How does technology still amaze you?

[ZLoth]

Sometimes, you can still be amazed by technology. I know that we take stuff for granted nowadays, but compared to 20-25 years ago and what was visualized to be "the future".... WOW! Presented for your perusal...

Since I am a night shift worker, I was missing out on some radio programs that I liked, and that may or may not show up for several days on the show's website. Until, I discovered the following:

• Record a radio station's Internet audio stream using StreamWriter at a designated time - even if that radio station is in my home town of Sacramento or the "Four Corners Public Radio" in Colorado
  
• Trim the junk from the beginning and end of the program using Audacity
  
• Add in MP3 Tags and a nice picture using MP3Tag
  
• Transfer it via WiFi to my phone using WiFi File Transfer Pro - in less than a minute!
  
• And listen to the program at my leisure through the Bluetooth connection in my car or Bluetooth headset at work
  

Considering that only a few short years ago, I would have to manually capture the audio to my computer, burn a CD or record to cassette, then deal with the mechanical stuff, just WOW!

How does technology still amaze you?

[golden eagle]

As I approach 40, I'm amazed at what we had growing up or even ten years ago vs. what we have now. Not only was there no Internet, but who could imagine doing anything on a telephone other than talk?

[J N Winkler]

Here is a technology thing I discovered today that amazed me, yet has nothing to do with computers or the Internet:  a Helmholtz resonator hanging from the intake air snorkel in my Saturn.  I had not seen anything remotely similar on my previous cars (my 1978 Impala was too old for such sophisticated noise-silencing technology, and if my 1986 Maxima had one it was very well hidden), so I was completely baffled as to what it was and what it was for until I did some Web research.

[Jardine]

I have a Sirius Starmate radio that lets me 'pause' up to 45 minutes on a music station or over an hour on a talk station.

If I am running errands, just pause the show when I leave the vehicle, and resume when I get back.  I can fast forward through commercials/breaks too.  The radio also alerts me if a specific music artist is about to play a song on a music channel if I am listening to talk.

I have a Sirius radio in one vehicle and an XM in another.  The Sirius definitely gets better reception, FWIW.

[briantroutman]

I hate to sound blasé, but most of what's been mentioned is even the slightest bit amazing to me. I think this is because most "new"  technologies are actually just predictable applications of well-worn tech. You're just taking one system and marrying to another or using it in a different way.

I think the other end of tech is far more fascinating–the micro instead of the macro. Take a microprocessor, for example–even one that's 30 years out of date. You have this tiny silicon wafer that's barely 1/100th of an inch thick, and it somehow this shard of etched metal takes electrical impulses through microscopic wires and invisible switches and performs calculations by the million every second... And that's on a 1977 Apple II that's basically unusable junk by today's standards.

Also mechanical tech: I remember walking through a junkyard some years ago and seeing a discarded engine sitting in the mud with its valve train and much of its innards exposed, and the sheer complexity and precision found in this piece of trash was astounding. That we're able to build such things to withstand incredible forces and last for hundreds of thousands of miles–and such intricacy is inside every battered '97 Corolla abandoned curbside in the Bronx–is amazing to me.

[ZLoth]

I hate to sound blasé, but most of what's been mentioned is even the slightest bit amazing to me. I think this is because most "new"  technologies are actually just predictable applications of well-worn tech. You're just taking one system and marrying to another or using it in a different way.

In other words, technology is evolutionary, not revolutionary? I can agree with my sentiment. Nothing in my original post suggested that this is new technology. In fact, everything is several years old, but it still blows me away how that chain works. (Dare I suggest James Burke's Connections?)

Also mechanical tech: I remember walking through a junkyard some years ago and seeing a discarded engine sitting in the mud with its valve train and much of its innards exposed, and the sheer complexity and precision found in this piece of trash was astounding. That we're able to build such things to withstand incredible forces and last for hundreds of thousands of miles–and such intricacy is inside every battered '97 Corolla abandoned curbside in the Bronx–is amazing to me.

Being a former machinist, I can certainly agree with your mechanical amazement, and know of the precision needed and the tools used to make such engineering possible.

