Does our user group have nothing but computer junkies? I was thinking about the last time we had a speaker and he asked the audience how many people have more than one machine. More than half of the audience raised their hands. So here I am, thinking about how many people not belonging to our user group have more than one machine. Then I got a call from an employee of a client. She told me that she was getting DSL from Roseville next week and wanted to share her connection with her kid's computer, as well as a new computer for herself.
So, I guess it's kind of like a TV or a car. Most people have more than one TV and many people have more than one car. So I guess we are not just a user group of nerds, but people that just have an interest in software and believe in the joining of others to share a common bond between interests.
When I first got a computer and then replaced that computer with a faster one, I kept the first one as a backup. Transferring files was done by the sneaker network. You put on your sneakers and take the floppy disk from one machine and walk over to the other and put it in and copy the file. Nowadays, all we do is connect the machines using a network or something like PCsync.
I wonder where the future is taking us and where we are going from here. Who would think that ten years ago, we could all have very fast connections to the Internet using technologies like cable modems or DSL lines and satellite dishes. We are all connected one way or another. We all have e-mail addresses. Even my parents ten years ago never knew much about computers; now my Dad sends more e-mail than I do, doing things like communicating with family back east and looking up genealogy. Modems are becoming obsolete.
Will we be able to throw away our TV screen and replace them with wide-screen monitors that are connected to both our computers and our television signals, allowing us to just pick off the Web what we want to watch for the evening? Can our wristwatches download movies, so we can watch blockbuster hits while we work? Can programs allow us to create our own movie studio, produce short productions, and send them off to family members and friends? Where are we headed?
Technology has changed billions of lives. Who knows whose life it will change next?
