Nothing stays the same
I have been thinking about how much change I have seen in my lifetime. It's only when I look back that I can appreciate the differences between my life now and the way things were almost 70 or 60, 50, 40 years ago. Not in terms of my personal life of course but in the way life is lived.
I'm thinking here mainly about changes in communication technology.
My son made me start these musings when he asked when I had first had a colour television. I replied that it was in the early 1970's, maybe 1973. He was surprised that I had grown up watching black and white television : though in fairness there were colour films in the cinema.
Looking back on a TV series from the 60's , say ' The man from Uncle', do we visualise it in black and white? I guess so. I think I do see Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuriakin up to their antics in monotones. The situation may be complicated however by seeing repeats of the colour version from the U.S in recent years.
Because it was all that we knew we were perfectly happy watching monochrome programmes. In fact everyone in the U.K was delighted when they were given another television channel to watch when ITV joined the original channel BBC in 1955.
There's something that's changed exponentially, the number of available channels . Over 400 at the last count including subscription ones. It's likely that most of us home in on quite a small selection of channels for most of our viewing. The choice we have in films via Netflix, Amazon or other platforms is truly stunning.
Using an android tablet as I'm doing now , would have been unimaginable to us in the 1960's and 70's .The idea of one's own hand held device able to communicate with others and to link to the infinite resources of something called the world wide web would have seemed like science fiction. Of course the internet itself did not come onto our radar until the 1990's. Gone are the days when books had to be ploughed through and articles read to find information.
New things are coming on stream all the time and I'm behind the curve so I'm just getting to use zoom for meetings . The lockdown has prompted many of us to use these platforms to communicate with friends. Letter writing and land line phones , which were the ways to communicate 40 years ago , have been joined by email, WhatsApp , Skype and snapchat. And that's just a sample. Oh and mobile phones of course are central to many lives seen and heard absolutely everywhere.
It seems we are all constantly communicating now more than ever. The problem is that face to face contact with friends and family is not freely available as it was only a few months ago.
I'm thinking here mainly about changes in communication technology.
My son made me start these musings when he asked when I had first had a colour television. I replied that it was in the early 1970's, maybe 1973. He was surprised that I had grown up watching black and white television : though in fairness there were colour films in the cinema.
Looking back on a TV series from the 60's , say ' The man from Uncle', do we visualise it in black and white? I guess so. I think I do see Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuriakin up to their antics in monotones. The situation may be complicated however by seeing repeats of the colour version from the U.S in recent years.
Because it was all that we knew we were perfectly happy watching monochrome programmes. In fact everyone in the U.K was delighted when they were given another television channel to watch when ITV joined the original channel BBC in 1955.
There's something that's changed exponentially, the number of available channels . Over 400 at the last count including subscription ones. It's likely that most of us home in on quite a small selection of channels for most of our viewing. The choice we have in films via Netflix, Amazon or other platforms is truly stunning.
Using an android tablet as I'm doing now , would have been unimaginable to us in the 1960's and 70's .The idea of one's own hand held device able to communicate with others and to link to the infinite resources of something called the world wide web would have seemed like science fiction. Of course the internet itself did not come onto our radar until the 1990's. Gone are the days when books had to be ploughed through and articles read to find information.
New things are coming on stream all the time and I'm behind the curve so I'm just getting to use zoom for meetings . The lockdown has prompted many of us to use these platforms to communicate with friends. Letter writing and land line phones , which were the ways to communicate 40 years ago , have been joined by email, WhatsApp , Skype and snapchat. And that's just a sample. Oh and mobile phones of course are central to many lives seen and heard absolutely everywhere.
It seems we are all constantly communicating now more than ever. The problem is that face to face contact with friends and family is not freely available as it was only a few months ago.
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