210625 Sentinel, The Times

Our rapidly changing lives

When I was a youngster, the only entertainment in our home was a radio. There was no TV, no computer, no stereo, no internet and our one phone plugged into the wall with a 6 foot chord in an open hallway. There was no privacy, except for a single bathroom upstairs. With 5 people in the home it was a busy place. At the dining table, adults talked and I was like a statue, something to be seen but not to speak. Corner lots in neighborhoods had a confectionary for small needs like convenience stores today. If someone walked into a store with a mask on, the mask was accompanied with a cheap .22 caliber pistol that was used in a cash and dash robbery.

I have seen the advent of televisions in nearly all homes instead of just in wealthy homes. Initially record players became high fidelity record players followed by stereo systems. In the fifties black and white TV sets had dim and somewhat blurry pictures. TV was only available for 16 hours a day, less than that on some stations. The rest of the time there was a test pattern that never changed. Television news programs were 15 minutes long at first, now we have a selection of 24 hour a day news stations. In the fifties few of the nation’s populace had ever flown in an airplane. The picture below is the test pattern that was used on all stations.

The first cell phones were huge, having an old style telephone handset and requiring a bag to hold them. Now there are more cell phones in the country than there are people and they all fit into a pocket. Now instead of talking at the dining table many people are perusing their cell phones; family gatherings are punctuated by cell phone browsing. Many people using cell phones while driving are so distracted that they cause auto accidents and near misses. The first color TV sets with very poor pictures ran in the vicinity of $750-1000 for a 23 inch console. Now there are 70 inch color TV’s with perfectly sharp pictures for as low as $400. For those who remember VCR’s the first ones were close to $1000, now you can buy a better DVD player for as low as $29.

Now we are in an extended pandemic that no other people alive today have ever known. We have had a year of isolation which caused a host of traumatic problems including a sharp increase in domestic violence. People have been without jobs due to the pandemic, as many as 16% of the population. That is the highest since the great depression years of the thirties which is estimated at 25%, but there is no way of actually knowing what it really was back then.

All considered, I think life is pretty good at this point even though I reserve the right to reverse judgment at any time.