Lesson 6 Part 1 Challenge

This article felt like a walk through history. My first exposure to computers came in mid-1970s when I worked for Baker & Taylor. The mainframe was housed in a huge room and the building had to be kept ice cold so the mainframe would not over heat. Now I hold the equivalent of that mainframe in my hand - my smartphone. I became a Facebook users when SAPL completed 23 Things. Admittedly I started the page for the challenge, but over time I began to use it more and more. Now it is a constant in my life. Yes, I have connected with a lot of folks from high school and college and former workplaces. It is nice to keep up with their lives through FB. I get to see photos and short videos of my nieces and nephews and of my great-nieces and nephews. They are growing up virtually. My three-year-old great-niece can work a smartphone as well (or better) than I can. There's a big difference in how to access information today versus using the old clunker CompuServe way back when. I had a subscription to CompuServe in the early 1990s and let's just say using it was clumsy. Several years later I would sit and chat with foodies on aol.com. Can any of us forget that horrid modem squak? At the time we lived in rural Northeast Oklahoma, so our connection was long distance. You couldn't stay online for very long. Today we're connected 24/7 almost everywhere. There are a few places on the map where coverage is spotty, but those are few. Today using the internet is so simple and so seamless that many people can keep a running patter during the Grammys or Oscars or Emmys. It's like having a viewing party, but not really.