Technology then and now.
 

When I was a kid back in the 60's we had one black and white TV, my mom would not allow it in any part of the house except our unfinished basement. All I remember was the basement was rather dark and musty and we had an old couch about 15 ft from the TV which my parents insisted was the right distance so we did not ruin our eyesight by being too close. There was no remote, we had to walk over and twist the channel nob; I think we got about 5 stations and that was on Long Island near NY city, not out in some country town! I remember all of us watching Kennedy's funeral and on Saturday night we watched Saturday Night At The Movies. We were not allowed to watch any TV on school nights.

Fast forward to yesterday when I helped my step son hang several flat screen TVs in their new home. He and his wife have 5 kids and the 3 older ones have their own bedrooms now, the younger 2 girls (4 and 6) share a room. They had to go with Comcast as that is the only provider, my son in law told me it will run $250 per month for HS internet, Cable for 6 TVs and a phone land line and I think they got 2 DVRs. They have a big family room with a 55" LED TV, the game room has a 50" plasma and the parents room has a 52" LED. The 3 older kids (12, 10 and 8) have a flat screen TV (in the 38" range) in their rooms and each kid has either a PS3 or a Wii or an X box. The 12 year old has an iPhone 4s and an iTouch and his 10 year old sister has no phone yet but does have an iTouch. The older 2 have laptops and the younger ones have some kind of tablet, a nook or other.

I get a chuckle when they sometimes say, "I'm bored, there's nothing to do!"

It's amazing, isn't it? We also had just the black and white TV, and my parents didn't spring for color until after I left for college in 1985.

At dinner last night, my daughter was talking about school, which is in its final two weeks and nothing is being taught. In one class, the teacher wanted to show them some YouTube video on the classroom smart board related to what they had been studying, and my daughter was moaning that they couldn't see the whole video because there were buffering problems. It really struck me then that this was a different time. She wasn't complaining about a cracked filmstrip, or a tv channel with too much static. It was "buffering." She's a digital native, and I'm just a visitor to this age. I mentioned this, and my wife totally got where I was coming from, but my daughter just looked at me like "that's nice, Dad."

I read a joke the other day related to this PRISM business...

You're on a business trip and lonesome for your loving wife.
So you call her and get into some rather intimate, hot pillow talk.
Later, just as you end the call, you hear some heavy breathing.
These days, it might not have been your wife !

So times have changed... we're back to the days of the party line.