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.<\/p>\n
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…<\/p>\n
Cordless telephone<\/p>\n
WATS line (remember those?)<\/p>\n
Videocassette player w\/attached monitor<\/p>\n
Walkman<\/p>\n
One thousand cassette tapes<\/p>\n
Newspaper<\/p>\n
Atlas<\/p>\n
Compass<\/p>\n
Alarm clock<\/p>\n
Stopwatch<\/p>\n
2-way pager<\/p>\n
Train schedule<\/p>\n
Filofax\/Dayrunner<\/p>\n
Dictaphone recorder<\/p>\n
Complete set of encyclopedias<\/p>\n
Camera<\/p>\n
Photo album<\/p>\n
Videogame system<\/p>\n
Barcode scanner<\/p>\n
Entire shelf of additional books<\/p>\n
A whole bookstore<\/p>\n
A whole record store<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Every now and then, it’s good to be reminded that I live in the !-ing future.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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.) … <\/p>\n