Everything is A-OK and all systems are GO!

Will having a smartphone alter the flavor of my upcoming vacation?

I'm pretty sure it will, at least in a couple of small ways. I suspect I'll find reasons to access the Internet in situations where I'd have been disconnected in the past. Probably to ax for directions to the nearest Del Taco.

Do they have Del Taco in Montana and Washington? I know that the Seattle area is bereft of the basics of civilization (Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Chipotle, etc), but have been told that the condition is intentional -- that the local hippies have so completely fried their brains on marrijuewanna that they no longer have the ability to distinguish between useful/economical products and overpriced pretentious crap. But I have no idea whether the disease has spread into the mountains or not.

Anyway, over the past couple of days I have found myself pondering technology and my relationship with it. Up until technology immersed itself in social practices (ie, Facebook, , eVite, cell phones, etc), I was usually an enthusiastic adopter of technological advancement. I dumped my slide rule for a calculator as soon as I could afford it, and forgot about typewriters the moment I discovered word processing. I was eagerly standing in line outside the store before it opened on the day Windows 95 was released, and I bought a GPS device back when they could only give you longitude and latitude.

My love of technology started early in life. I was fascinated by my dad's 8mm movie camera, and my favorite Christmas present ever was a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Each day when released from school, I would run home to watch Major Astro talk about space travel and planetary exploration on TV.



He never did explain how his ship generated gravity, and why a billion-dollar craft used flimsy naugahyde roller chairs from K-mart in the command module...but I didn't mind. His "Space Scope" picked up cartoons and old Superman episodes -- and he talked about elements, orbits, and physics as he toured our solar system for 90 minutes every weekday afternoon.

Oh sure, I recognized that most of the cartoons were absolutely terrible. (Clutch Cargo was especially disturbing.) But Roger Ramjet was excellent, and Astro Boy gave hints of the appeal that Japanese robot children could have for immature minds across the decades. And in addition to Superman, I was also fortunate to see episodes of Sea Hunt, Whirlybirds, Ripcord, and Jet Jackson. I don't remember anything at all about going to school, but my afternoons in front of the monochrome TV were idyllic.

Then my mom got cancer.

Yeah. It's no secret how that event impacted my life and directed its development...but I'll discuss those impacts in other forums. Of course, if you want to donate to cancer research, or reach out to help someone who is affected by the disease, I send you my thanks. But that is not today's topic. It's about technology.

Since the effects of chemotherapy forced my mom to spend a lot of time resting, my dad decided to make the substantial investment it took to get a color television set to make her convalescence more enjoyable. This was the early 1960s -- not only were the sets exotic and expensive, but much of the programming was still only broadcast in grayscale.

Our new TV came with one of the true wonders of the space age -- a remote control. Until then, you had to walk over to the set and physically turn a knob. Wichita had three channels...3, 10, and 12, which meant that you had to rotate the knob as many as 7 channel positions to go from one station to the next. Ugh.

The remote control didn't change that. In fact, it didn't modify how the channels were changed at all -- it just allowed you to perform the action from across the room. A push on the button activated a spring-loaded hammer inside the remote case, striking a small metal bar (imagine one tine of a tuning fork), which made a tone the TV could detect. A motor inside the set would then physically rotate the tuner knob the same way you would have until the desired position was attained.

It worked reasonably well, but it wasn't perfect. In Wichita, KS -- aka "The Air Capital of the World" -- jet airplanes would roar overhead regularly. As with any unmitigatable environmental annoyance, you just got used to it. We simply learned to pause conversations for the 10 seconds it took for the noise to subside. But when we got the new color TV, we were once again acutely aware that we were under the flight path. I never discovered whether it was just that the jet exhaust noise coincidentally contained the right frequency, or that the plane's sound waves sympathetically vibrated the remote's tuning bar -- but when an airplane went by, the channel would change. Or the TV would turn itself off.

I suspect that's why you no longer see sound-activated remote control devices.

Anyway, I left that device behind when I went to college. There, I discovered electronic calculators, 8-track tapes, and rock concerts enhanced with laser lights hitting mirrored disco balls. But every other technical advance in history paled in comparison to what I discovered in my junior year: cable television!

Holy cow! When I had moved from Wichita to Lawrence, I had learned about UHF broadcasting, and had accepted that advanced communities might have as many as 5 or 6 television stations. But now there was cable! Cable brought channels in the double digits! And here's the best part -- it came with a digital remote controller box.
By today's standards, these sorts of boxes were incredibly clunky. But in the early 70s, I could imagine nothing better than being able to push a numbered button and have the channel instantly change. I couldn't find a picture of the exact box we had, but it was similar to this one -- it had a row of 15 buttons and a toggle that would double the frequency to grant access to channels 15 through 30! Sure, it required a wire to run across the room...but it was immune to interference from aircraft.

Of course, having a remote control created a new source of conflict between me and my roommate. As a Radio-TV-Film major and the more intelligent of the two, you would expect that I would be the default controller of the remote. But despite his feeble intellect and unrefined tastes, Mickey had an impressive talent for selecting good entertainment. Therefore, I usually didn't mind if he did the channel surfing.

When we left Lawrence to start our individual adult careers, I purchased the remote box from the cable company and took it home with me. I used it to change channels all the way up until they finally invented TVs with infrared remotes. But that is another story.

The point is that technology marches on. Tanner confessed to me that he had never dialed a rotary telephone, and had no idea how they even worked. And it won't be long before no one will believe that at one time, telephones could not give you directions as you drove down the road.

I'm looking forward to the excitement and education that awaits us on our trip to Washington. I have no idea when I'll post the next blog, but it should contain some interesting photos and tales of adventure. Until then, enjoy your wireless devices, and have a great day!