“I’ll either see you next year or on the ‘other side,’” my 92-year-old grandmother told me as she headed up the stairs. She was on her way to bed because she had to get up at 4 a.m. the next morning for her flight home to New Jersey.
The impact of that statement didn’t really hit me for a couple days later. “Next year or the Other Side”; those are some interesting choices. For the last few years, my grandmother has been dodging the New Jersey winter by spending it with my parents in California. She doesn’t remember as much as she used to but we had a great conversation recently about her life experiences and all the technological advancements she’s witnessed having been born in 1921.
For you keeping score at home, that’s 16 US Presidents, about 6wars with US involvement, Civil Rights and desegregation and a slew of inventions that today are completely taken for granted such as laundry machines, microwaves and even television. As we’re having this conversation, we pause for a moment to watch my son playing with the Nintendo Wii and I turn to ask her what it must be like to witness what to me is a small, everyday thing.
She turns and smiles and says in a soft, gentle voice, “It’s like I’m living on a different planet. I don’t understand any of this. It’s like science fiction.”
Before she retires for the evening and leaves me with a quote that I’m still thinking about 5 days later, I asked to take a picture with her and my son and whip out my smartphone. Just another tool for me, but what might as well be a Star Trek Tricorder for her. I considered backing it up right then to my Seagate Central via my Seagate Mobile App, but instead I opted to enjoy the moment. Photo backup could wait the 20 minutes it’d take for me to get back home.
As I added the photo to the folder where I keep all the photos of my son (all 1,674 of them) it’s easy to think about storage being another one of those technological advancements we take for granted. Something that hasn’t always been around, but something that has always been necessary. From yesterday with tape to tomorrow with the cloud, storage has become a constant that everyone in all walks of life needs.
I’m proud of the 1,674 photos I have of my son. I hope I live to be 92 (preferably a little older) so that I can sit with my great grandchild and share the story behind the photograph. While we may not have jetpacks or flying cars, I am glad that this sci-fi era I’m in has technology to save what’s important to me. And not just for my generation, but for generations to come.
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