I just talked with my parents over FaceTime to congratulate my mom on her retirement today. Cian and Emily were jumping up and down all over the living room pretending to be kangaroos and wishing Omi a "Happy Retirement". It wasn't a long conversation but my kids can both see their grandparents and show them their toys and blow kisses before signing off.
We have talked from people back home in Canada over Skype, FaceTime and Google+. We have had chats with multiple locations in the same conversations (all with video). I get to see pictures of my friend's babies as quickly as my friend's back home get to. I can tweet, facebook, blog and text anyone at almost any time - even with the time difference.
This is amazing to me. Often I leave a FaceTime or GoogleChat thinking that it's straight out of the Jetsons that I can talk and see family back home and how truly incredible that is.
Twelve years ago I moved out of my parents house to a little house in Salima, Malawi. I had no laptop, no phone (smart or otherwise), no iPod, no iPad. I had a Discman with a small portable computer speaker. I had reasonable email access (every day at work if there was power and an internet connection - so not everyday) but it was expensive so I would formulate emails in Word and then quickly log on to the internet to send them to family and friends. I talked to my parents twice in 6 months on the phone. I had one Messenger conversation with my Edmonton girls during that time as well (an even where I had to wake up at 4am and open the office especially to do it - totally worth it).
Granted this was subSaharan Africa and not Australia but when I lived in Malawi more of my friends had cell phones than my friends back home did (and I didn't have a cell phone in either place). Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Pinterest, Tumblr, Skype, FaceTime and Google+ didn't exist so even if my internet connection was better I wouldn't have used these programs. When I came home from Malawi I remember being astonished that this new thing called a "DVD" was everywhere in Blockbuster when I tried to rent a movie on VHS (the latter two things in that sentence no longer exist).
It is unbelievable how quickly time passes by and how things that you think have always been a part of your life have only had a very short history with you. How many incredible minds are currently imagining what we would consider unimaginable inventions - what will 12 years from now look like?
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