by Pa Rock
Mental Wanderer
This morning Alexa is entertaining me with Flat and Scruggs salute to the sixties, an album called "Changing Times." The country duo pick and grin their way through a nice assortment of Bob Dylan tunes and music by a few others as they recreate a time that slipped by awfully fast. That album has put me in a mood.
I'm thinking about changes that I have witnessed during my life.
Yesterday I had to drive into town for a couple of things. One item was the corn meal product that makes the batter for frying fish. I went to Aldi's first, even though I had just learned over the internet that it is one of the few major retailers in America that allow guns in their stores. I couldn't find what I was looking for, and I finally did find a clerk who told me that the item I was searching for was "seasonal" and currently out-of-stock. And even though I assured her that we are right in the middle of fishing season, she still did not have that for which I searched.
But rest assured that this story does have a point that deals with innovation. Please read on . . .
Next I went to Big Lots to look for another item on my list, but Big Lots also has a small grocery department, so I decided to search for the fish batter there as well. I spotted a clerk and tried to explain to the obviously flustered young man what I was looking for. He pointed to his ears and mouth and shook his head - and then handed me his phone for me to talk into. I carefully told the phone what I was looking for, and the man, who could neither hear nor speak, read the translation of what I had said. He took me to the display for cornbread mix, the closest match that the store had to what I was after.
I was impressed with the young man's determination to overcome a major disability and hold down a job, and I was very impressed with Big Lots for hiring a disabled individual. That store will get more of my business!
I took a back route home and went by a house that had a couple of big sections of solar panels on its roof, something that is still a rarity here in West Plains. That set me to thinking about other innovations that I had witnessed during my lifetime and how quickly those startling changes morphed into things that came to be considered commonplace.
My father owned an appliance store in the small town where I grew up. He was the first area merchant to sell color televisions, and we had one of the earliest color televisions in our home. It was a heavy affair with a round screen - and it took the local television repairman - who worked with my dad - several hours to set it up. Color televisions and color programming soon became the norm, and within a very few years young people were "freaked out" when a program aired that was in black and white!
A young man named Dwight was home from college - sometime in the early 1960's - and I discovered him out behind the television repair shop that was at the back of my dad's store. He was borrowing tools from Kenny, the television repairman, and working at the dashboard of his car. It turns out Dwight was installing an 8-track tape player, the first I had ever seen. Within a few years all of the cool kids has 8-track players in their cars, and a few even had CB Radios! And it wasn't that much longer before cassette players were standard in most cars. Today, of course, most newer cars have satellite radio - and even Alexa and a few of her close relatives.
My generation grew up with television antennas on every house, big, ugly devices that could pull in two or three television stations. Around forty years or so ago the new technology of "cable" television finally started making its way into the rural areas, and antennas quickly started becoming obsolete. I had a friend named Larry, a teacher, who got ahead of the cable television racket by installing his own satellite dish - a whopping big dish that looked like something that belonged at NORAD. Larry's monster dish could pick up dozens of stations - and it was very expensive.
Not everyone could afford their own big satellite dishes - and it wasn't cost effective for cable to be dragged to every home in rural America, so companies quickly came about that delivered television programming to homes via small satellite dishes that could be attached to the roofs of homes. Then, as the satellite and cable companies began absorbing other services like telephone and internet, and became more and more greedy in their pricing, alternatives to those mainstay delivery systems began emerging - things like streaming devices, and smart speakers, and a rapidly expanding field of technological wonders!
When I was little, our family telephone hung on the wall and had a crank, and we were on a party line and had to share our services with other families. Today my phone is in my pocket.
And don't even get me started on the advent of computers and the changes that have occurred in that field over the last twenty-five years!
Today my television, computer, and smart speaker are all dependent on an internet connection - and my phone can also operate through the internet. Even so, I am regarded by many as "old school."
So when I see the solar panels finally beginning to blossom atop a few houses, I know from experience that very soon most of the homes in this area will have solar panels adorning their roofs, and that not too long after that the technology will have morphed into something smaller and even more effective - perhaps a solar tag attached to the roof guttering. Who knows?
But somewhere today, someone very young and very bright is working on an idea that will be revolutionary - for about a minute - and then another innovator will step beyond that milestone. Change is coming, and coming, and coming. It will not be denied!
I am thankful for all of the changes that I was able to experience during my brief few spins around the sun!
