I want to tell you about some changes that have been happening in the world. But first let me tell you about my recent trip to the farm that made me start to think about this topic. I was telling Aunt Beverely that I had been searching at local garage sales in Utah for a black dial phone, similar to the one you used to have in your office/ collectible room down in the basement.
I've been searching for quite some time and they are no where to be found. Aunt Bev walked away after our conversation and minutes later returned to my surprise with YOUR phone. Your black dial phone. I squealed with joy. It still has your phone number written on the front of it. 403-289-0049. Just saying your old phone number made me smile. She told me I could keep it. I was thrilled beyond belief. It is a treasure because it reminds me of you and I will cherish it and think of you when I look at it in my home.
Lots has changed since your phone was the current phone of the world.
Guess what?
We have new phones and they don't even have to connect to a phone jack in the wall to work. They are much smaller too, small enough to fit inside of my pocket. Its true.
I remember a long time ago when you got your first computer, you were in your 80's and you were so excited to try out this new thing called the internet. You had to dial up the internet and when you were using it the phone line wasn't accessible.....you had to wait for it to dial up.....and then all you were able to do was check your email. I thought you were the coolest Grandpa because you knew how to do this.
That computer you used that we ooohed and ahhhed over...no longer exists. Instead we mostly use our little phones, the one that can fit right inside my pocket.
It is called a Smart phone but it can do so much more than just telephone people. I got my first one about this time last year. Mine costs approx. $400 and we pay monthly fee of $80 a month for two phones.
So many people have them, they are very common in the United States/Canada and they are mind blowing.
Can I tell you a little bit about what they can do and more interestingly what they have replaced from when you were here.
My phone can call people.
It can call anywhere in the the United States at no extra charge to me. It stores all of my family and friends phone numbers inside of it. I have no need to memorize phone numbers anymore and I haven't seen a phone book in years. If you asked your Great Grand Daughter Daughter Lydia (born in 2008) if she knew what a pay phone was she would have no idea what you were referring to. We can use them at home, in the car, at the park...anywhere that their is cell phone service.
When I was in Junior High I used to write notes to my friends. I would fold them up all cute and fancy like this. When I needed to communicate with anyone in life such as my parents, sisters, friends or young women leaders I had to call them. No we have something new.
You can send anyone you know a text message . Things have definitely changed since your days of telegraphs and mores code during World War II.
Almost everyone communicates through E-mail these days. It is so fast and so convenient. Tyson uses it for school and work. I use it to write letters to my family in Canada, Guatemala and Australia. I send emails for my church calling in Young Women's and to communicate regarding Lydia's extra curricular activities. I keep all of my special emails in separate folders.
Yes, we still check our mail box just about everyday. But it is mostly filled with catalogs, bills and junk. Except during the month of December. We love December when the Christmas Cards come pouring in. There is something special about opening the mail and seeing an envelope addressed to you from someone that you love.
My favorite part of the Smart phone includes the camera. I love to take pictures. I do it daily and never before have a had a camera so readily accessible and with me practically all the time.
I remember with little fondness the days of the 35mm film cameras. If you were going on trip or had a special event you would go to the store and stock up on a couple rolls of film. They cost about 3-4 dollars a piece. Each roll had 24 exposures on it, which meant you had 24 chances to take a shot. If someone moved or didn't cooperate you didn't get to take multiple shots you just hoped for the best. When you took all of your pictures my mom would typically keep the rolls of film in a drawer until she had time to drop them off at a store to get developed. She would eventually get around to doing that and then it would sit at the store for who knows how long it took to go and pick them up. It was always a great day when we got to see the pictures. On occasion they would turn out black or white due to over or under exposure. It was the worst if you had a roll that was all black. But typically we were excited with the result. They were memories we could hold.
Those days are gone. I can take a picture with my phone. It has a fairly good camera already built in. I can see the photo immediately. If Lydia's eyes are closed I can take another one. I can take as many photo's as I want with no extra charge. Its free! I can also edit the pictures using my phone. Then I can email them, text them, post them (what is posting you ask...I'll get to that later.) I can go on-line and send them to a store, pay for them and they can send me the hard copy photo's right to my door. I never have to leave my house! I can also print out pictures myself using our printer.
Do you remember this thing? The beloved family video camera that everyone used in the 80's and earlier. I don't think you ever owned one but my Dad sure did and he loved it. He recorded us learning to ride bikes, opening presents on Christmas morning and every other big or little event that occurred during our childhood. I loved viewing those old family VHS tapes. They are precious!
