The future of the IM....

There have been many technological advances within the last 30 or so years.
Music for instance, going from the record/8-track days, to the cassette tape, to the cd, to the mp3.
In transportation, cars used to be huge, get terrible gas mileage, and be for the most part, ugly. Well, i guess aside from the fact that most of the cars are now made overseas, that one hasn't changed too much.

Then we come to communication. About 30 or so years ago, the main form of communication was the homing pigeon. You'd be lucky if your friends got your message about coming over for dinner, because the homing pigeon's route was influenced by whether or not they were hungry. Then, through the amazing invention of the telephone (by famed inventor, mr. verizon), people were able to actually talk to each other from long distances without having to write out words or know how to spell in any way. Then, along came the invention of the computer (which most people don't realize, was invented by mistake when scientists were trying to find a better mechanism for sharing porn), which revolutionized communciation forever. Now, people, instead of talking to their friends over the anitquated "telephone," were able to "message" each other via typing on their keyboard, and "emoting" with such clever phrases as "lol" and "brb."
It has indeed, come full circle.

I've often wondered what the next generation of communications will be. I can only imagine, that the telephone industry, now slipping into the obscurity that only tony danza has known, will attempt to create a better way to "call" people. I imagine that most likely, there will be some form of holographic interaction, where people will no longer ever have to leave their homes when interacting with other humans, simply doing it in their holographic chambers. Of course, by the time this happens, most of the people in my generation will be at the "i don't care for all these new fangled gadgets" phase, and we will never be able to use it, or learn how to get rid of the blinking "12:00." Our kids will use it all the time, not knowing what it was like in the olden days where people had to imagine what their friends looked like by looking at screennames such as "awesomedude224" or "beet_gardner."
We, on the other hand, will be hapily plucking away at our keyboards, waiting in vein for the people we just IMed to come back from their self-imposed "brb."


Mitch Hedberg's QotD:

You know how when you go to a restaurant, they call out your name? Like "Dufrain, party of two... Dufrain, party of two." And if no one answers, they'll say it again "Dufrain, party of two, Dufrain, party of two." But then if no one answers, they'll just move on the next name: "Bush, party of three." What happened to the Dufrains? They're missing, and no one cares. Right now, they're tied up in the trunk of someone's car, with duck tape over their mouths, and they're hungry. That's a double whammy! They should say "Bush, search party of three." "You can eat once you've found the Dufrains."