Changes in My Lifetime
This list started with Federal Express and Continental Drift.
When I was in high school, many companies had warehouses
scattered around the country. That was how you got your
products to your customers within a few days.
I graduated from college in 1965.
Continents hadn't started drifting yet.
A friend was on the ship that towed a magnetometer across the
floor of the Pacific Ocean in the late 1960s. The magnetic
reversals they recorded were one of the breakthroughs that
turned plate tectonics into mainstream science.
In hindsight, it's amazing how obvious it is. Everywhere you
look there is good evidence to back it up.
Now, even 4th graders know about plate tectonics.
Maybe I'm biased. I live in California. The San Andreas Fault
is only a few miles from my house.
Digital pictures on the web
There is a 3rd event that is probably as important as the ones above.
Unfortunately, I can't put a simple tag on it.
It's the combination on low cost PCs, low cost high speed
digital links (DSL, Cable), and low cost digital cameras.
In 1965, if you had casually mentioned emailing pictures
of kids to their grandparents, most people would have thought
you were nuts. Even computer geeks would have had to stretch
their imagination to figure out what you meant.
I'll have to figure out how to work cell phones into this area.
The big collection
Here is the big list. Or rather, it will be here when I get that far.
I'm still working on getting things HTML-ized.