Parking Ticket Complaint

 There are a few a shore side vacation spots within an hour drive from where I live. My family and I love to visit one specific town a few times a year in the summer to go on the beach and walk the board walk just as I had done as a kid with my family many times. If planned well we can head down to the shore early in the morning and return home in the evening and have a full day of fun and sun at the shore.

I know plenty of people that have shore homes or others that get a weekly rental and relax at the beach with a place to stay. But I'm not to keen on the cost and planning when I can drive to the shore anytime I like. But when you drive down for the day you will need to contend with parking. It can be impossible to find somewhere to park near where you want to be. Or you have use a pricey parking lot or feed the street meter. There is free parking but will require more walking.

We never had problems before but I recently received a parking ticket. Paying $6 for metered parking got more expensive that the $20 parking lots when you add in the $30 fine for an expired parking meter. You see, I used an app to pay for parking. The parking meter doesn't have a way to know you used the app. So when the meter checker comes about they are supposed to verify that your license plate number doesn't come back as having a valid parking session for that zone. I would have set the info needed in the app and verified before I paid for my parking. I was understandably upset. And I tried to figure out how I can get this resolved. If I tried to fight this in court, the court costs would cost me more than the fine itself. If I was wrong I could be paying double.

After looking at the info multiple times I realized my mistake. I had entered my license plate incorrectly into the app. Effectively I paid for someone else to park in my spot. I put my tail between my legs, corrected the error in the app for next time and paid my fine online.

If the error had been on the part of the meter checker/parking authority this would have been a different rant. If I was right and took this to court to prove it I may not have to pay a $30 fine but I would instead have to pay $33 court cost instead, more than the fine. I would still get penalized for defending my right not to pay an unfair fine. In the title of the parking ticket it states it is a complaint. Does this mean someone could take advantage of the system to make a complaint just to cause grief out of spite? So if the municipality took advantage of this most people would pay the fine and if they came to fight the ticket in court the system gets paid anyway. Seems like an easy win for the legal system. I would think there should be a better system. Why should I have to pay to be in the right?

This isn't the only time I've had a situation like this. That is why I see these holes in a legal system that has no way to be fair but plenty of ways it can be taken advantage of. My wife received a ticket for going through a red light in the mail one day. The ticket didn't come as a result of a traffic light camera or a police officer. It came as a result as a citizen that witnessed the incident, got my wife's license plate, and then made a trip to the local police to file the complaint that resulted in a ticket. We did not know this was possible.

The truth is my wife did go through a red light. Not a light that just turned red but having a bad day, wasn't paying attention and drove straight though a red light. Not a good situation. My wife had realized what had happened, pulled over and called me so I could meet her and drive her to her destination as she was not in a good frame of mind to continue driving. We thought we were fortune enough that she didn't get pulled over by a cop that day.

We contacted a lawyer and explained our situation. He defended us in court. His strategy was to require the defendant to identify us in a crowded courtroom or else the ticket would need to be thrown out. Since it was unlikely that this person got a good look at my wife this was a good strategy. My wife didn't disguise herself but she did her hair a bit different than her normal and put on her full makeup as she would if we were going for a night out (I don't like makeup on my wife so she doesn't normally wear makeup like on the day of the incident). It worked and we did not have to pay the fine. But after paying the lawyer and court costs we felt like we still got penalized. Although the alternative would also include points on my wife's license and in our state we could also be required to pay a surcharge for those points (which I don't understand). This could also affect our insurance premium. That is why most people in my state fight moving traffic violations that asses points. Even if you were in the wrong, you don't want points. You are better off making a deal with the prosecutor for a violation with a bigger fine but no points.

My point is if anybody can make a complaint, then anybody that has a beef with you can make a complaint even if you are not guilty just to be antagonistic, a weaponized legal system. At the end of our time in court we paid our court fees at the clerk window and we watched our accuser walk past us and walk down the street to her home without anything further being required of her. I would think half of the court fees should have been paid by her for her to have her day in court. She was the one who initiated this course of action. We only chose to be there to minimize the damage this would have on our life.

