I’m writing this on my iPad, using the Belkin keyboard that turns it into a netbook of sorts, driving back to Delaware after a fun afternoon with my stepdaughter. Correction: my husband is driving. I’m just in the passenger seat.
But it’s so crazy to me, the woman who didn’t even own her first cell phone until 2001, that I could be doing something like this.
The iPad/keyboard combo alone trips me out sometimes. I take it to meetings instead of lugging my heavy, work-issued laptop around the building. I take it to conferences for live tweeting. I’ve used it as a mobile hotspot. I’ve used it to watch movies on plane rides. I’ve shot and edited video on it. And yes, I’ve also been known to play a little Candy Crush on it as well.
I got my first smartphone in 2009, balking at first at the high price tag – not only of the phone itself but the monthly service. Up until then, I’d been paying $39 a month. (Goodness, I miss those days!) Keep in mind that I stayed on (free) dial up until 2005, because I couldn’t fathom paying for high-speed Internet.
But now, in 2014, I am all teched out. I’ve got my iPhone and unlimited texting plan. I’ve got the aforementioned iPad of Wonder. I have a 3D television (how did THAT happen?). I have a combo package that gives me fast Wi-Fi, a broadband phone, and a DVR.
Can we just talk about the DVR for a second? As soon as Comcast started offering them, I got one. I mean, fast-forwarding through commercials? No more recording shows on VHS? And with this X1 platform, buggy as it is, I can now recored four shows at once. Who needs this? you ask. I do. Sunday night TV is intense. FOUR SHOWS AT ONCE.
Welcome to the future.
Someday, when we all have Feed-style brain implants connecting us to everyone and everything, I’ll look back on the tech of 2014 and think of how positively quaint this all is.
But for now, as we cruise down I-95, in the car that lets me talk on the phone through its dashboard, I will continue to be amazed.
It seems unfathomable to me at times that I walk around with a phone in my pocket that is more powerful than my first computer bought in 1993.
I know, right? I remember when I was a little kid and amazed that my mom was born before color television. The next generation is going to be like, “Ew, you used to have to buy things by going to a website and not just THINKING about them?” Or something.