Communication miracles

When I was a little boy, we had a party line telephone that we shared with one of our neighbors. My Grandma Van Dyke, who lived on the edge of town, had a party line phone she shared with what seemed to be hundreds of neighbors. If all her neighbors decided to rubberneck on the conversation, she would have to tell them to get off or the call would get so weak that you couldn't hear her speak.

Obviously, we've come a long way in 50 years. Now most people I know carry a phone on their hip and they aren't sharing the signal with even one other person. Cell phone conversations can be so crisp that you think the person you're talking to is in the next room and not three or four states away.

Mostly, that's because today's telephone signals are digital rather than analog. Do you remember when we had dial phones? The dial would send an analog signal to a central exchange and connect you to the right party. You could actually hear the click, click, click of the equipment moving in the telephone exchange office. Now we hear a beep, beep or perhaps nothing at all.

But that's just one of the marvels of modern communication. This holiday season, I enjoyed meeting Derek's girlfriend's family -- who live in Brazil -- through the little camera on her computer and the little camera on our computer.

The cost of the call? Well, really there wasn't a cost, at least not anything additional from the monthly Internet fee we already pay. And yet we could talk to them and look at them.

Again, I remember Dick Tracy from the Sunday comics when I was young. He had a watch where he could talk and look at someone at the same time. Man, I thought that was pure science fiction...never gonna happen. And yet, it has. Maybe we aren't using a watch, but can it be very far off if we can do it on our computers and computers can be wireless?

I'm also enjoying the heck out of Facebook. It used to be that a family had to have a reunion somewhere and it involved a lot of people driving many miles if they wanted to visit with each other. Now, through Facebook, I'm in regular contact with a lot of my family -- cousins, second cousins, children of cousins, etc. -- simply by logging on to my trusty Facebook account.

Since I'm a communicator by trade, there's no real shortage of things for me to comment on -- Grandpa, my family, politics, religion, visitors, current events, you name it. If asked my opinion, I'm NOT smart enough to be tactful and keep it to myself. So I'm sure my extended family has figured out that I'm liberal Democrat who can't wait to have the government spend everyone else's money. My motto is: "the only fair tax is the one that I don't have to pay." So if the party in power sticks it to the rich or to the bankers, I know that it won't effect me one iota -- because I don't shop at stores that are owned by rich people, buy energy from utilities owned by rich people or have a bank account that could possibly have increased fees to pay for increased taxes. In a sentence, I'm gullible enough to believe that what politicans tell me is good for me, really is good for me. They are much smarter with my money than I am.

See, there I go again, espousing my opinions. So here's to digital communciations. Don't you feel like you've just been lectured again by grumpy Uncle Steve, but it's clearer now because of modern technology.