A Brave New World

     We recently came upon an old picture of my 21 year old son on Christmas morning and he was holding up one of his gifts. It was a CD walkman. Remember those? I ask because they have discontinued making them. That's right, what was a cool Christmas gift only six years ago isn't even being made today. It's become outdated. With the invention of iPods and MP3 players and other things, the walkman has gone the way of the big box TV and corded phones.
     What's really scary and may be a problem is I read on the internet that Apple may be getting ready to do away with the iPod. I have to say that this is a concern to me. We have many iPods in this family and my boys are asking for their own for Christmas this year. We also have a large collection of music on our computer for our iPods and it scares me to think that if Apple comes up with something to replace our iPods with will they be compatible with what we have already? And if you're thinking, "Of course they will!" Let me say one thing, VHS.
     We had a large selection of VHS movies at one time and now we have had to replace many of them with DVDs. Do you remember your first cell phone? How would that compare to the one you have today? I am willing to bet your first cell phone wasn't even a cell phone, but a pager. Do you remember the pager stores?
     The point I am trying to make is technology is progressing so rapidly now, that before you can catch up you are already outdated.  The danger lies in moving so fast that people give up investing in new technology because it isn't worth laying down hard earned cash for something that will be replaced with newer, better, faster in a matter of a few years. It's almost scary. I wonder with the new cloud technology if we will even have DVD's and music (in a physical sense) in a few years or will we just tap into the universe around us to find all of our collections of stuff. It really is a brave new world.