One Foot in the Door, One Foot Out?

While reading this article about the emergence of new technologies and the transition from one invention to the next since the dawn of time, I am reminded of my childhood when the latest gaming system with the best graphics was Nintendo 64 and the first version of Windows for the PC was the greatest thing since sliced bread. At that time, you could still dial a phone number without using the area code, cell phones were the size of a brick and people still had time to meet and fall in love without the advice from Match.com.

Now I don’t think I am that old to call the 90s the “good old days” but there is something to be nostalgic about a time when people weren’t attached to their cell phones and I didn’t have to constantly check Facebook to know what is going on in my friends lives.  There is still no denying that in a short amount of time there has been BIG changes. Some people feel that the digital revolution signals the death of the book, but I hope that there are still people like me out there who love the smell of a library book and would rather sit on the beach with an old book than a digital Kindle where you just don’t get the satisfaction of turning a page. Call me old fashioned, but despite my love for shiny and new technologies, nothing beats a book.

I did find in interesting when the article described how newer versions of technology still had elements of the older versions in them. As humans, we are creatures of habit and I think newer versions need to have older elements in them so that people would know how to work them. An example of this being every time Facebook changes. Every time Facebook changes, the grumbles and moans follow. Yet, we can’t live without it. And we still know how to work it because it doesn’t change so drastically that we have to relearn it. Also, technologies continue to reinvent themselves in order to stay with the times and to stay in business. When newspapers began suffering with the advent of the internet, many companies moved online to maintain their following. When the Nook and Kindle came onto the scene, textbooks began offering the option to purchase and download the book to make sure people keep buying their books. Yet the traditional ways of having an actual newspapers or buying an actual textbooks are still an option. We have one foot in the door and one foot out. Eventually over time, newspapers may be non existent and downloadable books many be the only way to get school text books. But, even though technology advances rapidly, we are still slow to replace them completely right away. It is safer to keep the old ways for a little while. At least until we are accustomed to the newer technologies.  I would personally prefer to test the water before diving in.