My TV Raises Questions --

The big flat-screen TV abruptly quit. A call to North Georgia Electronics. Ti took two men to carry it off to the shop.

 And I remembered the drugstore tube tester. How many of you old-timers took the tubes out of your B&W TV and tested them down at the corner drugstore? Bought a new tube. Fixed the TV yourself.

 (Once, in the middle seventies, I got disgusted with the University and took a correspondence course on TV repair. For a while there, I could tell you what tube to replace when your TV bombed).

 Changes come at us fast and we don’t realize it, until we look around and something is gone.

 Typewriters – now entirely replaced by electronics

Calculators – the good old Fridens and Marchants, likewise.

 Carburators. No more tinkering under the hood. Vacuum-operated windshield wipers. Remember those? No loss there.  Electric motors are better.

Kodak film. The darkroom. Now, it’s pictures on your computer.

 

Makes me wonder. What object, common in our lives, is suddenly on the edge of extinction?? What’s your candidate?

 

Printed books? Will they be replaced by adult comic books? A good question.

 We are clearly changing the way we communicate with each other. Do you use Twitter? Will it give us an entire new scope of social interactions?

 Change you can believe in?

 Dac

12/13/09

 “Between friends, differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.” – W. H. Auden.

Comments

[Dac Crossley Jr.]

Mike -- was a time when I thought amplified music was wrong. Im still on an acoustic guitar myself. As you remember it -- Athens is home to lots of music and the bulk of it is played on strings. My little group finds new guitar, mandolin, fiddle players all the time. Even a stand-up bass or two. Keep the faith!

dac

[Mike D.]

Hi Dac,

Here's the thing that I'm a little sad about...in a world where young children can "make" music with Wii and "play" guitar without skill using Guitar Hero, I wonder how many young people will bother with the effort it takes to learn to play an actual musical instrument?

Horseshoe Benders will always have beer, but there's only one musician among our graduate students now (and he plays the sax!).

Mike D.

[Ed Underwood]

Dac -
Celia is correct. Newpapers are teetering on the brink of history's wastebin. Network televison will not be far behind.
William Tate,Dean of Men at UGA, had a great story about his grandmother and Moses. He said if Moses had come to his grandmother's house, he would have recoginized everything except the rifle and the matches.
Moses would not recognize much at our homes today. A lot has happened in the last 4 generations.
Merry Christmas, old friend. Auld Lang Syne.

[Celia Yeary]

Dearest Dac--never fear, print books will not go away. Maybe many decades from now, but all indications say that the e-book, in what ever form or substance, is only another way to read printed material. But I do believe the print newspaper will soon be gone--too many things against them of which they cannot compete.
I don't see adult comic books tkaing the place of books, becasue there are too many learned people in the world to give up literary works. HOWEVER--I predict the newspaper will go, and in it's place, a tabloid style paper--maybe local or regionalized--that you buy at the grocery store or receive it in the mail once a week. I REFUSE TO EAT MY CHEERIOS AND HAVE MY COFFEE WHILE READING THE PAPER ON-LINE. And guess what? My books are first released as eBooks. Even I don't like to read an eBook. And I'm not 80, nor 70....but close.
Merry Chrismas to you and your family. Celia Yeary
SHOWDOWN IN SOUTHFORK: eBook available at:
www.thewildrosepress.com
ALL MY HOPES AND DREAMS-a Cactus Rose—
Print and eBook available at: www.thewildrosepress.com
www.celiayeary.com
http://www.celiayeary.blogspot.com

[Alan]

maybe buying computer software will be replaced with monthly subscriptions to websites that maintain the most up to date software.

perhaps gasoline vehicles will be replaced by those run by other fuel sources

land line telephones replaced by cell devices

commercial television replaced by computer internet access television

Happy Holidays

[John Duncklee]

I forgot to post my website: johnduncklee.com

and blog: johnduncklee.blogspot.com
enjoy!

[John Duncklee]

WELL DAC, AT EIGHTY I HAVE SEEN A FEW CHANGES! I am not sure I like many of these, but I suppose the one that unnerves me the most is people driving cars with cell phones held to their ear. To me that is unnecessary public endangerment.
I am also tired of all the political garbage from all sides on television. I am really disgusted with the way corporate America bribes The Congress and the rest of government. I am also happy to be eighty because the rights that we all assumed belonged to citizenship are quickly being usurped by the very people we elect to safeguard those rights.
Long live printed books!!! Happy Solstice!