When I was a kid, I'd watch Sci-fi shows and movies like Star Trek and Star Wars. They depicted video conferences between ships or a stationary location. I never dreamed that one day I would be able to do that with someone I knew.
Times really have changed and technology has really changed the world of reality and possibilities we live in. Almost 14-years ago I lived overseas in Nepal for 2 years. During that time I would need to schedule telephone calls at least a week in advance via email. Those calls were infrequent and expensive. We read articles in our weekly Newsweek about people in other third world countries using a cell-phone as THE method of telecommunication; the cell phone brought villages that previously had no telephones in contact with the remainder of the country and the world.
Phone calls and physical and/or electronic mail didn't ease any of the loneliness or "homesickness" that the face and voice of a great friend or loved one can. Daddy-O arrived in Bahrain today. He had emailed me twice, texted via Google voice, and we finally spoke via Skype. Those communications were all free and virtually instant compared to my experience as a Peace Corps volunteer. Our kids don't have any idea what a luxury that is; they got bored talking to him and moved on to other activities within five minutes of him calling.
Life is changing all around us and you don't always realize where you started. There are so many ways to go from here, but I will close with this. Little brother doesn't understand that the person on the other end of the connection can't see what he points the phone at; this is so beyond my family's rented landline AT&T telephone that used analog dialing when I was a little girl.
2 comments:
The fact that we could talk on your cell phone while you drove to work is amazing. Also, thanks for unlmited data plan on cell.
Now they're going to need to make a new law, no hands free video calling while driving. I deinitely never thought that that would ever be possible. Ridiculous!!!
:-)
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