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My husband was showing me an article he came across about how sophisticated cars are expected to become over the next few years. One source from GM claims that by the end of this decade self-driven cars will be on the road. Essentially they’ll be a driving computer, able to sense pedestrians and other vehicles, read road speed signs and even figure out whether or not to speed up or slow down if another car is trying to merge in from a nearby oncoming ramp. Sensors from every angle will take in and interpret all of the input from the surrounding vicinity.
So as this article puts it, should man drive a computer, or should a computer drive man? Judging by the number of human-error fatalities that happen every year, the answer seems obvious—if the technology is as safe and precise as they claim possible.
Dreaming about how much safer the roads could be for aging eyes and reflexes like mine and my husbands will be in ten years led me to wonder which generation has seen more advancements. Ours or our grandparents? Frankly I’m skipping my parent’s generation, simply because new services and products weren’t nearly as spectacular as the generations before and after them. The greatest generation was great for a variety of reasons, but let’s face it, they were pretty busy fighting wars, hot and cold.
I came up with a list of some of the things both my grandmother and my husband’s grandmother would have seen in their lifetimes. My grandmother lived from 1894 until 89 years later, 1983. And my husband’s grandmother was born in 1895 and died 101 years later, in 1996.
- Automobile
- Telephone
- Refrigeration and Air Conditioning
- Widespread Electriticy
- Radio
- Television
- Computers
- Rockets and satellites
- Nuclear bomb
This doesn’t even address all of the medical advances like the iron lung, the polio vaccine, and diabetes insulin, to name a few.
In comparison, what about the generation of my husband and me? The strides made in our lifetime seem huge, but were they as spectacular? My grandmother’s life went from simple to sophisticated in ways we probably couldn’t imagine. From horse travel to watching a man land on the moon?
The changes in our lives have been advancements within already existing technology. Cars are faster; phones don’t need wires; satellites can show us places we never knew existed; we can watch an unimaginable selection of television wherever and whenever we choose; computers are smaller, faster, can give us an encyclopedia of knowledge at the click of a mouse and are more socially relevant than ever.
And now cars will be driving us around more safely than we can drive ourselves.
This, of course, led me to thinking about all of the changes in the publishing world. When I was a child wanting to write for publication someday, I knew I’d have to be accepted by a publishing professional who may or may not share my vision for the kind of stories I wanted to write. My acceptance depended on a lot more than talent—it depended on my own persistence as well as timing, luck, the demands of the market, and the opinion of the only professionals I could reach who might be willing to gamble on whether or not readers would be interested in whatever I had to write.
But nowadays, if a writer can figure out a way to reach an audience, they can publish their own books without breaking the bank.
Technology keeps on going, in every area of life. Every once in a while I just have to pause a moment and take note of how much the advancements have impacted everyone’s life, including my own.
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