~ technology was my job, well,sort of…
A few years back I retired from The California Institute of Technology (Caltech). You may know the place, we bring you earthquakes, galaxies, and the Human Genome Project (which I was technically associated with). I've been fortunate to hang out with more NobeI Prize Laureates than have spoken at most colleges.
The coolest interludes were the few times my young daughter and I would bumped into Stephen Hawking at Blockbusters (who randomly knew me from work). He recognized her intelligence and respected her innocence. They would talk, he would ask for her help picking out movies.
But I digress. Personally I would rather write about peaks of technology in my personal life beginning with the cars of our century's first decade. For a brief period decent cars had am/fm radios AND cassette players AND multi disk CD players, usually accompanied by a decent sounding factory installed speaker system. Those were days when you could load these sturdy devices with music, books, and whatever, and still press the AM radio button for traffic, news, and weather. No GPS, but we had lofty Thomas Brothers Maps handy in our glove box.
Of course, weather "aps" weren't necessary because there was a windshield right there in front of you and a knob you could pull on the dashboard to clear off snow and rain. You never had to look at a finger smudged TV stuck in the middle of the dashboard or shield its l glare from your eyes. Cars had easy view mirrors, left and right on the doors, and just in front of you to monitor hind traffic and objects. b Everything needing control was at hand- as a switch, or a knob, or a lever, except for the dimmer switch by your left foot on the floor. And those things were pretty much standard on all cars, unless they were European, or "other" foreign makes.
Since then car design and engineering has advanced, centrally located on that screen, or the column or the wheel, or a FOB, or an ap on your "smart phone". That phone from which you can dim the lights, change the temperature, or watch folks rob your house, and also call the police from and watch them arrive at your front door. All of this leads to another story to vent from later.
Back to topic. Folks on campus still say that Caltech graduates that can't make it in the real world end up at JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory). The real world pays much better money than science and space or the future advancement of man. The real world is advancing cell phone technology, creating products which will function from blue tooth technoloy. JPL and friends put men on the moon. Since then we've advanced from TV remotes which we could click one of two buttons, once or twice, to raise the volume or change the stations when we watch a guy talking about new footsteps on the moon.
-dalton
10-5-24
