I am ancient

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It was only when I was a teenager that people started to have cell phones, and when I say cell phones, I do not mean "smart" phones. These were big heavy phones that could only be used for calling and texting.

It was only when I was going to university that we got internet at home. There was no point in having it before. And it was also at university when I got my first email account, a Gmail account (and I was so eager at the time to get an email..., that time is long gone).

Also, until my teenage years, things were very expensive. Any possession was extremely valued, even a watch (I mean, a normal one, not a "smart" one, those did not exist), because everything was so expensive. Traveling was expensive too.

Having music was expensive. Normally I would listen to the radio, and I was lucky one to have a radio set that could record what was being broadcasted on a cassette tape. Then I could listen to that song that I liked again. Sometimes I would record just in case and then overwrite if I did not like the song that much. But even having cassettes was not cheap, so I had to select wisely.

I know that I am sounding to many positively ancient. I feel ancient sometimes, but I am less than 40 years old (yes, yes, again, that is very old for many). 

It was only later that "consumerism" appeared, only later that traveling became affordable, only later online communication was possible.

And now I am living in this world that would look like science fiction to the 12 year-old-me. 

Now it feels like we are living a new revolution with all this artificial intelligence technology that is starting to appear, like ChatGPT. I am halfway through reading an article on this in Quanta Magazine: https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-unpredictable-abilities-emerging-from-large-ai-models-20230316/

Everything sounds like science fiction.

Everything is happening so fast. All this technology brings new horizons and if used wisely, it will bring great things. We will need to learn to be wise. 

I remember when we had to teach the generation that was born with the cell phones how to handle cell phones: we did not know how to teach that because we did not know it ourselves! We are learning as we go, and the "go" is speeding up. All these new technologies are a challenge to self-management.

Having been born in a pre-digital era, I may need more time to adapt to the new changes. However, I see clearly that I have the advantage of knowing how is a world without the digital. How one can be happy without all the things that we have today. How can things work without what we have now, and also, the things that we have lost.








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