This is Technology Bytes, episode 40, for December 10th, 2023.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
My name is Joel.
Enjoy, and here we go.
This is a bit of an interesting take on technology, I guess.
My mom passed away this past month.
Actually, that was towards the middle end of last month.
Anyway, in the passing of a relative like that, family gets together.
And what comes out as family gets together?
Well, it’s photographs of past events, sometimes photographs of many, many years ago.
And they are not on an iPhone or any other technology device.
They are generally printed and on paper.
And you think, is that a technology?
Well, at the time it was.
In fact, there are pictures that we were looking at as a family that were black and white because that’s before the technology of color existed.
Not before color existed, because obviously we could see color before that, but before it was printable, I guess, on paper.
But the thing is that sometimes to enjoy history, to enjoy family pastimes, to enjoy remembering and the memories that photos bring, it’s nice to hold that technology in your hand and to share and to handle and to hold and to pass around a circle or around a table or wherever we might be sitting and to discuss the memories and try to remember the occurrence and be able to look at the paper and have it bring back floods of memories.
And maybe we have to read the back where someone was wise enough to put a date, to put context, or we’re trying to figure it out.
But either way, it’s old technology, but it is technology nonetheless, and it really has a tendency to bring people together.
Maybe a little unlike the digital photography of today, although in that many of the family members were bringing out their phones to enjoy pictures of less distant past and the history of children, the history of grandchildren, and to see that.
And then the funny thing is that happens to us, and I don’t know if it’s happened to you yet, but it’s happened to me and it’s happened to my wife, is you’re holding a picture in your hand and you forget what you’re holding.
And you want to see a detail that you can’t quite make out, and so you pinch out on the picture to zoom in, thinking something’s going to change, and then you realize, oh, I’m holding a piece of paper.
And you feel a little foolish, hope nobody noticed.
But it happens, and it’s fun.
And the fact is that paper pictures bring families together, make family time fun, and are still a technology that’s enjoyable even in these times where we have massively more technological advances sitting in our pocket.
So I hope there’s times in your not-too-distant future where you get together with family and be able to share technology of the past, photos that you can pass around, maybe even black and white.
That is all I have for today.
If you have comments or suggestions, you can send them to technologybytes at merrickfamily.com.
I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast.
I look forward to the next time we are together taking another tear out of technology.
A little different because it’s paper photographs, but really taking another bite of technology.
