By Jim Hagarty
I have a daughter, 18, and a son, 20. They both have iPhones. And they both, this week, have been talking about Pokemon Go. My daughter has even wandered around our town, playing it.
It is at times like these that I feel I am sharing my home with two Martians and their mother. Or they are sharing their home with some weirdo from Jupiter.
Where the hell did Pokemon Go come from?
And what the hell is it?
Attempts have been made to explain this thing to me. They were as effective as explaining squirrels to a dog. Mostly because I don’t want to know what Pokemon Go is. By the time I learn about it, it will be Pokemon Went, that is one thing I know for sure.
I am not a Luddite (one who hates modernity) and I consider myself pretty cool with today’s technology. But it is as though things keep falling right out of the sky and I am not ready for them and never will be.
I think it took about one 24-hour cycle between the time I first heard about personal drones and the news that a friend of mine had one and was posting pictures on the Internet that he had taken with his. Then another friend got one. Then I saw a video of a handgun that had been attached to a drone. The owner flew it somewhere and emptied the gun just to see if it could be done. Then a news story about a woman sunbathing on her balcony when she looked up to see a peeping drone above her.
All too fast. All too fast.
Before that, it was the “Cloud” which just fell out of the clouds. I had no idea what it was but I think I use it today. Through my phone and laptop.
Then I woke up one day to see people making artificial human limbs using their 3-D printer.
Whaaaatttt?
Then there was the Apple iWatch and after that, every company had some version of an Internet powered watch.
And, of course, autonomous cars. They drive themselves. Now we can run over other people without lifting a finger.
Flying cars are on their way.
But the next thing to fall from the sky won’t be anything anyone will be able to predict. One day it will just be there.
And within a very short period of time, it will just be ordinary. Maybe even gone.
I am not yet ancient, but in our home when I was a kid, our telephone was a brown box attached to the wall. And I was seven before we got our first black-and-white TV. And it only broadcast seven hours a day, starting at 4 p.m.
I guess things fell from the sky back then too, but they seemed to take a bit longer to float down to the earth.
I am sure my parents lived in a constant state of shell shock.
