time flies, technology edition

Did you have a portable music player growing up?  I will date myself when I tell you that my music came to me from a little black radio, that my grandparents gave me for my birthday.  I loved it, it was compact, and on clear nights I could even get WLS from Chicago, and listen to it under my pillow when I was supposed to be sound asleep.  It wasn't this model, but similar.  I only WISH mine had been red.  I would put it in the basket of my bike, and along with a book I would ride out to the bridge over the Misssissippi River.  I would park my bike and climb the hill, and walk the trail through the woods until I came to the spot where you could see Lake Bemidji. I would turn on my radio, and read my book, until I started getting sleepy and knew it was time to go home.  (I don't know of anyone in Bemidji who would let their ten year old girl do that now, but times have changed....)

Fast forward many years, and my kid has an Ipod Touch. 

He can drink a beer, shoot a gun, or frost a cupcake.  All in the palm of his hand.  He can get instantenous movie reviews, directions, or locations on the closest Thai food.  He has dowloaded a Sudoku app for me, and lots of other fun games for himself.  The technology is amazing, you can get an app that will allow you to hear a song, have your Ipod listen to it, and it well tell you the name of the artist or band,  let you download the song, find out  if the artist is coming to your town, and then buy tickets.


And I thought I was so cool and worldy listening to a radio station from Chicago, while I gazed up at my Leif Garrett poster I had cut out of Teen Beat magazine.



As with most other big ticket items, he bought the Ipod himself.  He sold his Sony PSP and associated games to get some cash, along with some of his Xbox games he decided he no longer needed.   He combined that cash with birthday and holiday money.  He has to buy his own apps (ironically, the beer drinking and gun apps were free.....), so there are some economic lessons to be had along the way.  I think.

So just as I saved my babysitting money to buy the latest 45 record, he saves his money for apps.  And he can still use his Ipod to pull in WLS to listen to.  Heck, he can probably pull in a radio station from Siberia if he really wants to.

I only wonder what Charlie's twelve year old son will be saving his money for?  Will we even use money then, or will our bank info be embedded in a chip in our hand, and we will simply wave at a monitor as we check out?  I am still working on him to invent smellevision....maybe he should start by inventing the smelling app first.