Look at it this way... the processor used in the original Apple II computer, the 6502 processor, is an slow antique snail compared to a i7-4790K that is one of the fastest available. Yet, it was still more powerful and could address more menory than the Discrete IC RTL based processor used to land on the moon in 1969.

[ZLoth]

Today, I noticed a special for 6TB hard drives for $279 at NewEgg. Many years ago (~1994), I recall when I thought I had a good price point when I got a 300MB drive for $305.

[1995hoo]

Today, I noticed a special for 6TB hard drives for $279 at NewEgg. Many years ago (~1994), I recall when I thought I had a good price point when I got a 300MB drive for $305.

I remember when a 40 MB hard drive was too pricey for many people for home usage.

[ZLoth]

Oh, I remember those hard drives! I remember seeing a 5MB at a local TRS-80 computer club, going "that's neat!", and suffering sticker shock... thank you, I'll stick with floppies, that hard drive costs more than the computer itself! A few years later, when I had an Apple II computer, they introduced the "Sider" hard drive for a little over $700 for a 10MB model. In 2000, I remember paying something like $189 for a "spacious" 13GB hard drive. Check out this historical price chart. FWIW, from Wikipedia:

2005 — First 500 GB hard drive shipping
2006 — First 750 GB hard drive
2007 — First 1 terabyte hard drive
2008 — First 1.5 terabyte hard drive
2009 — First 2.0 terabyte hard drive
2010 — First 3.0 terabyte hard drive
2011 — First 4.0 terabyte hard drive 
2013 — Seagate announces that it will ship hard disk drives with capacities up to 5 TB
2013 — HGST announces a helium-filled 6 TB hard disk drive for enterprise applications
2014 — Seagate introduces 6 TB hard drives that do not use helium
2014 — Seagate ships prototype 8 TB hard drives to selected partners

Today, not only am I carrying a 16GB and a 32GB drive on my keychain (16GB for personal data, 32GB for the set of system recovery and very helpful programs), but the USB drives have completely obliterated using floppy drives in the personal computing environment. Again, WOW!

And, with the recent price decreases in SSDs, those "slow" hard drives are being replaced with SSDs for boot and programs, and the slower hard drives being used for data storage.

[GaryV]

When we bought our first home computer, I got a 386, because who would ever need a 486?   

[Roadrunner75]

My first computer was the Commodore VIC 20 - 5K of RAM.  I remember loading a text only based game, and getting an "Out of Memory" message.  I think I would have had to get the 3K memory expander cartridge.  Still have this in the attic probably somewhere....still miss playing Qbert.

[1995hoo]

Remember when a package of ten 3.5-inch floppies cost over $20?!!!!

My mother kept using floppies into the first decade of this century. When she asked me why I didn't use them, I showed her my digital camera and said, "To store one photo taken on here, I'd need four or five of your floppy disks."

[vdeane]

I wouldn't be surprised if SSDs start getting used for data too in the near future.  As the price comes down and the number of writes increases it would seem to be a natural step.

[kkt]

First computer I used a lot was a DECsystem-20.  Now PC caches are bigger than the -20's main memory, PC main memory is bigger than the -20's hard drive space, and the PC's hard drive is bigger than the combined hard drive space of all the -20s ever made put together.

But the -20 could support fifty people using it at once with zippier response than one person on a PC with a web browser.

[mgk920]

I'm always amazed at how the PSTS ('Public Switched Telephone System') is able to pick out the right phone, including cellulars, anywhere in the USA and make it ring for a voice call in no more than one or two seconds.



Mike

[roadman]

Although I've easily adapted to newer technology (such as CDs instead of vinyl) over the years, I must confess that my only legitimate "gee whiz, this is really really neat" technology moment was when I started using the voice command system in my new car (2012 Ford Focus) to control my MP3 player.

[lepidopteran]

The Shazam app has always amazed me.  For those not familiar, this phone app can identify popular songs just by "hearing" them.

As for technology evolving, consider this list of how access to movies has changed over the decades.