I already know this happens. A friend of mine was a contractor. After doing work for a wealthy man the wealthy man decided he didn't want to pay for it. My friend took every legal action to recover his money that was owed for the work he did. The wealthy man probably spent more money and effort to fight my friend in court than what he owed but my friend never received a penny for the work. Most likely the wealthy man refused to pay to prove he could.

But when a person can make small complaints that cost them nothing more than some time and will cost the other person no matter the outcome, it shows how the legal system can be used antagonistically.

Premature Truth

Words are hard! We struggle so much with miscommunication yet we have the tools we need to avoid it yet it still is a problem.

• Be quick to think but slow to react. In other words, take the time to think on what is communicated and don't jump to quickly to rash conclusions.
• Ask question to clarify if you are not sure.
• Keep in mind the audience can form a different opinion than the speaker/writer is trying to convey, and that is ok.

In social media it seems that one person can convey an idea and the social mob can misinterpret that and condemn the originator for saying something that was never intended. It seems that the electronic tools we have on the internet get abused and it changes how we are forced to use them differently than intended. For example a video blogger uploads his videos. His comment section is there to help him build a community audience. But if something considered controversial by a few is discussed in a video, it sets off an avalanche of hate post that the channel owner is forced to turn off the comment feature all together.

One of the things I found out about literature a long time ago is that a group of people can read the same thing and it is possible that each person gets something different from it. I discovered this concept in an English literature class. We all read the same short stories but when it was discussed in class it seems that there were wildly differing opinions about what we got out of it. Our professor pointed out that even with our differing views, its possible that not one of our views will ever match what the writers intended when they wrote the story. But literature like art, is in the eye of the beholder. The only thing the writer can hope is that is some way, an audience reads. The rest is on the reader to do with what they read, or choose put the book down and walk away if they don't like it. Before the internet people would say if you don't like what is on TV, then change the channel. The same should be said about social media, if you don't like what is said then go to a different video and allow algorithms adjust to show you content you like. Most entertainer win if you react. The more attention their "words" get, good or bad, gets more focus time, and in an advert laced society, possibly more money.

I heard of famous comedian Andy Kaufman. When he was on stage to perform, the things he would do, like reading from The Great Gadsby, would irritate his audience to the point that the audience would boo, hiss and throw things at him. He was considered more of an antagonist of his audience than an ally. When he was asked why he did things that way he explained that as a comedian his job wasn't to make the audience happy and laugh, his job was to get a reaction. His audience reacted by launching produce and beer bottles at his head.

Literature has a somewhat hidden audience. An author's best metric is how many books are sold. In social media there is an instant feedback mechanism so that the part of an audience with the loudest voice tends to be heard. TV and other forms of non-internet media never had such a closed loop feedback system. In all mediums you can and likely will have a different opinion and that is ok. You enjoy your opinion, that is part of the entertainment value. You don't necessarily need to understand or like what the author meant to say.

But when you try to convey a specific idea, being misunderstood can be problematic.

So now I will tell you a personal story of miscommunication that has continued for most of my life that if it was understood correctly would have had a different impact on how I view myself. For 50 years I have been hearing the same stories of my birth from my mom and dad. But some things never seem to add up. I was conceived on my parents 2 day honeymoon Feb 22-23 and I was born on Sept.20 as a 5 lb. baby. If you do the math that is 30 weeks. A normal birth is 40 weeks. So I was born 10 weeks premature. But I was sent home from the hospital with my parents only after 3 days in the hospital. The hospital did not treat me as a preemie. I have had many friends and family that have done the math in their head and insist that I was conceived illegitimately. But my parents are adamant that they did not have relations before marriage. As my parents tell the story I was born "early" but they never used the word "premature".  So for years I accepted what they said because even if things were much different, I'm still here and not much changes.

