Email: Slowly Dying or Going Strong?
I read an interesting article today in response to another controversial article about the “death of email”. I find it humorous that the poor woman who was nearly persecuted for her article, never said email was dying, just losing popularity and prominence. I guess there’s still some dispute on that idea. But I disgress.
I think it’s interesting that no matter how wonderful and revolutionizing a new technological advancement is, four groups of people emerge. *Note: Sometimes this does not happen because this advancement dies off before adoption by the majority takes place.
1. There’s a small group of activists who are overly excited about how wonderful and convenient this new *fill in the blank* is, how it will dramatically change how we communicate/entertain ourselves/do business/whatever else you can think of! And before you know it, <normal device that is working perfectly fine right now> will be completely replaced by this new *fill in the blank*!!!
2. There is a larger group of people who are interested, skeptical, briefly fascinated, or bored who try this New Big Thing and make up their mind about it. And, regardless of whether they use it or not, still use the old way or the other way of doing things for some time. The adoption rate by this group is usually the deciding factor of whether this technological development will become commonplace.
3. There is an equally large (usually) group of people who know very little about this so called New Big Thing that everyone who’s anyone is using and don’t really care about it, and wait to adopt the trend when the hype (and often the price) goes down. They adopt this technological advancement after several years when all the kinks have been ironed out, and when they discover this is a more efficient method of doing what they do.
4. There is a small group of people who are utterly clueless and will continue using their “extremely out of date and oh-so-not popular” method of doing things and will be perfectly content with it. This group only adopts the thing when their technologically advanced friends or relatives coerce them into updating or their local provider no longer offers the old way.
Nuff said. This happened for cars, telephones, and tv’s and is still happening to today with broadband Internet services, smartphones, blue-ray and facebook.
Because of group 3, and especially 4, there are still people using rotary phones, dial-up, and hand-written letters.
If it wasn’t for group 2, and especially 1, we wouldn’t know about some great conveniences that have truly improved our lives.
The truth is, the new big thing has its place for the people who like new things and need the change. But there will always be room for the good old days and the traditional forms of transportation, communication, education, and entertainmentation… *ahem* I mean… (hehe!)
I still remember in middle school, the first time that my little world was shattered by a Group 1 futuristic hopeful who told me that telephones would soon no longer be used anymore. But by now these future-thinkers don’t phase me. So lets not get our undies in a bundle! Email isn’t going anywhere! Just like radio, newspapers, dial-up, and telephones. They still have a purpose to serve.
So… what group are you in?
Websites Then and Now–Don’t Miss This!
Along with the evolution of Internet and Internet services, the way we make websites has dramatically changed! Where we used to have text, a few colors, and clipart, we now have dynamic graphics, multimedia features, interactive banners, and so much more!
Did you know you can see what websites used to look like? I just discovered this today. Check out the Wayback Machine! How cool is this?
The following pictures were from right around a decade ago. It’s fascinating to see how different they look today! From 1996, here’s MSN.com:
And… Yahoo.com! (or should I say Yahoo! .com…) 
Isn’t that precious?! And here’s Google.com circa 1998…
And, I know this is only four years ago… but just think about how much this site has changed!
Remember when Facebook.com was just for college students?
Check out more great memories at archive.org!
Broadband Rollout is Coming… on the Government’s Horse and Buggy
If you heard about the government stimulus package that plans to spend over 7 billion to get broadband in rural areas, don’t get too excited. This is the government we’re talking about afterall.
Here’s a few things we need to keep in mind.
- The current halt on afforable broadband service to rural areas is due to lack of interest for companies and for customers. Basically, it costs way too much money to get broadband way out to the boonies when not everyone wants to pay for it even if they did!
- Anytime the government hands out money, it has to jump so many hurdles and run through so much legislation that by the time they get around to it, we could probably have done it faster on our own with a big garage sale! Ok, ok… slight exaggeration. Anyway.
- There are a lot of big companies involved that will all be lobbying for their interests, and a lot of them are more concerned about their pockets than a few rural farmers waving their arms for a broadband bailout.
Here’s some of the things we dial-up users in the sticks have to look forward to:
*crickets chirp*
So anyway… The FCC has been given until February to (get this!) define “broadband” so the government can properly dole out the funds. Yes February. As in next year. If you can’t guess, it’s going to take at least several years for this promised broadband to reach your rural little computer.
