21st Century Man

It's Sunday, and my thoughts are a bit scattered, so I think I will just ramble.

Yesterday my 10-year old displayed his genetically prone skepticism regarding the practicality of hovercraft. Well, actually he questioned their existence, and the idea that (according to the Internet) you can build one using a leaf blower. I think we have picked his science project for next year. Time to get started now....

When I was younger I was pretty hard headed. Only knowing me then would allow you to believe I was ever worse than I am now. But I have had a few of my beliefs challenged over the years. I once thought paying 3 times more for an iPod versus any other mp3 player was ridiculous, until I finally tried one. Then I thought the idea of having a phone that surfed the Internet was a little insane (and who wants to put a video screen up to their face?) Now I think my iPhone is the second greatest product of the last several decades. (Excel is my #1 choice for that honor.) So now I'm thinking about buying a Mac to go with the four PC's in my house. After all, it only costs twice as much as other laptops....

And I was very skeptical of NetFlix when I first heard about it. Stream movies through an Xbox? I'm not a gamer, but even it I was I don't think I'd have thought this was a good idea. Until I tried it, of course. Now I'm selling a lot of my DVD's on eBay because I can watch my favorite TV shows any time I want, on any PC in the house or on a laptop while traveling.

Maybe I need to soften up even more. Who knows what else I am missing because of my preconceived notions? Three months ago I no idea that I could learn to program Java, C and iPhone Apps for free direct from Stanford no less!

I use to think I would rather have been born a 100 years ago, so that I could have participated in so many great scientific and engineering developments. Now days, I'm glad to be alive in this age.