There were other stories of the time around when I was born but never seemed to be much of a connection other than my parents dealing with the early stages of their marriage. My mom even shared one story of riding on the back of a dirt bike with my dad while she was pregnant with me. I would think it must have been early in the pregnancy and to me it sounded a bit of a irresponsible act while pregnant but if nothing happened then no big deal, right.

It happened to come up in conversation one more time between me and my brother recently. So I decided to question my mom one more time and I was able to connect the dots between some bad story telling from my parents over the years.

To me if a baby was born early that would be a week or two before the due date. Technically a baby is considered full term between 37 - 40 weeks. So week 37,38 and 39 are early, week 40 is on time and after week forty is late. Anything prior to week 37 is premature but does not mean its bad for the baby. I researched and found that at 30 weeks an infant has a 99 percent chance of survival with no lasting health effects from it but the baby is usually kept in hospital for some time in NICU to make sure.

So it is very possible I was a Preemie but my parents would use the word "early" instead of "premature". When I questioned my mom, that story about the motor cycle turns out was when she was 30 weeks pregnant and the off road ride caused her water to break. When my mom and dad went to the hospital the doctors decided to deliver me. Because I was not full term size I came out pretty easily.

So finally connecting all the dots gives me a new perspective of my parents. One that makes more sense than any other views I have ever held. My parents were reckless and careless in decision making as new parents that could have gravely affected my life. But those decisions came from a kind of stupidity that continued in their attempts to share the truth. My parents completely believed they were telling me the truth but the choice of one word conveyed a different meaning to their audience than what they imagined.

Don't get me wrong, I forgive my parents. But the perspective that I gain by knowing my parents made dumb decisions when I was born and continued making dumb decisions that made me and my brothers life more difficult than it needed to be growing up helps me to come to terms with some things in my life. I only wish I had this perspective earlier in life I may have made different decisions myself. If I only understood...

Stay in your lane

 So if I were to think about transportation technology and was asked what would be the ultimate vehicle to me I would definitely say a vehicle that could take me anywhere at any time. Basically the freedom to go where I want, or where I need to be is fairly important. For a car manufacture the answer would be whatever makes them the most money. Henry Ford knew who his customers were, everyday people which included even the people that worked in his factory. He wasn't going to sell them cars if they worked tirelessly and never had any time to buy things.

Large companies today are large. Small companies can come and go but rarely ever compete with the big dogs. The motivation is always to make money. Maybe they realize their purpose to fulfill a need and capitalize on it. Few go into business to give away what little they have. For some big business the realization for the best payday comes from doing business with other large business. For a company to sell products and services to individuals like you and me they would need to sell in high enough volume to make it worth it. That is why you don't see too many new car companies in the US because they would need to start with high enough volume to not have the competition put you out of business and that is not an easy feat to accomplish. If one of the big US car companies decided to stop making cars because it was more profitable to manufacture refrigerators we probably be left with a car shortage eventually unless someone decided to fill the gap. Consider that if one car company decided it wasn't profitable others would follow threatening a major factor in our way of living.

CES stand for Consumer Electronic Show which is a yearly Las Vegas convention ran by the Consumer Technology Association. The "consumer" I would think should be the little guy like me. CES 2021 showed car companies that may be investing more in development of commercial transportation of goods instead of private personal transport. There may be a more fundamental shift in transportation to get goods and services to you, not you to your destination. We already foresee this with online shopping and we easily can have anything delivered to our house. But there are issues with the the supply chain and lag time from initial purchase to usage of that product. If I needed a camera to take a picture and I didn't have a camera, I could go to a store, buy a camera and use it as soon as I walked out of the store. I buy a camera from Amazon I have to wait at least a day before I can use it, more if its not in stock at the local distribution point. We accept the delay and try to plan ahead.

