Headline Sep 29, 2015/ ''' TECHNOLOGY BY TRAPEZE-ING '''

''' TECHNOLOGY BY TRAPEZE-ING '''

IN 1979  - ''My Sharona''  topped the pop charts and Microsoft and Apple were baby companies, founded a few years before.

The majority of people in the U.S. had never touched anything that contained a microprocessor. And if you believe the numbers, middle-class life would've been easier then than it is now.

Except that's not what the smartphone tells us. 

Other things on my phone that I don't have to pay for : guitar tuner, file storage  [Dropbox versus some big filling cabinet]- compass, maps.

Of course, we can now do things for free on our phones that weren't even imaginable in 1979.

If you'd marched into the Jimmy Carter's Oval Office and showed him GPS turn-by-turn directions on palm size gadget, he'd have you arrested and sent to Area 51 with other aliens.

Facebook, YouTube, Kayak, Zillow, Slack and Snapchat, e-books, digital news, podcasts...........all imaginable in 1979. And then there's Google.

In 1979, if you and your friends were sitting on a porch talking about Apocalypse Now..... and wondered who played that......''terminate the colonel's command'' character, you'd have absolutely no way to find out.

You could have gone decades without knowing it was Harrison Ford.

This value thing is a side of technology that doesn't get mentioned in economic reports or presidential rants. Yes, certainly, more jobs are getting automated by software and artificial intelligence-

Eliminating some kind of jobs and ratcheting up productivity for others.  ''Free'' can kill whole industries.

Rochester , New York, is nearly denuded of Kodak factory workers. The overall impact on the job market has let employers hire fewer people or keep wages flat.

But all the software and all those lower labor costs also mean that lots of stuff is way cheaper, and usually far better than ever. It shows up in a big way in smartphones, but it shows up everywhere else too.

Stylish clothes are so cheap at  H&M  because of technology and globalisation. Spend $100 at  H&M  today and you can go home with a much better haul than if you'd spend the equivalent amount  [about $31] at J.C.Penney in 1979.

Actually, few things costs more today in relative basis than they did in 1979. The median home price in the  U.S. today is $236,400. The median home price in 1979 was $71,800. Adjust that for inflation and the figure is $236,008. Pretty darn close.

So Maple's provocation wasn't just some rich guy with a vested interest trying to tell is we're not as bad off as we think we are.

Technology both takes and gives. On the whole, it has made life better for less money and, compared with the pre-computer era of 1979. In fact life today is fantastically better if you factor in not having to listen to  ''My Sharoma'' 10 times a day.

And in the outreach of technology, I also realize that any one person's experience doesn't sum up anything, that even the most colorful anecdotes can't really rebuff the myth that has crept into the American consciousness:

That  Tinder  -that app wherein users swipe right to choose  {or swipe left to reject} potential mates  -is a wretched realm for shallow sex addicts, running not just monogamy but dating itself.

This argument reared its head again of late in a piece in  Vanity Fair's issue, ''Tinder and the Dawn of the Dating Apocalypse.''

The author, Nancy Jo Sales, is missing the point. So are most people when they  

vent about Tinder and how it has ruined dating/love/monogamy. Their argument is overly obvious that it's too easy to find a partner-

Therefore nobody settles down anymore, swiping the moment something goes wrong in a relationship. But this lament ignores two very important elements:

What dating was like before online dating, and what online dating is like now.

Don't you remember? Back then, we just blamed dating. Now we blame Tinder

But here's the point everyone just so misses. All Tinder does and did was to increase the chances of both men and women to meet new people. 

And that's how it was before too  Only spread out over a longer period..

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

'''  The Culture '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless