Open your phone


and get smart BRUCE PENTON


Imagine a Baby Boomer going to sleep in 1959 at the age of 9 and waking up in 2020 at the age of 70. Okay, besides having to really go to the bathroom, the first thing he might do is express amazement at the evolution of the ubiquitous telephone.


Baby Boomers laughed when Maxwell Smart used a shoe phone to whisper some spy information to his Get Smart espionage partners in 1965. A phone in your shoe? What next? We also guffawed when futurists told us that it might not be long before phones would not only be configured to hear someone on the other end, but to see them, too. Sure, buddy, sure. But then along came FaceTime, as much a part of Boomers’ lives today as wearing facemarks in the grocery store. (What? You don’t? Really? You should.)


What I can’t recall the futurists telling us is that we could communicate with, and see the faces of, dozens and dozens of people at the same time. Hi, there, Zoom.


10 BOOMERS | fall 2020


10 BOOMERS | FALL 2020 10 BOOMERS | FALL 2020


Video did not kill the radio star, as it turns out, but it certainly destroyed old time telephone equipment.


Kids might not believe it, but we Baby Boomers spoke to friends and family on a phone that was attached to the wall in the kitchen, or sitting on an end table in the living room. It was usually black. Those rotary-dial phones came with a coiled cord attached and a clunky handle for listening (top) and speaking into (bottom). Fingerwheel holes dialled the number. Later, new technology offered push-button numbering. Then came cordless, hand-held phones! Wow!


Now, of course, everybody has their own phone. Maxwell Smart might not believe it, but we carry the phones in our pockets. And we’re lost without them. We have ‘apps’, intended to make our lives easier. We can tap Skip the Dishes and food shows up at the house 30 minutes later. No cash? No worry. Your credit card has been billed. The phones not only do what


phones do — call people — but they tell us the time, they play us music, they take photos and video, they give us the current temperature, they tell us to turn right at the next intersection, they offer us interactive games, we watch TV programs on them, and they tell us how many steps we’ve taken that day, How on earth did people survive in 1972 not knowing if they reached 10,000 steps that day?


Don’t know the answer to some random question? If you own an iPhone, ask Siri. Go ahead. She knows everything. Try this: ‘Hey, Siri, has the world improved because people have immediate access to unlimited information?”


Replies Siri: “Not necessarily, but it certainly has for those people who purchased Apple stock in 1992 when it was 42 cents per share.”


Retired News editor Bruce Penton loves his iPhone.


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