Sure, as electric cars are becoming the car to buy and the dinosaur guzzling combustion engine dinosaurs are slowly getting replaced, we will still have vehicles to drive. But we are in for an era of fundamental change. The only way for new electric car technology to be developed and marketed was for a company like Tesla to go in all the way just to compete for the same customer as the other car giants even though they were creating a new product category. Ford is stopping all production of cars to focus on trucks accept for Mustang, which kind of looks like an SUV now. Now other companies are struggling to develop and retool to compete in this new category. Some companies just waiting until they have no other choice.

CES 2021 showed car tech. they did show off some new EVs and other gadgetry for your travels but...

• Caterpillar showed off a 285 ton, earth moving, mining dump truck that was autonomous.
• John Deer showed off VR to see from inside a tractors cab from a remote location.
• GM showed an electric pallet that can handle 200 lbs. to be used in shipping or to move goods around a warehouse. Could this be used with autonomous technology to load from a warehouse on to a truck or even unload a delivery to a residence or business?
• GM is also working on electric vertical take off and landing vehicle (EVTOL). Essentially a personal transportation drone. But the pictures shown don't convince me its not better suited to an autonomous package delivery courier.

However you look at it these are things that would be sold to businesses. The end consumer would benefit but I guess my definition of "Consumer Electronics" is a bit narrow.

The shopping malls we used to shop at are closing while Amazon keeps opening new fulfillment centers. We have less of a reason to go on errands when our groceries can be delivered to our house. Many jobs allow people to work from home while our children are doing remote education in the next room. Lobbyist are trying to sway lawmakers to change laws to benefit commerce against some of our basic rights to travel freely or communicate over the airwaves. In the end it may benefit us in some ways but it will definitely impact our world and change the way we live.

Embed

I started writing this blog 7/21/2008. So much has changed I realized this would need a rewrite to make it relevant now. but let me share what I wrote in 2008 as a piece of archeological evidence.

2008 -

Embedded computing has really fascinated me. I have found that the desktop computer as powerful as the one you bought 4 years ago and replaced since then because it was getting slow and clunky, the one that has been taking up that chunk of space besides your computer desk that your current computer now resides in can be built, scaled down, to fit in a cubical box that can fit in the palm of your hand. I know, your saying I don't need another Palm Pilot, or I-Phone or palm top computer. True those are embedded computing systems that serve a specific function as opposed to an end user multi-function device. But what I'm talking about is something that has a small form factor with a bigger purpose in life while carrying a cheaper price tag.

I asked a friend how many personal computers he owned because I knew he was a typical American home owner with a household of perspective computer users. My friend has 2 kids, both teenagers, an active household and he runs a part time business of his own on the side. His answer to me was 2, one laptop and one desktop. His business depends on those computer as well he uses them for personal use. He also shares time on them with his kids too. I probed him a little further to find he had a high speed ISP to get on the Internet and although he wasn't poor by no stretch he was on a budget. His situation was very typical of many folks I run into.

I asked my friend "What if you could buy a couple computers for less than $300 take them home, drop it on your kids desk in their room and tell them to "do your homework"?" I got a big smile out of him. My friend went on to tell me "I could afford that".

Or think about a small business that has 1 computer for each of its employees but all they need is a simple web server to post all of the company's process documentation so that each employee can access it 24/7. The Big Boss goes out buys an embedded PC that runs Apache Web server connected to a $90 UPS to minimize down time and the server backs up its files to an external USB hard drive for disaster recovery. The entire server operation could sit and run from the corner of the bosses desk and as far as anybody would be concerned it would be office decoration.

Computers are getting faster and smaller while we find more to accomplish with them. Our expectations may need to change. I think many people get a warm fuzzy feeling about the tower that sits under their desk while their laptop is meant to be small an portable. Desktop computer sizes are shrinking, servers are being consolidated and our reliance on them is getting stronger. I have a feeling that soon the desktop computer will be nothing more than a nub hanging off the back of your monitor that your network, keyboard and mouse connect wirelessly to. Some folks may need some time to get over that empty feeling they get from no longer being kept company by that whirring fan from that big box that used to sit under their desk that they would kick every time they come into work in the morning and log on.