Mental Wanderer
This morning Alexa is entertaining me with Flat and Scruggs salute to the sixties, an album called "Changing Times." The country duo pick and grin their way through a nice assortment of Bob Dylan tunes and music by a few others as they recreate a time that slipped by awfully fast. That album has put me in a mood.
I'm thinking about changes that I have witnessed during my life.
Yesterday I had to drive into town for a couple of things. One item was the corn meal product that makes the batter for frying fish. I went to Aldi's first, even though I had just learned over the internet that it is one of the few major retailers in America that allow guns in their stores. I couldn't find what I was looking for, and I finally did find a clerk who told me that the item I was searching for was "seasonal" and currently out-of-stock. And even though I assured her that we are right in the middle of fishing season, she still did not have that for which I searched.
But rest assured that this story does have a point that deals with innovation. Please read on . . .
Next I went to Big Lots to look for another item on my list, but Big Lots also has a small grocery department, so I decided to search for the fish batter there as well. I spotted a clerk and tried to explain to the obviously flustered young man what I was looking for. He pointed to his ears and mouth and shook his head - and then handed me his phone for me to talk into. I carefully told the phone what I was looking for, and the man, who could neither hear nor speak, read the translation of what I had said. He took me to the display for cornbread mix, the closest match that the store had to what I was after.
I was impressed with the young man's determination to overcome a major disability and hold down a job, and I was very impressed with Big Lots for hiring a disabled individual. That store will get more of my business!
I took a back route home and went by a house that had a couple of big sections of solar panels on its roof, something that is still a rarity here in West Plains. That set me to thinking about other innovations that I had witnessed during my lifetime and how quickly those startling changes morphed into things that came to be considered commonplace.
My father owned an appliance store in the small town where I grew up. He was the first area merchant to sell color televisions, and we had one of the earliest color televisions in our home. It was a heavy affair with a round screen - and it took the local television repairman - who worked with my dad - several hours to set it up. Color televisions and color programming soon became the norm, and within a very few years young people were "freaked out" when a program aired that was in black and white!
A young man named Dwight was home from college - sometime in the early 1960's - and I discovered him out behind the television repair shop that was at the back of my dad's store. He was borrowing tools from Kenny, the television repairman, and working at the dashboard of his car. It turns out Dwight was installing an 8-track tape player, the first I had ever seen. Within a few years all of the cool kids has 8-track players in their cars, and a few even had CB Radios! And it wasn't that much longer before cassette players were standard in most cars. Today, of course, most newer cars have satellite radio - and even Alexa and a few of her close relatives.
My generation grew up with television antennas on every house, big, ugly devices that could pull in two or three television stations. Around forty years or so ago the new technology of "cable" television finally started making its way into the rural areas, and antennas quickly started becoming obsolete. I had a friend named Larry, a teacher, who got ahead of the cable television racket by installing his own satellite dish - a whopping big dish that looked like something that belonged at NORAD. Larry's monster dish could pick up dozens of stations - and it was very expensive.
Not everyone could afford their own big satellite dishes - and it wasn't cost effective for cable to be dragged to every home in rural America, so companies quickly came about that delivered television programming to homes via small satellite dishes that could be attached to the roofs of homes. Then, as the satellite and cable companies began absorbing other services like telephone and internet, and became more and more greedy in their pricing, alternatives to those mainstay delivery systems began emerging - things like streaming devices, and smart speakers, and a rapidly expanding field of technological wonders!
When I was little, our family telephone hung on the wall and had a crank, and we were on a party line and had to share our services with other families. Today my phone is in my pocket.
And don't even get me started on the advent of computers and the changes that have occurred in that field over the last twenty-five years!
Today my television, computer, and smart speaker are all dependent on an internet connection - and my phone can also operate through the internet. Even so, I am regarded by many as "old school."
So when I see the solar panels finally beginning to blossom atop a few houses, I know from experience that very soon most of the homes in this area will have solar panels adorning their roofs, and that not too long after that the technology will have morphed into something smaller and even more effective - perhaps a solar tag attached to the roof guttering. Who knows?
But somewhere today, someone very young and very bright is working on an idea that will be revolutionary - for about a minute - and then another innovator will step beyond that milestone. Change is coming, and coming, and coming. It will not be denied!
I am thankful for all of the changes that I was able to experience during my brief few spins around the sun!
No comments:
Post a Comment