1993 to 2013: Appreciate your Smartphone

I’ve always wondered what it was like for my parents to witness the major changes in technology throughout the decades. They’ve told me about TV going from boring black & white to color. I’ve also listened to countless stories about how the school computer took up an entire room and had to be programmed with punch cards. It’s hard to appreciate these advancements (the “after”) without experiencing the “before”, since I’ve only known color TV and computers that can fit on a desk.

Today, it hit me after seeing this picture:

I haven’t been around on Earth all that long… but I do remember the days of PCs only being large towers with bulky CRT monitors and a ball mouse. In the last 20 years, I’ve seen more and more power squeezed into smaller and smaller devices.

My Android today is more powerful than the Macintosh Performa 6400 I was bragging to my friends at school about in ‘93. It also has more features to cover my needs from music to photography to games… and it even makes phone calls! The crazy part is that somehow this magical device is available 1/4 the price of what my dad paid for our Mac (in ‘93 dollars). I imagine that 20 years from now, I will be even more amazed by what we come up with.