Internet People

Hello HAL, shall we play a game? When I get nervous writing, I just remember that most of you reading this are sitting there in your underwear, or worse. Some of you actually have curlers in your hair. A few of you are laying on a bed with a laptop and a dog next to you. Then there are those who are eating lunch and reading this on your phones. . . One of you is on the toilet (you are the reader who is the most prepared!). Then there are a few of you sitting on a couch or sitting in a recliner and reading this on your iPads. There’s one in the bathtub reading this on your phone. (The rest of you don’t smell quite as nice!) Most of the rest of you are all at computer desks looking at monitors. And here I am typing and chewing on a carrot, and thinking “What’s up Doc?” to all of you. Just because I felt like reversing things for a change. You realize, THIS is how we humans gather now - in the ether of the internet,- by streaming electrons that run through insulated metal wires and pulses of light through fiber optic cables, that appear as digitized images, on screens of different sizes, that CONNECT us now. It’s a bit informal isn’t it? I mean, we haven’t developed any religious rituals that we feel we have to perform before we access the World Wide Web. . . Just virus protection programs to protect our hardware. You don’t even have to bathe, or wear nice clothes, or splash on cologne! There’s no coffee and doughnuts either. Every time my parents and their friends had a meeting, they always felt it necessary to have coffee and doughnuts. Always. Maybe someday we will invent monitors that produce the smell of coffee and doughnuts, so we can all meet with the same, albeit simulated, ambience that my parents and their generation always met with? Eh, probably not. Hey, I remember, mothers used to warn their children not to talk to strangers, but on the internet, with only a few button clicks you can read pages and pages of potentially dangerous crap from dozens of total strangers, many of whom don’t even have real names! Plus you can be sure too that several countries are watching everything you read, and that it all goes into a file that each of them are keeping on you. . . Oh yes. So, knowledge has increased. Not only do we know more scientifically, but you can easily click into an ashram halfway around the world, view videos of various religious services, visit sacred shrines by internet, or even watch live people frolic on a beach clear on the other side of the earth!

I remember how a lot of this started, because I was there. Back in 1978, when I was about to graduate high school, I took Computer Science class, and I learned how to program in Fortran on paper punch cards. Yep. The teacher took our stacks of program cards to the university where they actually had a computer (they were quite large, rare, and expensive in those days). Teacher would run our carded programs through the university computer. The results of our programs would then print out on tractor-fed green bar paper that came through a big loud noisy dot-matrix printer. . . and we were HAPPY, because we were on the cutting edge of high technology at the time.

My dad was an electrician for an airline, so we got electronics magazines sent to our house – the ones where you could buy an apple computer kit and build it yourself. Dad had aworkbench in the garage that was just loaded with jars of electronic components like transistors and diodes. But I didn't want to build a kit (and I didn't want Dad telling me how to build a kit). Nope. So I bought a ZX81 Timex Sinclair 1000 computer with 2k memory that I could display on our TV screen. It could save programs to cassette tapes. I thought I really had something fantastic (and I was right, because they have one now behind glass at the science museum, Think Tank, in Birmingham, England.) It didn’t really do anything, but it was so new, and so advanced, that it was like a truly magical marvel just to have one and play with it. Things advanced so quickly though, that when I was about to graduate college I bought a Commodore Amiga. OMG! That computer had dedicated graphic chips! And you could actually run CAD programs and basic animation on it! My new brother-in law worked as a salesman at the new fledgling computer store in town, and he recommended it. I think my first hard drive was like 800k, it was almost as big as a shoebox, and it came from the manufacturer with a virus! It was a very graphic virus, though, and I was like spellbound watching all the amazing virus graphics as soon as I turned on the computer. My brother-inlaw, though, he was totally embarrassed. I guess new computers weren’t supposed to boot up with a ‘Das BOOT’ boot virus. lol. Back then we all had stacks of floppy disks inistead of CD's or DVD's, and the viruses were much smaller and less sinister. Viruses back then seemed to be mostly made by guys who wanted to harmlessly show off their stunning graphic programming abilities. Hey that was fun. But it hasn’t just been computers. My whole life there has been rapid change like never before in the history of mankind, and I’m still over a decade away from even being considered a senior citizen! Some technology caught on slowly. The first color television sets began being sold in 1953. It wasn’t until 1959 that a regular program “Bonanza” began being broadcast in color. I remember being a toddler and watching “Superman” in black and white on the neighbors TV set. I was almost 3years old when ABC began airing “The Flintstones” and “The Jetsons” cartoons in color for the first time. Those were the third and forth shows to begin broadcasting in color. And then in 1966 NBC was the first in the US to convert and broadcast ALL of it’s programs in color. . . But accpetance was slow. Color TV shows had been around for 12 years, and available for 6, but people were still buying black and white TV sets. . . Finally, in 1972, the sale of color TV sets finally exceeded the sale of black and white TV sets. Once manufacturing became equipped to produce high technology gadgets and appliances - the changes began to happen much faster. In 1975 the sale of microwave ovens hit 1 million a year, and finally exceeded the sale of gas-based conventional ovens. But in 1975 only 4% of US households owned and used a microwave oven. By the end of 1976 however, almost 60% of US households (about 52 million) were cooking using a microwave oven! Dats FAST SOCIAL CHANGE bruther! Once most of us got computers into our homes, the next steps came quickly to get us all connected online. It used to be, during the early 1990’s, that internet access was like cell phones are today, because it required a 2 year contract that cost about $350. Then in 1996 America On Line stopped charging it’s users hourly fees, and went to a flat $19.95 monthly subscription. Now today you can get an account for FREE and virtually unlimited access. You just have to put up with some new high-tech intrusions, like advertising, tracking cookies, and having your emails scanned and tracked. . .

Phones and computers merged, and became wireless.

After machines advenced enough we then took on advancing our knowledge of biology. We mapped the human genome, and now we can commercially play around with custom genetic modifications to alter life forms. . .

And now we have microscopic robotic machines called nanobots, and robots called drones, that can fly, and The Google Car, that can drive itself.

Where we headed next?????? Selective breeding and implanted security chips? Instant justice? If you do something bad, will your implanted chip release nanobots that deconstruct and melt you?

Ohhhhhhh.! Something to think about there.

And remember this?

"But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." Daniel 12:4

Gosh, you have wonder how Daniel knew about this time, 2500 years ago. . .