Changing Technology.

I recently bought a Samsung tablet. It’s certainly not a top of the range one, but for me, it is perfect. It plays Netflix nicely. I can read my kindle books. I can blog. I can check out my Facebook feed, I can catch up with the news. What more do I need? I am not a gamer, besides solitaire, although sometimes I end up wasting a little too much time playing it. When I was reading reviews about the tablet, it got me thinking. It’s not the first time I’ve mentioned it, and it won’t be the last. When I grew up, tablets were medication. We went to libraries if we wanted to read books. We went to the cinema if we wanted to watch a movie. Now, everything is at our fingertips in the comfort of our own homes. Who would have thought that back in the eighties and before, that we’d have this amount of personal entertainment for ourselves? The 80’s were the end and the beginning of an era, depending on which way you look at it. Even in small towns, how many children actually cycle to school anymore? Are childhoods as free and innocent as they used to be? I doubt it. I was happy if I got a LP or music cassette by one of my favourite singers for Christmas and something nice to wear – children these days get tablets, x- boxes/games, mobile phones. A normal 32″ TV is not good enough for families anymore – the bigger the better. That said, I have never owned anything bigger than a 32″ TV. By the time I left home after high school, we still had a black and white one and we didn’t have a video machine either. If we went to friends it was quite a novelty watching TV in colour and watching movies on a video machine. I wonder what our grandparents thought of all the changes in technology through their years or if like us, they adapted to those changes? Change is inevitable though, but growing up with less technology, than there is today, makes me grateful for what I have today. I have a colour TV and I don’t actually care that it isn’t huge. As it is, I watch most of my movies and series on my laptop, which is half the size of a 32″ – but I don’t care. I enjoy my laptop. All of this technology we have today makes me grateful for my simple childhood. As I a child I knew the excitement of running down the driveway to check the mailbox curious to know if there were letters for me. Letters from pen – pals. Letters from my grandparents in England. As a child I cycled to the cinema. I went and chose books from our small library. I played in the garden and climbed trees. I had a good childhood. Maybe I over sentimentalize things a bit, but it was as close to perfect as perfect can be. I know that now.