Present day 2021 - 

Oh how things have changed. What I saw in 2008 makes sense in the evolution of computing now as we look back. Computers were getting smaller and cheaper. It is easy now to imagine getting $300 computing devices although you still wouldn't expect a high performer for that price. A year ago I bought my daughter a tablet that cost $100. It worked so well so I bought one for my wife also even though she didn't really need it. That tablet worked well for both of them. The number of devices that we own and connect to my LAN for internet access has multiplied and I have trouble keeping track.

 When my daughter started 6th grade, as we are dealing with the COVID epidemic that forced school children into remote learning, every kid was given a Chromebook to guarantee continued education. In 2008 that would never have been a consideration.

My thoughts were on embedded computing. The reason I bring up all this other stuff is because embedded is at one end of a large spectrum of computing.  To understand where that fits you need to look at everything to find the gap filled by embedded computing. And the lines get blurred. Mobile computing sits in the spectrum near embedded because they both tend to have similar requirements for small size and low power usage.

Everybody knows about the $35 Raspberry Pi credit card sized computer, or if you don't know look into it. For $10 you can get the Raspberry Pi 0W that is even smaller. Technically these can fall into the embedded class of computer but it depends on how you choose to use them. You can use them as a full desktop computer, or even a tablet with touch screen as well as a stand alone web server/file server on your LAN. There are even these cheap robot kits to add a Raspberry Pi as the brains of the operation.  Just a few added parts and know how you can turn it into anything you want. With many projects out there with full documentation to follow where you don't need an engineering degree to create. The Raspberry Pi kind of created this new class of flexible usage single board computing devices. With other companies creating there own versions of SBCs now you have many options to choose within this new market.

Recently I took apart a $300 laptop. I was shocked to find the motherboard was slightly larger, memory and storage included, than a Raspberry Pi. This amused me but made sense. I didn't look into the architecture used or power usage, it was a full sized laptop with such a compact motherboard that allowed for a large battery that took up the rest of the space that gave exceptional battery life. The form factor of a computer is geared to our usage. Computing is getting smaller and allowing for space in that form factor for other benefits.

At the far end of the spectrum is the server market. Could embedded computing or more specifically the Raspberry Pi cause a change on the other end of the spectrum? It already has, or what is used in the Raspberry Pi has. A Raspberry Pi does not have the computing power to replace a large servers. Raspberry Pi uses ARM processors. For many Data Centers the largest cost to maintain the business is power. It takes a lot of power, cooling and space to run many servers. ARM processors tend to be more power efficient. We are not going to have credit card sized server class computers in the near future. But there are companies working to create ARM based server class processors to take advantage of the benefits of ARM architecture. Less power usage = less cooling required. Also if a smaller size can be achieved, less of a footprint needed in a server farm. All this becomes a big cost saving to run a computing infrastructure.

Computer for a long time kept getting faster. Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. This speaks to speed and size. The more you can pack on a chip less needs to be on the motherboard to support the chip. This is how we get most Single Board Computers start with a System On a Chip (SOC) which is an integrated circuit that integrates all or most components of a computer.

So we may not loose the 1U server form factor I see in our server rooms today but imaging that those 1U servers in our racks could host 4 - 64 core CPU Single Board Computers with 1 terabyte ram baked into each SOC in the most power efficient package working as a cluster with 12 other 1U machines in a single rack.

Automation

 The idea of automation is to create something that will be able to complete a job or part of a job automatically without much human intervention. At one time when I was a kid the there was talk, from what I would have considered technologically ignorant adults, about "robots" that were going to take away our jobs like it was the same argument as immigrants coming to take away our jobs. It comes from a real fear that a cheaper labor source would ruin a man's employability. That may be true.

