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Memorable moments with technologies

(I have more posts in draft than I should, so I'm just pushing them out even though they're not really complete enough.)

 I've been interested in technology since I found out about computers through books. Here are a few of my significant moments. I'll skip the early ones, as that's a whole article to itself.

Jurassic Park

When they showed the dinosaurs it was amazing. "If they can do this they can do anything." And since then, "they", the CGI wizards have pretty much done anything we can conceive of.

iPod

I'd heard about the iPod but didn't come across my first one until I was browsing in an electronics shop at an airport. It was smaller and shinier than I thought. I don't know if this is the schmaltz of history, but it seemed opalescent. The click wheel was a revelation - you just glided your finger round that circle and it clicked and scrolled like magic.

Kindle

I got a Kindle for my birthday. Our boys were young then and they joined us in bed for me to open my presents. It had that default picture on it of the kid under a tree. The e-ink display looked like paper. I slid the power switch and the paper flickered and came alive. I had access to so many books now.

I didn't say all the moment were good. One day I dropped it by mistake and showed the downside of ebooks - the display broke and it became useless. If it had Overdrive, and so had access to my local libraries ebooks I would have replaced it, but by then I had a tablet which did have Overdrive to fulfill my reading needs.


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