List: '12 Monumental Gadget Firsts'

Today’s ‘List Friday’. Gizmodo tells us Sony launched its tape cassette Walkman on 1 July 1979 [1]. It wasn’t an instant hit. But eventually it took off. And with sales of 200 million it remained the world’s iconic low cost portable music device for many years. Arguably until Apple launched its iPod. On 23 October 2001. This week Sony announced – ironically on the iPod’s ninth birthday – it’s withdrawing the Walkman from sale in Japan. Technology sprints on, eyes fixed on the horizon. Or past it. And sparing no sentiment for its previous champions. Fittingly gizmodo – a tech website; or is it a blog? – provides today’s list: ‘12 Monumental Gadget Firsts’ [2]. (Click on each photograph to find out more about its gadget.) Its blurb says ‘These clunky ‘firsts’ will leave you hungry for a game of Duck Hunt and your favorite cassette. Or possibly send you scrambling to hug your sleek iPhone while giving thanks for the goodness that is modern technology’. All the ‘Monumental Gadget Firsts’ look clunky and outdated. But each of them – as the first commercially available model of their gadget – is a necessary step on the pathway of tech evolution. We all thought they were terrific in their day. And though their day’s gone, they still have an important role to play. At least 63-year-old Farmdoc likes to think so. Ho hum.

Innovation at your fingertips

Last 22 June I wrote that ‘In my 63-year lifetime so far, there’s been major technological advancement. It’s been massive. Monumental. Unprecedented, too. Arguably the era of greatest and fastest tech advancement ever [1]’. Five weeks later, my opinion’s the same. Nowadays tech advances are so incessant and amazing, it’s easy to be inured to them. And I think I am. But sometimes I come across something so astounding I can’t help but sit up and take notice. And so it was yesterday when I saw an ad for the Celluon CL850 Laserkey Projection Keyboard [2]. Essentially a palm-sized unit powered by USB or mains projects a laser QWERTY keyboard onto any flat non-reflective surface, and this virtual keyboard sends your typing wirelessly by Bluetooth radio to your nearby computer or smartphone. The keyboard’s full-sized, and it supports typing speed of 400 characters per minute (i.e. over six per second) with error rates similar to a standard physical keyboard. There’s no tactile sense of depressing keys, of course, but you can set it to make a small click when a virtual key’s touched. Here’s a 2-minute YouTube clip about it [3]. It’s selling for about A$130. Will I buy one? No – but that doesn’t stop me marvelling at the technology. Talk about having innovation at your fingertips. Ho hum.

In bed with cultural dissonance

In my 63-year lifetime so far, there’s been major technological advancement. It’s been massive. Monumental. Unprecedented, too. Arguably the era of greatest and fastest tech advancement ever. When I was a nipper no-one would’ve believed that in 2010 I’d be able to wake up, turn on a portable electronic device smaller than a sardine tin, and within 10 seconds be reading something called email, and be linked to the world by something called the internet. But yesterday I did exactly this. And via the internet I read an item about telegrams [1]. This week is Back to Morse Week [2] – the 20th – marking the completion in 1872 of the 3,200 km Overland Telegraph Line between Adelaide and Darwin [3]. To celebrate, this week Darwin residents can send free telegrams nation-wide. Do you remember telegrams? They were used to send good and bad news; congratulations and commiserations. Best Men read them at weddings. And the Queen sent them to her centenarian subjects. The world’s first telegram was in 1844 – in the USA. Australia’s first one was in 1854, and the last one was in 1993 [4]. Technologically speaking, 1993 seems like an eon ago. (I didn’t send, or receive, my first email until 1998.) I don’t know if the current tech flourish’s increased people’s happiness. It’s an interesting question. But that doesn’t, and shouldn’t, stop us marvelling at it. Or suffering cultural dissonance [5] when one lies in bed surfing the net on one’s iPod, reading of telegrams. Ho hum.