Saturday, December 29, 2007

What technology will my child see in his lifetime?

A conversation with my father sparked this post. Today Dad was introduced to the Nintendo wii bowling game. For those unfamiliar with the system, a player straps a remote to her/his wrist and then becomes an active player in virtual sports. The remote serves as a tennis racket, a golf club, a bat... or with some add ons, boxing gloves, steering wheels.... the list goes on! A sensor bar on or below the tv "reads" the player's movements. So, using the remote, my dad was bowling in our living room.



Do you remember this??? The old Atari that allowed us to play games like Pitfall and Pong.

And this???













With each new entertainment or computer system that came into our home I can remember thinking...."this is so cool! It can't get better than this!" and with each advancing system the images became clearer and more vibrant, more engaging, more user friendly, more entertaining! I wonder what is coming next. In the 80s I would never have been able to wrap my head around the concept of a virtual environment, like Second Life, or the virtual gaming of the Nintendo wii! What technology will my child see in his lifetime?

From records, 8 tracks, cassettes, and CDs to mp3s and ipods.... what is next?

I can't even imagine, but I can't wait to find out! What do you think??

BTW, images are from wikipedia.

2 comments:

KTI said...

Lori,
So true! I often think the same thing. I grew up in the 80's, and I remember when we used to play Atari,(Frogger!) and then we were so psyched when Nintendo came out...then SuperNintendo...and then Sony Playstation entered our house. (And it could continue, except my brother and I kinda grew out of videogames!) But geesh...What are our kids gonna see in their lifetime! I can't wait to find out either!

Ann Oro said...

What been fun for me, too, is seeing my sons enjoy some of my old technology. We have an Atari machine that plugs into the tv with all the old games burned onto a chip. They have also tried an old PC game called Cosmo's Cosmic Adventures.

I can't imagine what will be out there in 20 years that will make us look back on the Wii with nostalgia.

Ann