I love technology

It's amazing how much the world has changed over the last ten years or so. When I was in college, waaay back in the late 90s, I lived about sixty miles from my girlfriend (who is now my wife). The only way to really keep in touch was via telephone. I'm not talking about the fancy i-phones of today. These phones had a cord that attached to the base of a wall, and that was hooked up to miles of copper wire that stretched across the country. Back then we had this thing called "long distance." The sixty miles between me and my girlfriend was considered "long distance." This meant that to talk to her via the telephone, I had to pay something like 25 cents every minute to speak to her, and we often had very long conversations. My phone bill would usually be at least 100 dollars a month. We had to restrict our communication with each other, making sixty miles seem very far. Also, I had no car to visit her with, and sixty miles is a long way to ride your bicycle.

My family (who lived about 45 miles away) seemed even farther away, because there was no way I was going to waste 25 cents a minute on them, when I couldn't even afford to spend it on my girlfriend! Sure, there was email, but that involved going to a computer lab, logging into a UNIX terminal, and (usually the kicker) the person you wanted to talk to having an email address of their own.

Today, cell phones and the proliferation of the Internet have changed the definition of "long distance." My wife and I share two cell phones that we pay a combined $50 dollars a month for, and we can talk for as long as we want, no matter where we are. (You can't get plans that cheap any more, so we are going to have these Florida numbers for a while). When we lived in Fort Lauderdale, 1300 miles away from our families, we could call, email, and instant message them all the time. While we only got to see them in person two or three times a year, all these communication options made 1300 miles seem not that much farther than 45 miles did back in college.

Today I got to experience another benefit of all this technology. I'm in Chicago, probably fewer than 200 miles from my wife and daughter. Today is Monday, and I won't be home again to see them until Wednesday. Now, Adelaide is only six months old, so when her mom gives her the phone to "Say hi to Daddy," I talk to her, but on the other end I can only hear the sounds of her trying to fit the phone into her mouth.

Tonight Abee and I got on MSN Messenger, and used its webcam call feature, which is basically the same way people talk to each other between their ships on Star Trek. We've done this a few times before, but today Adelaide was able to recognize me on the computer screen. I talked to her and her face lit up, as if to say "hey, I remember you from somewhere!" Then I played peek-a-boo with her, hiding behind my hands. She laughed. My six month old baby could see and hear and play with me from 200 miles away, and I got to see her laugh. I miss her and Abee a lot when I am on trips, and what happened today really made my day. I love technology.