Call me Neanderthal, but I just made my first Red Box movie rental. This is a red-letter day here. (pun intended) We, of the fifteen-year old television set that measures more than two inches deep, are moving ever-so-slowly into the digital age. While we were driving home from our afternoon errand-outing, my SO commented about the technology involved with the Red Box concept. That, with a swipe of plastic just to rent a movie, 'they' know so much about us. Just one plastic card connects so many personal information points about a household that it is mind-boggling.......and he and I are so very far behind the digital curve it is not funny. Scarier still is the notion that as far as technology, we are not in the bottom third, although we feel like we are in the bottom tenth.
Capt. SO and I were born in the antique, Bell-telephone-on-the-wall era where you had to crank a handle rapidly to speak into a mouthpiece of sorts to get 'Central'. Not too long into our childhoods, technology discovered our rural area and Ma Bell's household telephones became the iconic black-box model, while the party-line was established, often with three, four, or five homes on one line and each household had their own 'ring' identity. People today think they are so modern and hip with their 'ring tones' but people my age had the original ring tones. One family's ring might be two shorts and a long while another's would be two longs and a short. The party system could be very vexing, especially if there were household 'talkers' that would make it practically impossible to ever 'get a line'.
Capt. SO also remarked that we might have never rented our Red Box movie today had not our scion showed him how over the Holly Daze. We also recognized that just about all of our technology learning curve is a result of someone younger than thirty showing us how. While we might wistfully reminisce about the days of 'two longs and a short', without our digital progress we could have never watched Princess Leia play with her baby doll during a video chat today.
Thank you, Ma Bell. You helped start this revolution that is moving at warp speed.
Ancora imparo
