I know its a cliché but when I was a kid, technology was very different then it is today. Born in the 70's I'm a Generation "Xer" who was a youth of the 80s and 90s. It is unbelievable the changes to things such as phones, computers (we didn't have a computer until I was 15), calculators, cameras, TV's, even microwaves. The only thing that has not changed all the much is the dishwasher. Really, other then some aesthetic differences in buttons I do not believe the technology has evolved all the much.
For our telephone, it was a rotary when I was in the 1-5 year range. It was a tedious thing to use, and if you didn't get the tone just right, you ended up with a wrong number. It was a pulse style phone and it took about 30 seconds for the call to go through. I can remember waiting and waiting for the thing to work. Then we got our first touch tone. Whoa, what a difference it was to use this device. All you had to do was touch the numbers you wanted. More efficient and quicker. This phone we had until I left the house at 19. Touch tone phones are still very widely used, so I was part of bridging the gap from rotary to touch. The big thing now is wireless phones in your house. That occurred about 15 years ago. The cost for a 4-5 phone wireless househould system is in the area of $50-100.
The first household computer we had was a Commodore. Of course it was, everyone had them in the 80s and 90s. Compared to what we have today, it was a boat anchor. Very limited to what it could do, and unless you typed in a page of code, it did very little. The second, and what I like to call the real computer used Windows, and that was in 1994. My sister purchased it for school. It had word processing software, and it was able to do more then the Commodore. I remember playing my first computer based game on it. Wolfenstein 3D. Fun game, still even today its an enjoyable game. Over the years I've had 3 computers. One desktop, and two laptops. Plus multiple work laptops because I am in sales. The desktop cost me $2k. It had 16mb of RAM and could access the internet via an eithernet cord as there was no "Wifi" then. Compared to what I have now, it was archaic. I recently purchased an Acer laptop. It has everything on it, storage, DVD CD writer, it is fast, has a big bright screen, and the cost was $400? Cheaper, better, and about 100 times faster.
In 1999 I bought my first cellular phone. It was the Clearnet Brick phone. I thought it was amazing. You could talk anywhere with it, in your car (this was before Bluetooth) at your buddies house, anywhere. Well almost anywhere, there had to be a tower close by. Since then, I've had several cell phones. Each one better then the next. Then in 2005 I got a Blackberry (AKA Crackberry.) Now, this was revolutionary. You could check you emails on your phone. Pretty amazing, and it worked well. I still have a Blackberry 8 years later. I also have a Samsung S3. Its pretty cool too for apps and internet. Still, the Blackberry keyboard rocks.
The touch revolution started about 2007 for us. My wife received an Itouch and from there it started. Since then, we have 3 tablets, 2 old Iphones, 1 new Iphone, 1 Android, and the Itouch. That makes 7 touch devices. My son was able to use these devices before he could even read, such easy technology to use. I recall watching Star Trek in the 90's, Jean-Luc Picard and the boys and girls using these fancy pad things for reading, for work, for everything. I never thought that it would happen so soon. All within about a 10 year period. Even my GPS in my car is touch. Nothing runs on keyboards any more other then computers. I remember taking typing in grade 9, it has come in handy over the years, but will the next generation use or even need it? Maybe they will teach kids the "hunt and peck" method on their handhelds?
Televisions have come along way from those old Zennith floor models. Everything is now flat screen and can be hung on your wall. The picture clarity is very good now, a far cry from the time when I watched GI Joe and Ghostbuster's cartoons in the basement of my parents home.
With the amazing handheld devices we have, things like calculators and cameras are a thing of the past. They are standard tools on every device. I haven't used a camera (other then the one on my phone) in years. Same with the calculator. Why would you? It used to be that the picture quality was 1 megapixel on a phone. It was horrible, you were better off drawing a picture. Now, most phones have a quality of nothing less then 10 megapixels. Its funny, because when I was in college, the newspaper at the school bragged about buying a digital camera for the deal price of $4000. It was 3 megapixels. Hmm, I'm thinking that was not such a good buy.
The overlap of technology I have seen has been remarkable. I think back and wonder how on earth did I ever live without a computer or my Samsung? Funny though, I don't remember wanting to be able to call someone in my car when I was 16?
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