Technology moves to the great outdoors
As a teenager, I couldn’t imagine that any generation would ever
see the changes that my grandmother’s had.
Technology moves to the great outdoors
As a teenager, I couldn’t imagine that any generation would ever see the changes that my grandmother’s had.
Although she was never able to get over long hair on men or miniskirts on women, she took space flight pretty much in stride.
Born on a ranch in San Benito, she rode with a brother and sister to school on a buckboard wagon and married at 16. She milked a cow to help feed five children, and chopped wood for a stove used to prepare their meals.
She watched as the world went to war, and went to war again. She was ready when women got the vote. Radio came, then television. Airplanes buzzed over San Benito County, and she was still sitting in her rocker when she watched the first moon landing on TV.
Perhaps because it happened incrementally, my grandmother never marveled aloud at technology’s progress.
We’re doing the same thing today, and our generations are witnessing more profound change than hers, and taking it for granted just as she did.
I remember that moon landing as well. And I remember when a high school algebra instructor showed us the first pocket calculator I’d ever seen. The tool was purchased by the school at a cost of several hundred dollars, and it could add, subtract, multiply and divide.
Some day, he said, we might all have one of our own. But until then, it was slide rules in chemistry and math class, and slide rules only.
Before I was too far along in college, calculators were everywhere. Businesses were giving simple ones away.
When I began in the newspaper business, stories were filed using manual typewriters.
Parents will understand the eye roll I get whenever I accidentally call a CD a record in front of our daughters.
But the real change is something that surrounds us, yet that few of us think about. It’s in microchips. That moon landing? A Toyota Camry today contains more computer power than the Apollo module that carried a crew there. Think about the contents of your pockets: PDA? Cell phone? Keyless remote? Ipod?
How many computers are in your house? How would your workplace function without them?
Technology has crept to the center of our natural pursuits as well.
Earlier last spring, we were on a hike with friends through Pinnacles National Monument. At one point, a friend checked his phone, and remarked that he had a signal. We were both packing digital cameras and gps handhelds (note to self: satellite technology functions poorly in caves).
We were linked to the world, and the world was talking back.
Certainly, all this technology has its advantages. Search and rescue efforts are more effective. Better equipment allows people to go farther, faster.
But technology also gives some people a feeling of invincibility. A ranger once told me of a person calling from a backcountry trail to request a helicopter rescue. The reason? Sore feet.
John Muir ventured into the Sierra for weeks at a time, packing a blanket and hardtack. His knapsack would put even the most hardcore ultralight hiker’s to shame. But Muir, alone and without any easy access to communications, knew he had only himself to rely on.
It’s not just hikers and climbers who have embraced technology.
Birding once was practiced with textbooks and shotguns. Field guides and binoculars changed the entire nature of the pursuit.
Today, a sighting of a rare bird is questionable without photographic documentation, so many birders carry digital cameras.
Others would not dream of venturing out without digital recorders, much more convenient than notebooks for capturing observations.
Some pack small speakers and MP3 players to play back bird calls. Others record nature sounds with elaborate equipment.
It’s a burden most of us embrace as a boon.
But it’s a burden just the same, in more ways than pounds and ounces. Take birding: a passion that once required an $8 field guide and a pair of Army surplus binoculars now induces some people to carry $5,000 worth of equipment into the field.
That’s progress.