Why do we need to define broadband? Well because all these “high-speed” companies are giving customers such low-quality service that it’s hardly fast enough to be considered fast in today’s age. Check this out:
*Satellite services can drop your connection speed to that equivalent to dial-up as a penalty for using the service excessively.
*Wireless can become so overcrowded with users that it is actually slower and more unreliable than dial-up.
*Many ”low-cost” DSL plans have connection speeds that are no more than 10 times faster than dial-up (keep in mind that advertised speeds are not guaranteed actual speeds).
You might as well just stay with dial-up at that rate! Oh and get this!
*Our fastest connection speeds here in the U.S. is much slower than the normal connection speed in other countries. So much for being an advanced country!
So now the FCC is asking some of these Internet services providers to help them decide how fast broadband should be (or how else to determine what makes broadband what it is–long story), and phone companies like AT&T are trying their hardest to keep the standards low. They want broadband to be defined as being able to achieve basic tasks (like web page loading) and not even including video streaming and gaming capabilites!
Guess what? That, my friends, is dial-up. And we already have that. Yes, this is going to take a while. Looks like I’m going to keep going to the library to get videos… But I’m ok with that. I never had my hopes up from day one anyway.
From Then to Now: Telephones
Communications has come a long way from it’s early beginnings, and countless brilliant inventions and discoveries have brought us from running messangers to instant messaging. Today we depend heavily on Internet services and technology for communication, education, and entertainment, to name a few.
Here is a brief history of the telephone and early forms of telecommunications, when everything came about, and how telephones play a role in society today.
Then: One of the earliest telecommunications devices was the telegraph, a cable that would carry signals that respresented words. The first telegraph was invented by Joseph Henry in 1831. Samuel Morse invented Morse Code four years later, and in 1843, he invented the first long-distance telegraph line. A series of short and long clicks of the telegraph would represent words that would be written down by attendants and delivered to the reciever.
The first telephone invented is credited to Alexander Graham Bell, but Thomas Edison and others were great contributers and came close to claiming the title themselves. Bell recieved the patent for the first electric telephone in 1876. The switchboard exchange was invented the same year. A telephone would ring the area operator, who would run the switchboard and connect the call to another telephone.
Other events in the telephone timeline include:
- 1885–AT&T (American Telephone & Telegraph Co.) began
- 1889–direct dial (not requiring switchboard) telephone patented
- 1898–first telephone answering machines invented
- 1914–first cross continental telephone call made
- 1923–rotary telephone invented by Antoine Barnay
- 1961–Touch-tone phone introduced to public
- 1979–In Japan, first cellular phone communication network
- 1983–First cellular phone network in the US
- 1985–Car phones became earliest mobile phones
- 1993–SMS text messaging began in Finland
- 1995–First internet phone software (voice over IP)
- 1996–First smartphone released by Nokia
Now: Telephones are still quite prevelent in our world today. Although telephone lines have been provided to the entire US, analog phone line are beginning to be less popular. With digital services like cable, dsl, and cellphones becoming more popular and technologically advanced, more people are cancelling their analog phone service. Some are speculating how soon analog phones services will no longer be available, but it’s probably not going to happen anytime soon.
Cellphones are leading the radically fast-changing development of telecommunications devices today. Thanks to cell phones, the definition of “phone” is no longer only a “talking” device. Only a short decade ago, the pocket sized cell phone was in itself a phenomenon. Next came text messenging, camera, camcorders, internet access, touch screens, and qwerty keyboards.
Cellphones serve as address book, calculator, calendar/dayplanner, alarm clock, and gps. You can check email, watch movies, download and play music, store photos, videos, and other data on cell phones.
Consider this: 20 years ago the latest computers had a harddrive storage capacity of 8 MB. Today, a cellphone can hold a chip about the size of a fingernail with the storage capacity of as much as 16 GB (or 16,384 MB)! New advancements, gadgets, and features are being developed almost daily. It’s difficult to even imagine what will be available in as little as a few years.
What Can You Live Without?
For the last two weeks, my house has been without running water. My parents are digging out our basement. I’m sure it’ll be wonderful when it’s all done, but being without running water has been frustrating. If it wasn’t for work and a house-sitting job I had last week, I would probably have been more affected. I was home sick the last two days, and boy, did I notice then!
