Prompted by a remark in an e-mail message from MA, I began to wonder what would amaze me and puzzle me the most if I had gone to sleep 20 years ago. Here are some of the changes over the past twenty years that seem to me to have been the most dramatic. Aside from the first two, most of the rest seem to be the result of major changes in electronic and communication technologies.
- My family: all three children married (sort of, in one case) and five grandchildren.
- Stock market indices and commodities prices. Oughta sight!
- Cell phones? nah, Ms. Eclectic and I both had one back then. But what cell phones, and especially smart phones, will do is pretty amazing.
- The explosion of the internet. Back in 1991, I was reading and contributing to tonnes of newsgroups (fun, and I made friends along the way with whom I am still in contact). But I hadn't even heard of "the web" back then.
- in that same vein, Google and Wikipaedia: want to know something? It is so much easier to find an answer these days.
- Real incomes. What I mean here is that there seem to be so many things that are so much cheaper these days than they were 20 years ago. I know, I know: food and energy and commodities prices have jumped a lot lately, but overall, prices for so many things seem not to have risen much, if at all, but incomes have.
- The size of gubmnt, especially in the US.
- How much cleaner the environment seems, especially regarding industrial pollution.
- CDs and DVDs? They were just barely breaking into the consumer markets, and now they're nearly passé.
- Ceramic knives. I'm sure they were around before, but I'd never heard of them.
- any others?