Girl of the 21st Century

As we were watching the Germany vs. Australia World Cup match, my dad was telling me about how he'd always thought telecommunication interesting as a kid. He told me he didn't pursue a career in it because he didn't think it would really evolve beyond telephone calls. The way he saw it, watches were the way of the future. He said "As a kid, I thought people in the future would have little television screens on their watches. Nowadays they're only worn by very rich people for show or very poor people who can't even afford cell phones."

We continued to talk about how we saw the "future," technology-wise and I once again realized how disappointed I am with our technological progress. I thought that by now everyone would communicate though screens instead of holding a phone to their ear, kinda like they did on that Disney Channel movie "Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century."

The recent release of the HTC EVO and the announcement of the iPhone 4 made me realize how slow the process of implementing advanced technology into every-day society is. Because while we do now have phones with which people can visually communicate via Skype or whatever client is provided, I know this won't be something we commonly see within the next year or two. Maybe I'm just impatient, but I always thought that people would be doing that regularly by now and it bothers me that we're not. It feels like everyone in America should be required to own some sort of smartphone or not own one at all. (Ironically, I still only own a dumb messaging phone.) It also annoys me how phones with cameras on both sides are being advertised as devices that emphasize video communication as though it were some sort of crazy new idea. Like we didn't already have iChat and Skype.

Don't even get me started on universal WiFi. I know there is greater technology out there than simple touchscreen devices with internet and video messaging. I want to know what that technology is. We need to start gravitating towards what we don't already have so that what we're just about to get becomes the norm.