The Second Hand Man

1968 is only forty six years into my past and yet I feel as though I’ve been thrust back into the Dark Ages. The wonderful new discoveries, theories, concepts and inventions are all outdated to me already. Frustratingly, there is very little, if anything, that this time can teach me in my fields of interest.

So, I have instead, opted to read a lot of philosophical as well as fictional work; stuff I always wanted to, but never got the chance to peruse in my previous life.

Analogue will eventually succumb to Digital.

It’s strange not to see any digital watches. And people actually use their brains to add, subtract, multiply and divide without the aid of pocket calculators. This is a good thing, but I’m not looking forward to using slide rules and log books at school again.

Although many 1-hour shops for the developing and printing of your happy snaps will spring up, they will meet their demise at the birth of the digital camera. The buzz word will be pixels. And, although some shops will manage to survive by printing out the digital images, most people will opt to view them simply by downloading them onto their PCs (Personal Computers).

This brings to mind another practice - the use of acronyms.

In the future acronyms will become the order of the day (SMS, CEO, ATM, PIN, CD, DVD, FAQs, CGI, HIV - AIDS, SARS, H1N1 GPS, HD, ABS, DVD, JPEG, E-DOC, URL, ROM, RAM, MS-DOS, CD-ROM, etc.). This will be especially so in the area of computer technology. It will not be uncommon to hear something like: ‘The CCO of the CC informed the IT specialist that his IBM PC was down due to a faulty LAN.’

People will become obsessed with memory capacity (Not their own, but that of their computers’ as well as the many other devices that operate through binary codes), making terms like Meg and Gig a large part of the sales lingo.

And, although the HIV - AIDS disease will ravish much of the Sub-Saharan continent, the viruses that will be affecting more people, will be those that play havoc with the smooth functioning of their computer’s operating systems.

To be honest, there are a myriad of differences that I could note between the sixties and the early 21st century, but then I would fill volumes. So I have opted to only notarize the above few for now; just the ones that I have personally found to be the most noticeable, influential and significant.

Of all the things I miss most, the internet and my coffeemaker top the list.