One nice aspect of getting older is that one gains perspective through a personal history. The downside to this new outlook is that it is as humbling as it is enlightening, especially when it comes to technology. I remember a moment in time when we started to replace our black and white televisions with color. Having grown up with a black and white TV set, I took television itself for granted, but as archaic as it sounds now, color TV was a new and transformational technology that changed the average viewer's life.
Concept to Market
The concept of television itself had been in development since as early as 1884 when German scientists began experimenting with cathode rays, but was not fully operational until 1927 when the inventor Philo T. Farnsworth developed what is known as a dissector tube and finally transmitted an image of – what else – a dollar sign. Go figure.
In the early 1970s, my uncle, who was a scientist for the RCA Corporation, told me that RCA had developed a flat screen TV that could be hung on a wall like a picture. Actually – as I found out later – the very first prototype for a plasma display monitor was invented in July 1964 at the University of Illinois by professors Donald Bitzer and Gene Slottow, and a graduate student named Robert Willson. I was duly impressed, and I inquired as to when I could get a flat screen for my apartment. My uncle explained to me that RCA would not be manufacturing the new televisions due to the high costs involved with the production of said technology, but instead, RCA would farm out the chore of manufacturing to the Japanese and then buy back the finished product to distribute under their brand name. He also let me know that it could be 20 years before they were actually being sold to the consumer market.
I was dismayed that the technology would take so long to arrive at the consumer market but, then again, the first patent that contained a proposal for color TV was filed in Germany in 1904, and it wasn't until 1953 that the first commercial color television broadcasts – using a system developed by RCA – were authorized by the FCC. This, of course, is all ancient history, as we now have LED LCD backlit screens that have replaced the older Cathode ray and even Plasma televisions. These flat screens are bigger and brighter and with an enhanced picture, which is the product of digital technology; a technology that, since being introduced to the general population in the 1980s, has transformed our lives and the world in which we live.
Changing the World
Again, one nice aspect of getting older is that one gains perspective through a personal history. I marvel at the amount of change that I have seen in my lifetime, and I am impressed at how easily we assimilate all these radical changes into our daily lives. Fifteen years ago, I had a pager, and, if paged, I would have to locate a phone to return the call. Fortunately, back then, every place of business had a public phone, and there were even phone booths on the street to be used by anyone with a quarter or an 800 number. In 1999, I bought my first cell phone, and life, as I knew it, changed for the better. I could be in contact with my family from anywhere in the world, and I could do business and not be tied to any one place.
Ray Tomlinson is credited for inventing email in 1971, but the general public didn't start using the medium until around 1996. By 1997, 10 million users world wide had email accounts, and it was right around the same time that the Internet began to really flourish, even though it too had been around since 1969.
In the last 10 years, the amount of progress in the world of communications has been astounding. The flat screen and digital technology have been incorporated into our phones and our computers. The screens are touch-sensitive, and the processing that once took up whole laboratory floors now fits into the palm of our hand. Video conferencing is available on Skype and Mac, and even though most communication applications can be handled by a single phone, most of us have more than one screen in our possession – a phone, laptop, Kindle, iPod, iPad, a GPS device, a digital console, or maybe all of the above.
Former Flights of Fancy
These are all amazing inventions which years ago were just flights of fancy for the science fiction or comic book writers. Dick Tracy had a wrist phone which, while never specified, must have worked on some sort of RF band. Star Trek had flip phones and large flat screens, while Hal was the computer with a mind of his own in the Arthur C. Clarke/Stanley Kubrick film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. All of these ideas stemmed from the imagination of very creative individuals; writers and filmmakers who could imagine the fantastic and entertain us with the notion of great things to come in the future.
As it is, the future is now, and while I am a great fan of fiction and a fervid imagination, I am most in awe of the inventors who are able to not only imagine the fantastic, but manifest it as well. Although many of the new inventions are just the next step in the process of technological evolution or, possibly, just a needed upgrade to the current state of the art, it still does not detract from the amazing ability of the inventor who can visualize and create it. Unfortunately for me, I am one of those people with a feverish imagination who can use the current technology and even see beyond it but lack the skill or ability to actually build upon it.
Next: Personalized Consoles?
That said, allow me to offer what I see as an upgrade for our digital consoles. Since, in our line of work, the digital console has become another viewing screen, let me propose a flash drive that would enable us to load our computer or phone files and applications into the console. The screen could then be switched between the console and our personal files. I'm sure that most of us already often bypass Clear-Coms and use our cell phones to text between stage, monitors and front of house; therefore we may as well cut out the middle technology and just use the console. The console screens can even flash an alert when an email or text is coming in.
If we could access the Internet, it would enable us to advance future shows while mixing the current one and email our upgraded files to the next stop on the itinerary. If we build a decent video camera into the console, we can record and store each show and, by utilizing this function, we could send each show directly to YouTube or Facebook and avoid all the horrible posts taken with inferior cell phones. Instead of using our iPods for playback, we could play music directly from our now-internal files. In the long run, it would help us stay focused by doing away with all the other screens we have and need to keep checking during a show. For those of the naysayers who think it might be a distraction, let's be honest. Your multiple screens probably already distract you and, as a matter of fact I have personally witnessed engineers watching movies on their laptops during shows. By the way, for all you brilliant inventors who can make this happen, this idea is not a total gift. As soon as it's implemented, I get 20 percent of all royalties. Don't forget!
