I know what you mean. A few years back I was on a high speed ferry between Hong Kong and Macau and bidding on a car in Australia.
I remember stopping and thinking, wow I'm living in a science fiction movie.
So I'm currently in a 737 at about 32,000ft half way between Canberra and Perth posting on AULRO, watching Supercars on the Foxtel app (in SD admittedly) and messaging my wife.
i know the chain of technology required to make all this work, but it still astonishes me. Mind you I'd hate to see the bandwidth bill for this flight,
I know what you mean. A few years back I was on a high speed ferry between Hong Kong and Macau and bidding on a car in Australia.
I remember stopping and thinking, wow I'm living in a science fiction movie.
I recall hearing that there had been possible Australian casualties in Iraq in 2007. My son was in theatre at that time. It took a couple of days to know that he was fine. The phone line we were given when he deployed told us that we would be told before anyone else was a comfort I guess. I had comms in a way at that time.
Supercars? Astonishing what we take for granted these days.
I mean no disrespect.
JayTee
Nullus Anxietus
Getting involved in discussions is the best way to learn.
2000 D2 TD5 Auto: Tins
1994 D1 300TDi Manual: Dave
1980 SIII Petrol Tray: Doris
OKApotamus #74
Nanocom, D2 TD5 only.
None taken, and believe me I'm astonished rather than taking this for granted.
In her lifetime my great grandmother went from "dates with boys" who came to pick her up in the horse and cart, to seeing a man walk on the moon to taking a 747 to Disneyland for her 80th birthday.
I'm just wondering the level of progress I'll see in what remains of my lifetime compared to what she saw over hers.
I can't eveimagine what you went through in 2007. Having better Comms probably would not have made it much better, nor easier.
I spend my life inside technology (when I'm not under my cursed D3), and I know intimately how it all works, but sometimes I still take a step back and look at it from a different perspective and I'm just amazed at what we have.
To me the improvement in communications is the most amazing. When we first came to Oz from the UK we had to book a phone call but now you can just dial and you're there.
Likewise when I worked in the bush when we reached a phone after an hours drive through some very rough "roads" we had to wind the handle to get the operator, tell her the number we wanted and they would connect you after verifying with the number that reversing the charge was OK.
I worked in Telfer back in around 1981 and we had to line up to use the one and only phone and the worst thing was if one of the wimmin on site got there before you...... her Mum worked for Telstra and they would gob off for bloody hours free while us lot who wanted to chat with the wife and kids waited and waited..... if anybody had murdered the her I reckon we'd have all cheered them. Only joking. She was a nice girl apart from that
That wasn't really that long ago maybe early 80s. Incredible stuff advances now.
AlanH.
PS. There was no TV to our camp back then either until they put in a satellite dish and that ruined our social life up the pub....... just a bit anyway.
There have been some recent advances, certainly, but I have to query the assumption that advances in recent years have been faster and more important than in other eras.
Just to quote a few -
In 1871 the fastest a message could be sent from London to Adelaide (or the reverse) was about a month; in October 1872, it was about four minutes.
In 1906 my mother saw her first motorcar, in what is now inner Sydney. She saw men walking on the moon in 1969.
In 1913 my father saw flying one of the first aeroplanes in Australia near Penrith. In 1943 he was an air raid warden at North Rocks, near Parramatta, and was employed building aeroplane engines for warplanes. He made some of the tooling for the first gas turbine engines made in Australia. He lived to see men on the moon, and supersonic flight.
While I was at primary school, we heard about the new ball point pens. They were forbidden, as leading to poor writing style.
When I started my first full time job, my job title was "Computer" - and that is what I did; calculations with pencil and paper. I had actually seen a real computer a year or two earlier; Sydney University had just switched on 'Silliac' while I was there. At the time, one of about two or three computers in Australia. It occupied several rooms, and had a mean time between valve failures of about fourteen hours. Input and output was by punched paper tape.
When I first started actually using a computer in 1973 in Melbourne, it occupied almost a complete floor of the office building, and worked on punch cards. By 1987 I owned my first PC (gave it to a collector a few years ago!).
John
JDNSW
1986 110 County 3.9 diesel
1970 2a 109 2.25 petrol
Reminds me of the time I was in a remote village up the side of a mountain in Burma, four hours by 4wd from the regional capital. I noticed I had mobile reception so decided to take a photo to text home. Then I noticed I had Wi-Fi! The village council had put on free Wi-Fi. So I took a photo of a buffalo looking in a church window and immediately sent it home. Amazing.
Even the beggars have mobiles.
Air in tyres! Whatever next? Gears that change themselves?
If you don't like trucks, stop buying stuff.
OK my most enduring memory of this type of thing is talking 50 years ago to my mother's governess.
She remembered the Kanakas in the canefields near where she lived in Howard and the building of the railways, the coming of electricity. After her coal miner husband died she as penance never listened to a radio again.
Talking of communications I recall as a very young child being driven by my dad in our 36 Studebaker to Bundaberg. The road was dirt between the canefields. So even in the 50s there was no bitumen road from Brisbane to Bundaberg.
Regards Philip A
I remember when as a child our house first got electricity, in the 1950s. Does that count?
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