Who doesn't, from time to time, wonder what the future will hold? What amazing things will be created, technologies and inventions which will become part of our daily lives...so much so that we'll then forget at one point they could have only existed in our wildest dreams.
When I grew up in Nome, the only technology in my life was a radio which broadcast two local stations and the one telephone attached to a wall in the kitchen. (Not even a simple TV with a channel or two was available.) If I really stretched the phone cord it could extend far enough to allow me to tuck myself away in the bathroom with the door closed, for a private chat with my best friend.
If I stop to compare that to my life today, the contrast is truly astonishing.
This struck me on a late afternoon this past weekend. The kids were reading and I was catching the end of a movie on my iPad, lounging outdoors on the first gloriously warm day of the year. Max came out, sat beside me and asked what the movie was about. Margaret Thatcher. Who? She was the Prime Minister of Britain. Asking more questions I couldn't adequately answer, I paused the movie, searched on her name and was promptly able to find the answer to any question he could possible ask.
Then a text came in, wanting to know if Max was free for something later in the week, to which I promptly responded after opening my calender to confirm there weren't any conflicts.
He wandered off, and I finished up the end of the movie and then checked my mail before heading back in to start dinner. (Now, if only such devices could also whip up a delicious meal - I'd be delirious.)
All on a simple little tablet weighing nearly nothing. I walked into the house waving it at my husband, saying "I LOVE this thing!! If I had wanted to know something about someone when I was Max's age I would have had to open the encyclopedia! I can't imagine how insane it would have been to have access to something like this, with all it can do and give you access to. I couldn't have imagined."
So, I swear...I'm living in the future.