I bet you are catching on and won't be surprised when I tell you that these are gone too. If I want to record my daughters dance recital I can just pull my phone out of my pocket and voila. Isn't that unreal? I can store in my computer, burn it to DVD or even load it to You Tube (on the internet) so her Grandparents can see it all the way in Australia.
This next part might blow you mind. There are self contained software called APPS and there are many different APPS, millions in fact. You can fill your phone full of APPS. There is an APP created by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and it contains all of the Standard Works, ALL OF THEM, all the manuals for teaching lessons, every General Conference address given in the last 70 years and so much more. You can read the Ensign, the Friend and the New Era using your phone too. I still use and love my actual scriptures...there is just something about a book to me and being able to mark it up like full of insights. But I am in the the minority.
My phone has replaced my watched. I realized this at Girls camp when we didn't use our phones and I never knew what time it was. People still generally wear watches but I haven't owned one for many moons.
I have sweet memories of you and Grandma reading your daily Calgary Herald. You were both always in the know with the current events of the world and in Calgary. Grandma would cut our articles and send them to my Mom after we moved to the States. I like to hold the Newspaper too but it costs money to order it and now a days you can read them for free online. My husband reads many different papers to keep caught up these days. I take a look at the headlines when time allows. I most definitely still miss waking up at my parents home and reading the comics as I ate my bowl of Honey Nut cheerios before I headed off to school.
Maps. We still have a good 'ol State Farm road map in the car, at least we used to I haven't seen it in a while. Now a days, I can turn my phone on, tell it the address of my destination and the GPS (global positioning system) will track my location, tell me how to get there and let me know what time we will arrive.
Recipe Boxes. I know Grandma had many of these things. I love to collect recipes too. I have 3 huge binders chuck full of recipes, some are even Grandma's. A popular thing is a virtual board called Pinterest where you can save recipes that you find on-line, you can go to the site and see how to make it and sometimes even watch step by step videos. Recipes of all kinds, any type of food and from any culture are just a click away.
Shopping. On-line shopping is one of my favorites. I am a little bit in love (slightly addicted) with Amazon Prime, I'll be honest. I did almost all of my Christmas shopping on Amazon last year. You can buy just about everything for everyone on your list, for lower prices than the mall and Amazon ships it to your house in 2 days. You read that right? I can go shopping without living my house. Crazy right?
I still buy a lot of things at stores, but when I can avoid crowded busy stores before Christmas then I do.
I think I got my love for garage sales from you, Grandpa. I remember going garage sale shopping in your old blue pick up on Saturday mornings when I was a kid. I still love to get out and garage sale and even though on line garage sales are creeping into our virtual worlds...I sure hope garage sales stick around because I love a good bargain.
I'm not much of a T.V. watcher these days. But oh my goodness, I was at my friends house the other day and they showed us all about Apple T.V. they can pretty much watch any show and movie that has ever been made. ...and her husband could even control the T.V. using his phone. You can record T.V. with a thing called DVR. (digital video recorder) If you are not home to catch the news or your favorite show, the T.V. will record it for you and you can watch it on your T.V. and if you are on a business trip you can watch it from a device like an ipad or iphone! I still have yet to wrap my mind around this one.
Gone are the days of Dad driving my older sisters and I to the movie store to pick out movies to watch on a Friday night. I remember him getting frustrated because it took us so long and we could never agree on a movie. He would give us a 3 minute warning and said he would choose the movie for us if we couldn't pick.
We watch movies on NetFlix, or Amazon Prime now. They have endless options and it is still difficult for me to choose sometimes. Once in a while Tyson goes to Red Box. It is vending machine outside of the Grocery store where you can rent a DVD for a $1.20 a day.
More and more people are reading books on their phones, ipads or devices called Kindles. You can buy any book on-line and you can store it and read it anytime you'd like. This one is also pretty amazing. My Mom is a big time reader, she reads e-books and real books. She likes to share books and it is easier to share a hard copy in her opinion. I love to read too, I still like to hold books too and I love my library so I'm all set.
8 Track tapes have come and gone, Compact Disks were in the spotlight for a long, then our Ipods took over and now people are listening to music on their phones. We use on-line music apps called Pandora or Spotify and you can pretty much listen to any artist, any style of music, new or old for FREE!
Encyclopedias are a thing of the past as well. I don't think I have used one of these since I was in Elementary school.(1994) Google is our encyclopedia now. I can Google on my phone. You can ask it anything and it will find you thousands of sources. The tricky part is everything on the internet is obviously NOT true, so you have to be wise and find good legit sources. The information is endless and at our fingertips. You can learn anything you want about any topic, science, medical, history, art, language, religion.....anything....without opening a book, without going to a library. We are what is known as the information age. I don't believe that my generation uses it to its full potential and that might be an over generalization but I know I do not.
