So back in the day, I thought it would be really cool to have a little white plastic communicator that would let me link up instantly with all my high-school pals. (It was a backhanded homage to this desire that led me to use my dinky Nokia 1112 at my high-school birthday party last year.) As in so many things back then, obviously, my vision was limited.
On the way to the bar yesterday for the final Redskins debacle of the year, I jotted down a list of everything I would have needed in 1989 to do what my iPhone does now…
Cordless telephone
WATS line (remember those?)
Videocassette player w/attached monitor
Walkman
One thousand cassette tapes
Newspaper
Atlas
Compass
Alarm clock
Stopwatch
2-way pager
Train schedule
Filofax/Dayrunner
Dictaphone recorder
Complete set of encyclopedias
Camera
Photo album
Videogame system
Barcode scanner
Entire shelf of additional books
A whole bookstore
A whole record store
So in other words, I would need to ride around in a station wagon towing a U-Haul to have everything I have in my front pocket.
Every now and then, it’s good to be reminded that I live in the !-ing future.