Finally out of the Cave

Beau Yancey
03/07/09
Dr. Farman
DTC 375
Word Count: 926

Finally out of the Cave

My parents have always been a bit hesitant when it comes to technology. Whether it was the several gaming systems my brothers and I went through, or even cell phones in recent years, they have always wanted the piece of technology with the fewest options and buttons possible. As a family we joke about how they are stuck in a cave, refusing to come outside of it and see the light of newer technology. However in recent years, this has not been the case.

I have always been fortunate enough to be surrounded by a computer. My Father worked out at Battelle while I was growing up and he would bring home his massive computer system home on the weekends. The colossal green monitor, the bulky computer itself, and the keyboard, that was so precious that it was protected by a clear plastic cover at all times.

Before my Dad would ever even think about using such a piece of technology, he would always read the instructors manual from cover to cover, even with a highlighter at times. This habit still exists today. Nothing would be operated unless it was fully understood, to protect the machine from being annihilated from the user, or my siblings.

I believe it was the invention of the cell phone which made my parents finally see the light. A technology which made communication so readily available through the push of a button. There was no DOS system to worry about. No files that could be removed. Just a communication device that needed to be handled and fiddled with to be fully understood. From one cell phone to the next my parents crept closer towards the light. From the cell phone to the Palm Pilot and finally, at the end of last year, the Blackberry! A technology which I don’t even posses. We were all so very proud of them both. It wasn’t until this interview that I came to realize why they had such a hard time coming out of the cave. The technologies they described and the inventions they have seen during their lifetimes is nothing short of miraculous.

Beau: What was the most commonly used technology you used during your childhood?

Mom: The television. I remember getting our very first one. We were one of the first people on our block to have one. We were pretty popular. It had tubes and everything!

Beau: What other technologies were memorable?

Mom: Ok, this is a cool thing. It was called the Magcard. It was made by IBM. I was one of the very first people to be trained to use it. You could hold twenty two pages of information, and I could back up twelve spaces if I wanted to and make changes. The best part about it was that it typed by itself once you hit the send key. It was pretty cool! If I wanted to only print page twelve, I could go into the settings and hit print page twelve, and it would only print page twelve. It was amazing and I was there. I had to be trained for a whole week to use it. Everyone thought it was the coolest thing ever, but a year later, another model came out and it held one hundred pages! This was just unnatural.

Beau: What has been the greatest technological breakthrough of your time?

Mom: Without a doubt the computer. The old manual typewriter would have to use carbon paper if you wanted to make multiple pages and if you wanted seven pages or so, the last page would look blurry and you probably couldn’t use it. Then if you made a mistake, you would have to erase it on every single page. Even the electric typewriter was a huge advancement because it would not only type faster, but you didn’t have to return the carriage manually, and it would correct mistakes easily.

(About this time my Dad entered the room and he added to what my Mom had said.)

Dad: I remember the Mimeographs. I remember being a kid in class and we all had to take turns making copies with a hand crank thing and you would run paper through it and it had a strong smell that smelled really good!

Dad: Another technology that has come a long way is the telephone. Remember when we had to talk to an operator to make a phone call?

Mom: Yep, his name was Hunter number 51547.

Dad: Or there was a party line where families in remote areas would share the same phone line and cost of the phone bill. You would pick up the phone and your neighbor would be talking on the phone and you would have to ask him to leave so you could make a call.

Dad: Cameras are another one. You had to keep cleaning the flash bulb before a picture was taken. They then came out with a camera that had four flash cubes on it that would rotate every picture so the lighting was good. When they wore out we used to throw them into the river and shoot them with bb guns.

Beau: Did you ever think technology had reached its peak?

Mom: No, everything was changing so fast. A man on the moon, television, everywhere we looked things were popping up. It was a space age of rockets and amazing flying machines. It became expected that tomorrow there would be new and better things.