From the Pager to AI, and everything in between.

I remember my dad carrying a pager. I was little but I remember asking him what was it for.

Thinking about it now I can't really see why he needed it, he was a car mechanic. I can't really picture a situation when someone would urgently page him to discuss a fuel pump replacement. But, who knows?

I was reading about how long it took from the first Airplane flight to the Moon landing and suddenly thought about the same thing but applied to phones and computers.

Of all these, how many do you remember?

The Pager, 1980s and 2990s

Motorola, first commercial brick phone. Mid 80s I remember seeing people using those brick phones. You had to have money and a convertible to have one of those.

WORLD WIDE WEB!! 1991.. YES it's only been around for about 30 years.

First smartphone, Nokia 1996

Hotmail and AOL messaging. First mass email. 1996! I remember AOl. Wed get the cds in the mail. Who doesn't remember the infamous Chatrooms!? 😊

WIRELESS INTERNET, 1997

First free video call, SKYPE , 2001!!!!

FACEBOOK, social media, news feed. 2004!! Social media has only been around for 20 years!?? Think about it.. in the year 2000 there was no social media!!!!

iPhone .. touch screen, camera, apps ... 2007 !!

SIRI. the first time you could "talk" to the computer. 2011!!!
There was not talking to the computer in 2010!!

Google translate Neural AI... Computer talk went from funny talk to actually useful.. 20l6..

GPT3.. First AI that could hold a conversation. 2020!!!!
From that to the prominence AI holds worldwide and how it has penetrated all aspects of life, had only taken 6 yrs .

GPT 4... AI Went from the lab to your pocket?? 2022!!!

Multimodal AI... ChatGpt, Gemini, Claude, etc. it can "see," pictures, hear voice, and generate video..
You can LITERALLY talk to it like a person.. 2023!!

To me is amazing how far it's gone in such little time.

Makes me wonder, how in the hell did we manage to live before the pagers and smart phones and internet and now AI!!??

So the question is... How many of those do you remember living thru?

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CookieCrumbs · F

It was 1992 when I first experienced using the World Wide Web . I was in my first year at university. I installed my first dial-up modem (the one that made a sound) and felt super cool about it. 😂 So much information that could be accessed by the fingertips….

Fast forward to today…. I’m fairly updated with tech and I’m still around to be using AI to improve/build systems at work. Set aside the issues and concerns regarding governance of AI, it’s amazing to see how far we’ve come…

CurrentName · 51-55, M

@CookieCrumbs
Your first year at UNI!!
That's crazy😊
Reference AI, I share your sentiment. Look how far we've gone in such a little amount of time!
I look at the dates and I think..wow..how did we ever make it without all this technology?
When you had to wait a week for a response for your "text'!!

Miram · 31-35, F

I didn't discover the internet until I was almost 14 years old. 2003 or 2004.

I was amazed by the amount of information I could access!! Brain went full addict. Before then, I relied heavily on books and while compared to my peers, I was very advanced intellectually, my access to the internet was a complete game changer.

I won a scholarship to Turkey and then to Canada because of my academic achievements, plenty of which was the result of autonomous learning and having an internet connection.

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CurrentName · 51-55, M

@Miram
Of course. I too, have huge reservations about AI.
It's actually scary to me.

CurrentName · 51-55, M

@Miram
Do you not think that's the same argument or precaution some old people that grew up without Internet, said about those who grew up on the internet,?

Miram · 31-35, F

@CurrentName

I grew up with extremists in north africa. I can't completely relate to how others saw the internet because everything was Haram where I grew up, even my voice as a female. Everything was a problem.

But I have been familiar with debates surrounding safety and participated in them myself later. I think plenty of the points were legitimate concerns back then and proven to require precautions and more regulations. Both the internet and its content including AI pose risks..but AI is far of a jump compared to the earlier informational revolution. I don't think we even began to catch up with the issues of the first in order to handle the second. We are lacking. Advancements are proceeding and overshadowing any morality or ethics we need to develop to keep up.

We are very much doing nothing. It is simply happening to us at this point.

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CurrentName · 51-55, M

@aboveaverageaveragejoe
You're right on one thing tho... You're right when you said.
I guess you didn't love thru most of it. You're wrong. I did plenty of loving.

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