During my life, I've seen a lot of changes in technology. Definitely more than I will be able to remember for this blog. But nevertheless, I will try to remember what I can.
As a little kid, I can remember watching cartoons on our big TV that was put on the floor. To change the channel, you had to type a two-digit channel number, so if you wanted to go to channel 2, you had to put in 02. The channel numbers showed up as a large green writing in the lower right corner. I remember sometimes looking really close at the screen and seeing little green, blue, and red squares. I think I was in late elementary school when I first heard about TVs that were flat like pictures and you could hang them on the wall. But they were very expensive, and I didn't know anyone who had one. Now, of course, most TVs are flat.
I remember when we got our first fluorescent coiled bulb when I was in third grade. That night my parents came home from Fred Meyer and put it in our downstairs lights. Then I stayed up late to play Super Mario World.
And speaking of Nintendo, I grew up with my siblings playing the NES, and then when I was around seven, my brother bought a used Super Nintendo. When I was in second grade, the Nintendo 64 came out, and I wanted one really bad. I was obsessed with getting one. But I never did. (My brother tells me it was because he told me it was hard.) I remember trying one in Target one day when I was "home" sick, but I couldn't figure out how to make it work. (Now that I think about it, I don't think stores have video game testing centers like they used to.) Later in elementary school, the GameCube came out, and I was no longer really interested in newer game technology. In high school, the Wii came out, and that has been the most recent Nintendo system, until the Wii-U. Of course, there have been other game systems that I've seen--I remember watching Sega games at others' houses, and then there were incarnations of PlayStations, X-Boxes, and others. When I turned eight, my grandparents got me my own GameBoy. It was really cool, because it was black instead of typical grey. Then Pocket GameBoy came out, then GameBoy Color, then GameBoy Advance (which is the most modern one I have), then DS and 3DS.
When I was a kid, we would listen to tapes. I remember listening to The Little Mermaid and the Carpenters on tapes. Occasionally we would even listen to records on our big stereo, which was so big it was its own piece of furniture. When I was six, we finally got a CD player, although they had existed long before then. However, our cars only had tape players, so we would put our CDs on tapes, and we would make mix tapes for vacations. When we finally got a car that had a CD player, it was a big deal. Now, of course, tape decks are obsolete, except that I use mine with an adapter for my phone. CDs are well on their way out, with some stores not selling them at all. I still buy CDs, but I pretty much only use them in my car, ripping the music electronically. It is more convenient to have all of your music available from one device, rather than having to carry CDs that only are part of your collection.
When I was very young, we had a computer that when you printed something, it came out on those sheets of paper that are attached and you have to tear off the sides. It had WordPerfect (which was a great program, even in high school, and I'm sad it's gone) on it and some primitive games. There were plenty of floppy disks that went with it. Then in 1997, we got a new computer with Windows 95 (school computers used Windows 3.1). We had dial-up internet, and we of course used AOL. (The only people I know now who use an AOL email are my grandparents.) We had to wait for the internet to dial up, and it was super slow on Friday nights. On one occasion, I heard my mom and brother say that they had dialed a different number, and it ended up being some old lady's number, so they heard her voice when they tried to get on the internet. We thought we were pretty cool for having the internet. It wasn't uncommon, but not everyone had it. I had a lot of fun searching the internet and setting up my email account. That was the era of email forwards. (I was spared most email forwards, but now that they have transferred to Facebook, I unfortunately have to deal with them.) One time, someone sent this video to my mom, and it took ten minutes to load:
Now we can watch it instantly, most of the time. One time, I remember reading an article in the newspaper where they made a computer that could access the internet without any wires. Now wifi is the norm. As with TVs, large monitors are practically fossils.
I remember when cell phones weren't overly common. You must have been rich if you had one, and they were really annoying when people used them in public. The ring tones were just beeps. Then cell phones became more and more common. When I was in high school, Apple announced the iPhone, and now smartphones are really common. Even I have one. Phones can do pretty much anything. In the early 2000s, Palm Pilots were a big deal, but now phones are better than they were.
I remember in early high school seeing the top of my house from Google Earth. Now that's not special, and you can see the front of your house with Google Maps. Sometimes I think it's a little creepy how much Google can do; recently, I got some notifications from Google in which they identified where a lot of my pictures were taken without me telling them. It amazes me when Facebook and other sites can identify people's faces.
I have been home from my mission for five years, and sometimes it amazes me the things that have happened even since I've been home. I first heard of iPads in 2010, and now they are common. I remember a discussion in 2010 about cloud storage. I had never heard that term before. I know it existed before then, but now it is much more common, with things like Google Drive and Dropbox.
Around the year 2000, DVDs came out. I didn't know why they were better than VHS tapes, and I didn't think we would ever get one, as DVD players cost hundreds of dollars. But now they are very cheap, as are DVDs. Blurays try to replace them, but the change isn't as drastic, so I think they will take longer to finally dethrone DVDs. I think Bluray and DVDs will probably die out around the same time. The 3D movie fad, which was popular five years ago, is becoming less popular, and there are fewer 3D Blurays being released, even when they are 3D in theaters.
We thought our used 1995 Subaru Legacy that we got in 2000 was really cool, as it had a CD player and a tape player, and a sunroof and a moonroof, and of course automatic windows (which wasn't new to us, but we did have several cars without automatic windows). Now, cars have built-in GPS, iPod decks, backup cameras, alarms that alert you when you might hit something, and so much more.
Household appliances have become more high tech, with lights that show you when a cycle is done, alarms that beep when you keep the fridge door open, and other things.
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