Just two years ago I baby-sat my favorite little 3 year old boy Caden while we were living in Oklahoma. Each Friday his Mom would write me a check and every Saturday I would sign the back, put Lydia in the car, drive to the bank and deposit into my checking account. (Always getting her that beloved sucker.)
Those trips to the bank are gone too. I still have to sign my check, but now all I need to do is take a picture of it with my phone and the bank can deposit it for me. I can't explain how it all works, I wish I knew, because it is mind blowing. I also wish I had another word to use other than mind blowing.....but I don't. It has been a long time since I have had to actually walk into a bank, or even go in the drive through. Did you bank have a drive-thru? I can transfer money to separate accounts, check balances and pay pills using the app too. Its a life saver.
I don't cut out coupons any more. I just take a screen shot (picture) of it on my phone and show the worker at the store. This one is awesome! I don't have to waste ink and paper or worry about losing the coupon.
The internet has changed the way we do family history. Huge data bases are available at our finger tips. You can look up your ancestors on-line, read their stories, see old photo's. You can find deceased family members and get their information and records needed to do their temple work. The Church of Jesus Christ is on a mission to hasten the work of the Lord and the internet is helping do so much good.
I love making lists. I am 50/50 with this one. Sometimes I still write out my grocery list on paper and other times I just keep track of it on my phone using my Out of Milk app, it depends on my mood I guess. It is handy when I run out of something I can just jot it down in my phone and it never gets lost.
I have a an APP that is a Flashlight. It is so bright and it doesn't need batteries. Cool eh?
If I ever needed a compass....which I don't very often I have one of those on my phone too.
My calculator comes in handy all the time.
My husband Tyson loves using the phone to find out where is the cheapest place in town to buy gas. He uses Gas Buddy. This app saves us a little extra money each month.
My Dad uses his phone to find out movie times and prices for date night. He can even reserve his seats and buy the tickets on his iphone. Awesome eh? We used to have to call the theater and listen to the long show time menu.....etc. Those were the good days. Not.
There are lots of different ways that our phones keep us in contact these days, we call them social media: Facebook, Skype, Blogging, Instagram, Face time, Twitter....etc. All of these have been life savers when I've lived far away from family and pretty soon I will appreciate them all even more as I move across the ocean even further from everyone that I love.
I recently watched a You tube video called LOOK UP! It showed us that our generation is spending so much time looking down at our phones that we sometimes forget to look up. We may be reading the Ensign, checking our bank transactions, reading emails, catching up on news or just wasting time looking at cat photo's ( ha ha ) but all of that requires us to look down instead of up.
As Tyson and I were driving home from Canada this summer we talked about the day we met. We were both at a WSU orientation, it was 2001 before anyone had a Smart phone. We were in an uncomfortable situation where we didn't know anyone. If one of us had been on our phone looking down that day we most likely would have never met. Neither of us would have approached the other one and my life would have been very different without Tyson in it. So I hope I always remember to take time to look up so I don't miss out on life around me or new people that I can meet.
Your generation had none of this and mine is the transitioning one who knows what it is like to live without all of this technology. Some days I want to go back and be rid of it all. But other days I embrace it and am thankful for it. Whenever we have something good Satan takes it and twists it into the most evil thing he can. He sure has made his mark of evil with technology.
Technology, however is not going away. So it is our job to use it wisely and our responsibility to teach our kids (who are Tech Natives: a person who was born during or after the general introduction of digital technologies and through interacting with digital technology from an early age, has a greater comfort level using it.) how to use technology to do good, to uplift, to gain more knowledge, to share the gospel, to keep records, to stay in contact with loved ones and all else it has to offer.
The Google Glasses are the latest thing to be invented (that I know of....I can't keep up, nor do I attempt to) and the last one I will share: Google Glass is Google's wearable computer that a person wears like a regular pair of prescription glasses. Google Glass is best described as an evolution of the smartphone — a way to freely access data without needing to look at a handheld device. NO. I don't have these. Not yet anyways. Ha ha. Jokes.
Things have sure changed since the time of YOUR phone verses MY phone. I don't think life is better or worse for having all of this new technology. Just different. It sure does make me curious as to how much it is going to keep changing by the time I reach Grandma status. ;)
I know you will never really actually read this letter. (Blog post). And I know I could have just made this record for Lydia to learn about life was like before she came around but it was more fun thinking about you as I wrote it. Miss you dearly. Love you more.
Love, Laura G. xoxo
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