a suitcase but plugged into the cig charger in the car and had the buttons on the top of it.

It's just nuts that my kids don't have a clue what life would be like without the internet, satellite, PlayStation 4, Online gaming, Ipods, MP3, (I don't even think they've seen a record player or 8 track tape, or even a regular cassette tape) I used to live for after school getting off the bus waiting to go play football at a friends yard in the neighborhood or go fishing around the neighborhood. Now when you tell kids to go outside and throw the football they think that they are in trouble because you are taking them away from their video games.

I remember laying on my back with my brother in our yard looking up at the sky and clouds trying to makeout certain shapes in them. Or watch an airplane fly by and watch the trailer behind it wondering how something that big could fly across the sky.

Nowadays, I can't figure out how to play video games because of all the buttons on the controllers, My 12 year old nephew knows more about how to play with a cell phone or video game than I ever knew. Gone are the days of Pen pals, and regular mail. If people don't respond instantly after you send an email it makes you angry. Everyone including elementary kids have a phone. If they don't have a smart phone they are looked at like they are 2nd class citizens.

I remember having a Commodore 64, and a Texas Instruments computer. I could print off a photo or make it do some stupid something. Nowadays my phone is more powerful than our entire computer system growing up.

Technology changes so fast now. I remember buying my 1st  laptop for work and it was an IBM thinkpad with 1 GB of memory. OMG, 1Gig was huge then. Now computers have 3 Terabytes or memory.

It's crazy to watch the world around me change, It's neat, but it makes me think of where we will be when I turn 60 which is 18 light years away. What will we have then? Cars that drive themselves, interactive video games, virtual concerts, etc?? I just hope I am still around to see the world change. I just hope it's for the better. I try to tell my kids how lucky they have it versus when I grew up. However, I would never change my youth fishing, and playing sports in the yard with friends, for todays technology. But it's neat to see the world grow around us. Instagram,Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, Fiverr,  Google, etc. was just a thought back in my youth. Now I don't know how to function without  it.

I just hope we don't forget to take the time to actually spend face time with our children, and get to know them outside of what they post online. I love the new innovation but it scares me as well. Don't let business take the place of family time. I did, and I am in 100% regret mode. I missed the basketball, softball, football games because I was 100% focused on moving forward and making more money. Money is great, but not worth losing your family over. I made that wrong turn, take it from me- the world grows around you. Don't get caught standing still or let the grass grow under your feet!