A speculative mind

Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone from 1877 bears about as much similarity to the modern smart phone as an abacus bears to a PC or Mac. There are just about as many leaps in technology in both cases. It’s funny how a major jump in technology happens (like the actual invention of the phone). Then there are some refinements over a few years or decades until it gets to a useful stable form. Then it stays virtually the same for many years with only minor innovations. The telephone was virtually unchanged from sometime before I was born until I was about forty. Push-buttons were replacing the rotary dial, but that was about it. (Isn’t it interesting though that when we call someone, we still call it “dialing?” I have never seen a dial on a cell phone.) Cell phones were introduced and (once they became cheap enough) they changed the way we phone each other. New advancements followed soon after, texting and then smart phones. Personal computers were also becoming commonplace and wer...

At some point in the late 1970’s on one of my treks through the science fiction section of my favorite book store I fleetingly noticed a book that had on the cover what appeared to be a cartoon planet with a mouth. The mouth was laughing and its tongue was sticking out. Obviously this book cover was trying to tell people that what was inside was hysterically funny. I thought it looked stupid. Anybody trying that hard to make you think they are funny, must be pretty lame. I bypassed the book. I was wrong. The book was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. It was a few years later when the book was forced upon me by a friend. It was not forced upon me in book form however. My former physics professor, who had become friends with my wife and I, produced some cassette tapes she had of the BBC radio show of the Hitchhiker’s Guide. It was wonderfully funny, reminiscent of Monty Python. My wife and I had the best time sitting there listening to those shows. Sometime la...

                                        I remember my brother and sister talking about a new science fiction show that was going to premier on television that night. I don’t know how they heard of it or how much buzz there was about it before it aired. Somehow they had heard about it and they infected me even though my mother said that she didn’t think I should be watching one of those weirdo shows (this is how she described pretty much all science fiction.)   I was seven years old at the time.   I liked science fiction. Some kids my age liked westerns, some liked cop shows, some liked war shows, and some liked sports. I liked Science fiction. It spoke to me. Maybe I was more open to speculative ideas, maybe I liked science itself more than the average kid, or maybe I just liked cool ray guns and special effects. I watched cartoons like Jonny Quest and Space Ghost , and l...