But another side of the argument is that automation for one thing can free up a laborer for a more important task. A worker on an assembly line works dutifully for years when his employer invests in machinery that eliminates the need for that worker as well as five other employees down steam on the line. This doesn't seem fair and while it does improve the productivity of the factory it doesn't come free. There is still a cost for this new labor, it did take a team of people that developed the machinery, software, upgrades and it will require someone to maintain that machinery. Now that employer had a choice to invest into the costs of machinery verses payroll. The employer could still use that loyal employee in another role that continues to strengthens the business but typically those unprepared workers are swept aside and the search starts for skilled labor in this high tech new world.

In some areas the cost of labor can be cheaper than the investment of expensive machinery. That is something that every business has to weigh out. I've seen video from Chinese factories where there is a lot of machinery but laborers doing tasks in key part of the assembly line that could be replaced by machinery because the labor is cheap and a human in those positions is good enough. A person can be a quick, easy and flexible component to get the job done. Use of a machine may take time to get it setup in place and tuned correctly before it can do the job effectively.

That was all real world hypothetical to paint the idea of automation before I shift to talking about the same thing in other areas like computing. I always heard the example of taking a repetitive task and simplifying by creating a program or script to repeat it for you. This was always difficult for me to accept because I knew about programing and one of the beautiful things about computer programs is the end result can be different and not repeatable. The example of manufacturing is repetitive, or does it have to be? Car manufacturers allow for some customization such as the color of the car, so not every car is built the same. They use a lot of automation in a process that includes data processing and decision making.

Think more like a printer. A printer can print on paper. I send a document to my printer and can tell it to print multiple copies of that document. Or I could send multiple unique documents to print out sequentially. And each document can be further unique by using different size, type or color paper. Each document printed is automatically being created by the printer but each page is a separate product of that printer physically created without human intervention until it is complete and need to be removed from the printer output. It does not require a human to write each letter of the document on the paper. Before the printing press, documents were duplicated by one man writing by hand the words another already put on paper, it required a lot of work until better duplication methods came along.

When I was a kid, before my family bought our first computer, my dad had a typewriter. It was a novel idea but I had problems using it. I tried using it a few times but it was painful for me to use. If I made one mistake the whole page was ruined and had to start over. My thoughts had to be well thought out before I could start typing. That meant writing everything on paper by hand first, make all correction and then be meticulous printing that to paper. It was too much work. It was stupid.

When we got our first computer I realized that we could type and edit a document in the computer's memory before sending to a printer was so much like it should be it was genius. Or you could just save it to a file, the printer wasn't even needed! That was pre-internet for my family but I made the connection with the flexibility of a computer. Also in that moment is an idea of automation to reduce steps and increase productivity. Now we take it for granted to send a quick email instead of digging out the old clunky typewriter from the attic to send a letter that should arrive to the recipient in a few days.

Automation is something that continues to change our environment. So what I say is not to consider using automation to merely reduce costs and increase profits for a few but lets use automation as a way to produce more, bigger and better so we make ourselves stronger as a community.

My thought on Divorce

I watched a youtube video of a celebrity talking about divorce. This celebrity was divorced and talked on the dealing with the difficulties of raising her 2 kids on her own and being alone. I know you are thinking life is definitely different for the rich and famous that fly in and out of marriage, but celebrities are people too. The video was thought provoking to me as someone who has never been in that situation.

Before I was married I did not believe in divorce outside of the most extreme situations. To me it seemed that too many marriages were ending in divorce creating unnecessarily broken families. The concept of divorce seams way too easy of an escape when 2 people can't seem to work with each other. I've had friends tell me that "You don't know what it is like until you are put in that situation". Well I tell you I am in that situation now by being married. It has not been easy but my marriage has survived and continues to survive. We do not have some special bullet proof marriage. The only difference may be the respect we have toward the institution of marriage that we take the commitment to heart to work through our problems.

