What's new to you?

The typical signs a person has lived a while are gray hair, wrinkles, an ever-expanding waist size and the increasingly frequent occasions when you can’t remember where you put your car keys, or even where you put the entire car. If you’ve reached a certain age you have to admit there are times you walk out of the store and have no idea where you parked. So you sally forth hoping nobody is watching as you wander the asphalt wasteland surrounding Wal-mart like a Bedouin riding a drunken camel.
The best indicator of years on the planet is not the change to one’s physical appearance or the cognitive decline but rather the number of technological advances one can enumerate to the younger generation, and there is nothing kids like better than listening to you describe the changes you’ve witnessed because it segues so neatly into the reasons why they are ungrateful slackers who just don’t appreciate how easy they have it.
Why, back when I was kid I had to get up off the couch, stand all the way up mind you, walk multiple steps and actually put my hand on the television to change the channel. But do you appreciate the remote control? No, you let it slid between the couch cushions like it’s just another lint covered breath mint falling out of your pocket rather than treat it like the miracle of science it truly is.
My generation did not make the same kind of leap as a previous generation who started out with horse and buggies and then watched a man walk on the moon. People of my age have witnessed massive changes in things like… the phone.
The first calls I made were probably to my best friend Rob (whose boyhood number I still remember even though he has not lived at that house since Ronald Reagan was President and T.J. Hooker was on television). I made those calls on a phone the size of a Toyota Prius. This phone was tethered to the wall, coal black, squarish, possessed a rotary dial, and the part you held in your hand was substantial enough to bludgeon marauding Cossacks into submission. The kicker to whole deal is the phone I used only made phone calls.
The phone my daughter uses to call her best friend is about the size of a deck of cards, completely wireless, makes phone calls, sends texts messages, takes pictures, reminds you of your appointments, wakes you up in the morning, figures your taxes and translates the works of Charles Dickens into Aramaic, but if you are confronted by marauding Cossacks you are out of luck.
I don’t really know why they’re called cell phones. There is one theory I am willing to float for public inspection. These devices so insidiously infiltrate the psyche of young people that they actually bond with their host at a cellular level not unlike nicotine, cocaine and caramel Girl Scout cookies.
A more recent invention is the Kindle. This doohickey downloads (downloads, there’s a word nobody used when I was a kid) entire books making it possible to read everything from the latest Stephen King novel to “Troilus and Cressida” with nothing more than a 10.2 ounce contraption in your hand. Now I am old school. I like the feel of paper and the smell of a brand new book. I love browsing through bookstores. I like the accoutrements of reading, book marks, book lights, bookcases, but I do not like the book hernia I get whenever I have to move. I box of books is heavier than two sumo wrestlers carrying Alex Karras. The lightness and mobility of the Kindle is attractive but on the other hand you can’t use a $359 gizmo to prop up the dining room table.
So my generation has gone from box phones and paper books to cell phone/camera/message sender/datebook/alarm clock/accountant/translators and a sliver of a device holding 1,500 books in one hand. What is my kid’s generation going to go to? Today’s cell phone becomes a device you place in your ear and it will transmit your thoughts and the images your eyes see to a receiver in somebody else’s ear. While being intensely cool you had better be very, very sure it is turned off before you go on a date or discuss your true feelings about your boss. The Kindle will evolve into a device which with a single bright flash implants all 4,178 pages of the Harry Potter books directly into your brain.