It’s A Smaller World

So last night Kristi and I were talking about how communication has changed so much in thirty years. This was after a successful video Skype call with Uncle Leo and Aunt Marty back in Kansas City, a thoroughly enjoyable experience that we plan to repeat soon.

If you’re old enough, think back to 1986. The early-to-mid-eighties were really a tipping point for technology in America. Computers in the home. The very first cellular phone tech started hitting the market. Music devices that produced flawless sound using lasers. There was this strong sense that the future wasn’t quite here yet, but would be strolling by at any moment.

It was a fun time to be a teenager. (A few years later, “Star Trek: The Next Generation” started selling the dreams of a distant 23rd century. Holographic entertainment. Everyday video communication. Everyone walking around with a digital tablet. Massive computer networking. That sort of fantastic fictional stuff.)

I was 15 years old, and heavily into computer bulletin boards (BBS’s) at the time – sort of the 1980’s very crude version of the Internet. Every BBS has an internal messaging system where users could send mail to other users on the same board. Ah, the days of calling a BBS on the phone with a 1200 baud modem, that could transfer a 200k file point-to-point in about two hours. And feeling like the miracle was that you could send a message or transfer a file at all. Communication itself was the miracle.

When I heard about a new type of BBS that actually transferred messages from node to node (each board would automatically call the next node late at night and pass the messages along until they finally reached their destination), it was a revelation. You could actually send a message around the world if you wanted! Sure, it took two weeks. But you could do it.

That was digital communications in 1986. Slow, crude, expensive, but a good start. Living a thousand miles away might as well have been ten thousand miles, or a million miles. Long distance phone calls were expensive. If you didn’t have time to write letters, then your world was pretty well limited to the local thirty-mile radius.

And now, 2012. Regular phones with unlimited long distance, even though most everyone’s on cheap cellular. Maintaining constant contact with entire social circles regularly on Facebook. Email’s even starting to feel a bit archaic, in the age of IM. And in the last few years, video telephony technology has advanced amazingly quickly. When you can sit down at your computer and make a seamless, jitter-free video phone call with someone on the other side of the planet, and talk for as long as you want free of charge, that’s a smaller world. That right there is the miracle of communication.

In that world, there’s no legitimate excuse whatsoever for not keeping in touch. It’s free, or at least extremely inexpensive. It’s fast. It’s high quality. It’s easy to do. And it’s becoming cheaper, easier, faster and better every day. Seriously, you just plug it in and go.

If you’re not staying in touch with friends and family, it’s for no other reason than you simply want it that way.

When I stop and contrast it with my memories of 1986, I feel like we’re living in the future that then was dimly seen on the distant horizon. I’m sure every generation feels that way about their times. But I really enjoy watching the Star Trek-like dreams of the future quickly now becoming everyday staples of modern life that we take for granted. Especially when those moments happen when they make real differences in the lives of real people.

We really enjoyed talking with Leo and Marty over video yesterday, and look forward to doing it again when my brother Chris comes for Thanksgiving. No, it’s still not quite as good as being there. But it’s getting awfully close.