Person asks: "Did you see the movie "˜Attack of the 50-foot Roadgeek'?"
50's-60's: Nawww, I missed it when it was in the theaters.
70's:  No, but I might catch it when they show it on TV.
80's:  No, but it should be on HBO/Showtime soon.
Late 80's-90's:  No, but I can check if it's available to rent at WestCoast/Blockbuster/Hollywood video.
2000's: No, but I can check if it's available on DVD from Netflix.
Late 2000's:  No, but I'll go check if it's available through on-demand cable.  Or Redbox.
2010's:  Oh, do you mean this movie? (Cue the film's ominous opening music as you stream the video of "Attack of the 50-foot Roadgeek" on your smartphone.)

[Pete from Boston]

Smartphones are the most science-fiction of products we have, in my opinion.  Massively powerful networked pocket minicomputers are fantastically represented in nearly every space drama, and yet here they are, sexting selfies like a mundane commonplace appliance. 

I remember in the Battlestar Galactica episode when they landed on 20th-century Earth, and someone invited them out for coffee.  They had this little device on which they looked up "coffee" and it was so cool in 1980 to conceive of such a device.  Of course, their response was something like "drink beans?," so like us, this technology didn't necessarily make them any smarter.

The best way I can describe the impact of smartphones, and I realize it's kind of an exaggeration (but only kind of) is this way: remember unanswered questions?

[The Nature Boy]

I've heard the absurdity of our usage of smart phones conceptually described as this:

If you went back to 1950 and told your grandfather that one day you'd have the entirety of the world's knowledge accessible from a device in your pocket, he'd probably assume you were really smart because you could literally look up anything you wanted at any time. He'd be very disappointed when you tell him that you use it to take pictures of yourself and argue with your friends.

[Brian556]

quote from the nature boy:

I've heard the absurdity of our usage of smart phones conceptually described as this:

If you went back to 1950 and told your grandfather that one day you'd have the entirety of the world's knowledge accessible from a device in your pocket, he'd probably assume you were really smart because you could literally look up anything you wanted at any time. He'd be very disappointed when you tell him that you use it to take pictures of yourself and argue with your friends.

Very well said. This reminds me that we live in a low IQ society.

[J N Winkler]

I think it would depend on how technologically savvy the grandfather was.  As technology becomes cheap and widely available, it tends to be used for increasingly trivial purposes, and this would have been evident even with 1950's technology though not to nearly the same extent that it is today.  The 1950's were when telephones in homes became ubiquitous (though it took some more time for party lines to vanish on residential connections) and local phone calls began to be unmetered in the US.  By 1960 people would have been very familiar with the use of telephones for idle gossip and many of them would remember an earlier time when phones in homes were so rare and so confined to the wealthy that Literary Digest could mispredict an entire presidential election (in 1936) on the (partial) basis of a poll of telephone users.

[Pete from Boston]

I've heard the absurdity of our usage of smart phones conceptually described as this:

If you went back to 1950 and told your grandfather that one day you'd have the entirety of the world's knowledge accessible from a device in your pocket, he'd probably assume you were really smart because you could literally look up anything you wanted at any time. He'd be very disappointed when you tell him that you use it to take pictures of yourself and argue with your friends.

In the mid-1990s, radio monolgist Joe Frank told a story ("An Entrprising Man" – well worth a listen) of fantastical but almost plausible business schemes that went awry.  One of these fictional schemes was a database chip implant that gave users access to vast stores of information on many subjects.  A major downside was that they created nothing new, had no regard for the research behind the knowledge, and were dull, boorish know-it-alls.

In other words, he foresaw us smartphone users a dozen years before we emerged as such.

[JMoses24]

I don't want to rehash a lot of these answers, a lot of them are things I would've covered.

It still amazes me that the video game systems I currently play can find where I left off on a game in about 4 minutes.

[Laura]

I've heard the absurdity of our usage of smart phones conceptually described as this:

If you went back to 1950 and told your grandfather that one day you'd have the entirety of the world's knowledge accessible from a device in your pocket, he'd probably assume you were really smart because you could literally look up anything you wanted at any time. He'd be very disappointed when you tell him that you use it to take pictures of yourself look at pictures of cats and argue with your friends.

FIFY.