This is Technology Bytes, episode 124 for July 20, 2025.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bites on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
So this week I titled my podcast, Really?, because I was just thinking in general terms and overall in people’s lives, my own in particular, of the technology that we often take for granted.
And the advances in technology that have happened in my short lifetime and maybe yours as well.
And a number of things come to mind, maybe cellular phone service might be one of the largest, where it doesn’t matter where you are in the world almost, and it doesn’t matter kind of who you are because the availability has become such that almost everyone has a cell phone.
We become connected to the world and reachable.
I know there’s a story that one of our friends told us years and years ago, and she’s like, Mom, this is my cell phone, and this is my number.
And so then her cell phone rang, and her mom’s like, How did they know you were at my house?
And she just didn’t get it.
She didn’t understand that technology, and we just take it for granted today.
I was thinking of streaming services, the availability of TV shows and events and movies just at our fingertips and what we’re able to listen to and watch and music and all those kinds of things.
And in my world, just looking at the availability of technology in a smart home, it’s like, Oh, I forgot to do this.
I forgot to turn off this light.
I forgot to do this at home before I left.
And I just get on my phone and I turn this light off.
I turn this light on.
I think of things like when my wife was sick and my daughter couldn’t get a hold of her.
She wasn’t answering texts, wasn’t answering phone calls.
And so she calls the neighbor and unlocks the house from her phone and allows the neighbor to go in and make sure her mother is OK.
Those are things that maybe after the fact we kind of wonder, Yeah, what would we have done?
Have to drive that distance.
And, you know, it’s just interesting the things that we just think are going to be there.
And then when they’re not, we get all bent out of shape.
Why the electricity go off?
Why don’t I have hot water?
Why, why, why?
And it’s interesting we talk about driving and then you get to electric cars and you’ve heard me talk about my EV6 and how much I enjoy it.
And, you know, that’s just a technology that not that long ago was maybe a little bit useless.
But the distance you can go today, the availability of charging stations kind of is ubiquitous throughout the United States, at least maybe other places as well.
But these technologies are just things that we use on a daily basis that we don’t really think about.
The fact that we can turn a computer on, write a message, get it printed if we want to, although I’m not sure who prints anymore, send it to as many people as we want to be able to do a podcast like I’m doing now.
All these technologies that just happen because of somebody’s brain, because of work that somebody else did, that we get to take advantage of.
And sometimes I think we lose sight of that.
And sometimes we complain about companies or individuals or technologies that don’t do exactly what we want them to do.
But the fact that they exist at all is maybe it should amaze us.
Maybe it should make us more thankful.
Maybe it should make us more grateful for the times in which we live and the technologies we get to enjoy.
And the fact that they work at all, that’s just pretty neat.
So that’s kind of all I have for today.
I know it’s a little short, but just wanted you to think about the technologies that you use on a regular basis, that you count on on a regular basis.
And when things don’t go exactly as you would like them to with your technology, just be thankful that it works most of the time.
Well, that is all I have for today.
If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytes at MerrickFamily.com.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast.
And I look forward to the next time we are together, taking another bite of technology.
