Where do we go from here?
Technology is forever changing. And I鈥檓 forever struggling to keep up with it.
That蘑菇视频 not the first time I鈥檝e expressed those thoughts.
Back in February of 2007, I wrote a column for these pages about how modern inventions that once seemed indispensable are eventually cast aside for even a more modern invention 鈥� that, for the time being, seems indispensable.
I wrote about how, back in 1896, the folks of Dearborn, Michigan, must鈥檝e been startled to see Henry Ford traverse a road in a carriage without a horse attached to it.
Horses were eventually rendered non-essential.
That蘑菇视频 not a comment on technology unless you consider that even Henry Ford would be aghast if he ever saw the current crop of driverless cars.
Last week, there was an event at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway involving two driverless race cars hitting as high as 180 mph.
That蘑菇视频 progress!
In that 2007 column, I wrote about how, if you were a sports fan during the early years of the 1900s, you鈥檇 have to head for the State Theatre or the 蘑菇视频 building for live updates of major sporting events.
There鈥檇 be a chalkboard inside of the theatre that was updated manually for people interested in the results of Pittsburgh Pirates games.
And when there was a major boxing match, there would be an employee of the newspaper who would announce the round-by-round accounts of the fights.
Of course, nobody performs that function these days.
There are dozens of ways to get up-to-the-minute accounts of sporting events.
Getting them is one thing. Getting them with realistic clarity is something completely different.
When I wrote that column nearly 16 years ago, there was nothing as clear as these Ultra High-Definition TV sets of today.
Anybody can now have a fully equipped movie theater in their living room.
Back then, wide-screen TVs were just hitting the mass market.
Smart TVs weren鈥檛 nearly as indispensable as they are now.
Part of that 2007 column was devoted to the popularity of Hollywood Video and Blockbuster Video.
They were the go-to places for movie rentals.
Those days are long gone.
Hollywood Video ceased operations in 2010. Blockbuster Video, which at one time had 9,094 stores, dropped to just one store in Bend, Oregon, in 2014.
Instead, an upstart that I wrote about in 2007, Netflix, outlasted both Hollywood Video and Blockbuster Video with a smart business model.
First, Netflix allowed its customers to get movies by mail. Then, it began making use of the 鈥渟mart鈥� capabilities of our internet-ready TVs, by sending high-quality movies directly to our homes 鈥� and for a reasonably priced membership.
Soon, other streaming services followed. There are now dozens of them, and for a variety of purposes 鈥� with a seemingly endless array of home entertainment.
Along the way, CDs and DVDs became less indispensable than they once were.
The newest automobiles come without any CD players.
Just like you鈥檇 be hard-pressed to find a VHS machine for your TV.
We saw it come. Now we鈥檙e seeing it go away, I guess.
I鈥檓 a gamer. At 74 years old, I鈥檓 one of the older ones. But I鈥檓 a gamer, nonetheless.
I started this journey back in the mid-1970s with Pong.
For those of you who aren鈥檛 quite familiar with Pong, it was a simplistic, monochromatically lit box that moved across your TV screen 鈥� that was supposed to resemble a table tennis game.
When I bought mine, I bought a second one for my parents, because I was convinced we鈥檇 all reached the outer limits of modern technology.
We hadn鈥檛, of course. But at the time, nobody had been able to control anything on our television screens. To make that little light move back and forth on my TV screen felt like the equivalent of walking on the moon 鈥� at the time.
Pong has given way to an endless generation of video games. I now have the latest PlayStation (PlayStation 5, with its ultra-realistic sounds and graphics.
I鈥檓 sure that someday it鈥檒l be rendered obsolete!
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight, and 50-year TV news and newspaper veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.