We’ve come a long way

Published 3:18 pm Saturday, July 18, 2009

We’ve come a long way in 100 years. From airplanes to cars to walking on the moon, technology has progressed nicely from decade to decade, and the hard work of men and women to make full use of it has paid off.

Here’s where we are now.

In the past two weeks, I’ve used technology in the following ways:

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While driving to Indiana to see some friends, I booked a four-star hotel room on priceline.com for $40 in Madison, Wis. to avoid falling asleep at the wheel.

I looked up mapblast.com on at least three different occasions to find my way to a newspaper interview or event.

I received a copy of the new enews, an e-mail version of the Austin Daily Herald.

I’ve received several text messages from the Albert Lea Tribune announcing breaking stories, including word of Good Morning America weather anchor Sam Champion coming to the area.

When I was having dinner with a friend at the Chatter Box Pub in St. Paul, we looked up words via cell phone Internet while playing Scrabble and then used the iPhone application Shazam to look up a song during a round of Music Bingo.

The next day, I received a call on my cell phone from my brother-in-law informing me I had a new niece. Sevenand a half-pound Cambria Ella was born July 17.

I then looked up directions to the hospital on my cell phone.

After meeting my niece for the first time, someone who has more hair than I do, I checked my personal e-mail in the visitors lounge.

A couple of years ago, my family took a trip to Disneyland. Some of us waited in line to get into a restaurant, while the others browsed the shops nearby. When our table was ready, I used a cell phone to call my sister to let her and the others know we were ready for dinner.

When they came around the corner, my sister asked, “What would we have done without a cell phone?”

I responded, “I would have walked around the corner and told you our table was ready.”

Could we live without a lot of today’s technology? Of course.

I’m sure the world would survive without Tweets and global positioning systems and HDTV.

The advances simply aim to make the world a little more convenient and perhaps a little bit more efficient too.

It’s our choice whether to use them.

In the film “All the President’s Men,” Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein broke the Watergate stories by using typewriters and dozens of phone books.

In 2009, I can look up the parks and rec events calendar in two seconds on the Internet and pull up a complete list of city contact information the same way.

The automobile was has been another great product from technology.

It’s nice to be able to drive to an assignment and to hop in a car to visit family.

Do I need a Ferrari 612 Scaglietti to do it? No, but the automobile has been a welcomed invention for decades.

Technology is a good thing. It’s there if we need it. It can be ignored if we don’t, but in the end it does make the world a little more efficient.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I have to e-mail this column to news editor Katie Johnson, because during the last two days I’ve been on vacation.