Now that I am married the thought of divorce makes me anxious. In the US and Canada 40 percent of marriages fail. That is high! For people that are in me and my wife's situation the percentage is more like 90 percent in the first 2 years fail. I should have divorced my wife long ago but I would not have considered it, I didn't do it, I won't, I'm glad I didn't, and it scares me to be without her. Also I REALLY love my wife. Its not an equal partnership and a lot of things are not working the way either of us thought it should, I accept that. Although she is the one to use the D word as a threat to control a situation, I will never say it. I can only control my actions but divorce would never be my choice. I don't believe that it was by chance or that I am lucky, I believe God's hand has been steering the boat in this marriage and I am blessed that my marriage with my wife has lasted. After 13 years I am at a place to be more confident about my marriage and less anxious about our future. I am also at a point in my life that if the worst case happened I would be OK. But what I talk about here has to do with my personal choices that I control, not the things that I cannot control. I take the commitment of marriage seriously, I don't consider throwing in the towel when things are tough. I went into marriage thinking it would take a lot of effort on my part to make it work. I feel the work had a side effect to turn me into a better person. As it turns out much of the work was to make a lot of change in my life that I didn't know was needed and I would have never known if I wasn't married to my wife.

To a larger degree our marriage persists due to God and our beliefs. It relates here but I will save that for another blog.

I have never been divorced. Since being married and having worked through some of the most difficult situation and disappointments my view on divorce has only strengthened. I can almost imagine how bad the heartache of coming out of failed marriage can feel and what it takes to come back from that can't be easy. I don't wish it on anyone.

Today's kids will no longer answer telephones

Today's technology is influenced by what we are familiar with. Ask yourself why does a telephone ring? The answer would be to let you know someone is trying to make contact. It is a communication device and the inventors figured if someone was trying to call there would need to be a way for someone on the other end to be notified. So the best answer to that problem was to add a bell or buzzer of some sort, that will get someones attention.

With radio, there is no need for a bell. You speak into the microphone and if someone hears you out there on another radio and they want to talk, they respond with their voice. Simple. Your voice is your announcement or request to communicate.

Cell phones are really radios that act like a phone. But it could be unsettling to keep hearing voices come from your pocket when you are waiting for a call. But we are conditioned to hearing phones ring so that is OK even if the "ringing" is some annoying song that someone else oddly likes.

Today we have so many different methods of communication. Just try to list them...

phone
cell phone
raido
snail mail
email
text chat
SMS text
Instant Message
Skype
forum post
Facebook
Twitter
Snap Chat

And on I could go on. Many of these technologies can be used to allow 2 or more people to easily communicate simultaneously or at their leisure. The thing is today's adult generation is using many of those in work and our personal lives. But our default will probably be the telephone in its many forms. We all have a phone of some sort. But with the availability versatility of cell phones they seem most popular. Keep this in mind the answer to the following question as I go on, "Do you remember when you saw your parent or grandparent or an older person who was used to using the wall phone for most of their life have difficulty accepting the concept of using a cell phone?" I still know some people refusing to accept using new technology of today.

So here is another question. Why does a cell phone ring? Well technically it doesn't ring a bell. It plays a sound file through a speaker that can be changed. For some people it is the sound of a bell like the old timey telephones of yesterday. But for many they change their "ringer" to something different like a clip from a song or some sound byte that will uniquely identify that someone is trying to make contact through their phone.

But this is about the younger generation. Like the 12 year old kid I was playing a game against on my Xbox that did a very good job trash talking me in the game voice chat and making it funny and enjoyable at the same time. I don't know the kids phone number or his real name. I just know his gamer tag. And somehow I am on his friends list. I'm not his friend, just someone that he plays an occasional online game with. And anytime he sees that I am online he can challenge me to a game. And I accept. Other people may join in on the fun if they like. No ringing telephone. Its more like messages that pop up on screen that invites you into a conversation.

So it will be interesting to see how today's youngest kids will be communicating when they become adults because the older generations before them have become accepting to the many changes that have been happening in our technology today.