Memories From Whale’s Past

Whatever did we do without social media, the internet and mobile phones (does anyone call them cell phones anymore?)

When I started working at The Whale 35 years ago, if you wanted to contact someone aside from a personal visit, you relied on the landline phone or mail. I think we were happy with that.

Then came the fax machine with those awful rolls of whatever kind of cheap paper that spit out of it. Soon after, came the computer with e-mail, internet, mobile phones and all the various social media outlets.

I am all for social media and the many ways to contact a person to keep in touch. For example, recently one of my former co-workers who now lives in the southern portion of the country, was cleaning out his attic. While doing so, he stumbled on a box of items he hadn't seen in 20 years.

In it, he found WAAL t-shirts, stationery, bumper stickers and even a memo I wrote to the staff when we hired him as the new overnight DJ on The Whale. For him to show me these long lost gems, it was as simple as taking a few pictures via his mobile phone and sending them via Facebook Messenger.

Can you imagine if this scenario happened 20 years ago? He would have had to take pictures of the items from a camera that used rolls, wait to fill out the roll with pictures, drop off the roll at a photo processing center, wait for the pictures to be developed in about a week, then send them to me via regular mail which probably would cost more than a regular stamp to send.

Today, that would be considered a lot of effort. I find it so amazing how much technology has changed in my lifetime. For good or bad, right?