Joining the 21st Century

The other day I purchased an IPhone.  Wow, am I imressed with it.  My previous phone, an LG flip model, came with a 60 page book of instructions.  My new phone came without any book, just a small accordion folded pamphlet.  I have always been technologically challenged, to this day waiting until an under 25 year old came over to help me get the remote control for the TV to work.  But the IPhone is incredibly smart.  Earlier today one of my daughters called to ask if I had heard her news report on the radio.  I hadn't, but within about 10 seconds, there it was on my phone!  Even I can master it!

The rapid rate of technological advances never ceases to amaze me.  In the last fifty years so much has been invented, improved, and made available to the general public.  Can this pace keep up?  Remember who invented the cotton gin?   (play Jeopardy theme song here).  We all had to memorize his name in third grade - Eli Whitney.  Now was that more important than the person who invented cell phones?  Yet no one knows his or her name.  Who invented the computer?  It wasn't so long ago that I was working at a radio station and feeding punch cards into a mammoth pseudo computer, just to get the commercials on at the right time.

What's next?  Well, I'll tell you.  Another brilliant guy at the MIT Media Lab (why are they always there?  wouldn't you love to visit?) has invented a pendant that you wear around your neck and then just by making gestures with your hands your phone knows what to do.  Take a photo?  call Mom?  remember to pick up bread and milk on your way home?

That's almost as amazing as the Florida woman who recently tried to extort $50,000 from her husband by having a ransom tape delivered to him.  Unfortunately, you could hear she and her lover having sex in the background of the tape.  Not cool.

But, if she had an IPhone she could have taped herself, e mailed it to her husband, and set the timer for the time of the drop off.  Heck, she probably could have had her phone drive to the drop off spot, film him dropping off the dough and then had sex with him over the phone.