The Phone
The year was 1998. The place, Taft Ave., Manila. Clad in plaid shirt and my khaki slacks were accentuated by a brick in the left side pocket. It was a Nokia pre-5110 model (similar to the one pictured below). I took it out of my pocket, extruded the antenna to gather some signal and called my mom.
“I just finished the exam,” I said with a sigh of relief.
“DLSU Engineering, here I come.” I smugly slid back the cellular phone into my pocket.
The Mouse
No doubt that kids are attracted to pretty graphics. That’s why my grade 3 classmate who owned a personal computer was more popular by owning a Gyromite device with his Nintendo.
The PC screen was black and white and sported a keyboard and a dot-matrix printer. We used it to type and print some school papers. Then we’d trade NES game cartridges and play ping-pong on their dinner table.
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The mouse in the house came a little later in ’95. It had a ball that gathered dirt. And yeah, the PC screen was colored already and said Windows 95.
We might feel that technology is leaving us behind especially if we try to keep up with it. But just like the phone and mouse, they simply evolve into more functional tools – the mouse lost its tail – the phone dropped its antenna and dissolved physical buttons – but they are still the phone and mouse we use to communicate with someone and control something, respectively (or soon interchangeably).
Maybe one day they will be totally transformed into something that we won’t recognize anymore (as compared with the pictures) — that’s how evolution goes as far as survival is concerned – you adapt and evolve or you simply perish and be forgotten.
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