My parents bring water from the neighbors every day. We have buckets, jars, barrels, and thermoses setting around with drinking, cooking, dishwashing, laundry, and toilet flushing water. I’m sure there’s worse things than being without water for two months (yeah, we’ve barely started!) So far, I haven’t gone out of my mind. I’ve got lots of friends and family who live nearby with showers! 
All in all, it’s really made me grateful for the simple things, like turning a knob and suddenly have clean, hot, running water in a split second! I’d like to say I’ll never take running water for granted again, but I’ll probably get used to it again as soon as it’s back full time in my life!
This it got me thinking. How many modern convenieces have we decided we absolutely cannot live without? Imagine how different your life would be without some of these things?
- Electricity
- Automobiles
- Interior Plumbing
- Telephones
What about technology and computers? So many things can now be done online or with computerized systems. Everything from traffic lights, to billing and mailings, to tax and medical records and tracking depend on computers… just to name a few!
Here’s a challenge for you. Think about some of the Internet services you use personally and how much you “need” them to survive, then take this poll:
Technology–Changing the Staples of Our Daily Lives
I recently ran across a joke book that must have been written before I was born (I’m 23, in case you wondered). I know we’ve owned it more than 10 years. It was very interesting to read it–the comparison of humor now and then really surprised me. One section was called Why Don’t They Invent…. I was shocked to find a few of them had been invented: invisible braces, a robot pet dog, a car with built-in direction finder (gps), dictionary computer (spellcheck)!
Technology has never failed to surprise us. It changes our lives dramatically in a matter of a few years, sometimes without us even realizing it–until we stop and consider how it used to be. Oh yeah…… wow.
Here are a few things that we once considered a staple, something we couldn’t do without even as little as 10 years ago. How many of these things do you hardly ever use anymore?
1. Calendars and Day Planners. I can’t remember the last time I bought or wrote on a physical paper calendar. Cell phones, palm pilots, and several computer programs, like Microsoft Outlook now cover all of our appointment and scheduling needs.
2. Address Books and Phonebooks. Again, got it covered with the cell phone! The Internet provides multiple ways to access business addresses and phone numbers in the whole world, including maps to get there and pictures, etc. Facebook is another growing venue that allows a way to contact friends and aquaintences quickly, or list full contact information directly.
3. Cassette/CD players. This one may still be up for debate. Cellphones, computer media players, Ipods, mp3 players, and audio streaming from the Internet are quickly claiming the music playing audience with broader availability and better quality.
4. Newspapers. Again, not obsolete, but access to Internet services has opened a large, not to mention free, door for readers who at one time depended solely on their morning folded up paper on the front porch to stay informed.
5. Dictionaries and Encyclopedias. I remember the heavy volumes of World Book Encyclopedia and finding my topic after some time–either because I wasn’t sure where to look or I kept getting distracted by the pictures from other entries! Technology has added so much vocabulary, like “googled” and “add-ons” that it is difficult for the printed volumes to keep up! Websites like Wikipedia.com and Dictionary.com have transformed our research habits.
6. Calculators, Adding Machines, and Conversion Charts. Software programs have replaced these items for home, school, and office uses. Search engines and search boxes in browsers can now query conversions and calcuations instantly.
7. Microsoft Clip Art. Remember when you used clip art for posters and cards? Image searches on the Internet have by far replaced the role of the primitive collection of a person sitting at a desk and a piece of cake.
8. Film Cameras. Who wants to run to Walmart and wait several hours when you can load and print your pictures in five minutes at home? Digital cameras now offer the quality of a 35mm, but with zoom, black and white, timed shots, and, my favorite, the preview! You know right then and there if dad’s eyes were closed!
9. Wooden Pencils (and pencil sharpeners). Remember how loud the “roy, roy, roy” of the pencil sharpener at the front of the classroom was in the middle of a test? Wooden pencils are still useful to artists, but the rise of mechanical pencils have made them less popular for schoolwork. Now students can submit homework electronically and type up their papers on computers.
10. Watches. This one could be up for debate because of their use as a fashion accessory. However, many would agree that much fewer people use a watch as a necessity, as cell phones and computers nearly always display the correct time.
Count up your total! How many of these items are still a part of your daily life?
