Happy New Year!

Here we are again, another new year just around the corner. What is in store for the coming year? What new adventures will unfold? Will gas make it to $5 a gallon? Of course no one knows, but each New Year's Eve we all ponder these types of questions. I suppose it's just human nature to wonder about the future.


More than likely, not much will change. Think back to the past, how many things can you remember that really knocked your socks off? Yeah, that's what I thought, not many.The biggest event I can remember in my relatively short past was 9/11. I mean that really hit everyone out of the blue!


I suppose landing on the moon was a big event, but at the time I was still in high school and it really didn't seem like such a big deal back then. We knew it was going to happen eventually, so the actual event was just a bit anticlimactic.


I think life is mostly like that, changes occur slowly and even the ones which truly impact our daily lives happen in such a way that they are perceived to have always been that way. I mean a lot of the things we have today we take for granted as having always been available to us.

Those of my generation can remember a time when had to wait a bit if we wanted to hear sound from an electronic device. For those who don't remember, I'm talking about the fact that we had to wait for the tubes to warm up. Nowadays we simply flip a switch and we get instant sound or music.


If you go back a little further, there were no devices capable of playing any kind of sound. If you wanted music you had to listen to a live performance. If you wanted to hear someone making a speech, you had to be there when they made it.
  
This point was brought to me recently when I purchased an older car with a tube-type radio. It does play, but takes a minute or two to warm up before you hear sound coming from the speaker. And that sound is not the kind which can be generated by even a cheap MP3 player these days, it sounds a bit on the low-fidelity side.


Computers are now pretty much taken for granted, everyone has one and most of us are connected by the marvel called the internet. I can remember a time when if you wanted to chat with someone, you picked up the phone and called them, or paid them a visit in person. Now you take a device from your pocket and type them an instant message. Not really sure if this is a step forward.


So what will the coming year bring? No idea. But I think we can safely assume that it won't seem such a big deal when it happens. We are just programmed that way I guess...