My grandfather’s life, from 1889 to 1974, represents one season of technological and social change. The impossible was proven possible. Cultural assumptions about transportation, communication, health and lifestyle were challenged and overturned. People like my grandfather had to adjust, overcome their own biases and prejudices, and take their role in inventing the future.
Many of these adjustments, while unsettling or difficult like mental and social storms, were imaginable for my grandfather. The term “horseless carriage” provides some continuity back to the familiar and a context for change. But one of these inventions stood out from all the others as the most “mind blowing” (my term, not his), a sort of mental and social tornado.
Can you guess what it was?
I’ll give you a hint: it is nothing I’ve mentioned.
Go on, bring something to mind.
It was the victrola. The mind-blowing innovation was recorded sound. My grandfather was absolutely and utterly astonished to see a machine talking and singing. He said “it would have been easier to understand if my dog had talked.”
While my dog doesn’t literally talk, it definitely does communicate. So it is easy to see how my grandfather saw it as a small leap for a dog to talk. But he had no basis of experience for a machine talking.
What do you think will blow the minds of our generation?
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