Ever Shrinking Thanks to advancing technology everything is getting smaller and or thinner. It does make one wonder what the future holds for devices. I remember when televisions had tiny screens and were in crate like cases, but people wanted bigger screens so the screens not only grew in size, so did their cabinets. Eventually the screens got even bigger and some were even 100 inches or more but the sets became very thin as time went by. Today a large television is far lighter than the 60 inch Mitsubishi set I used to have. Some of us who are old timers and remember the cars from the sixties remember how big they used to be. I know I liked that and as did plenty of other old timers. It is true they didn’t have the accessories today’s cars have, but they had a lot of room. Today some car companies do not even make family cars anymore and are manufacturing mostly sports utility vehicles known as SUVs. Some are even bigger than the cars of old, and buck the trend of things getting smaller. I remember when some radios came in a stand up cabinet. As time went by the cabinets turned into cases and eventually, they became portable. A few years later Sony created one that fit into your pocket and everyone was amazed. Today no one even needs a radio anymore because you can listen to radio programs over your cell phone and most homes don’t even have a radio. The radio got so small it became an app. When wireless phones came out, they were pretty large with a long aerial and sometimes reception was not so good. They got smaller and the aerial disappeared. Then cell phones came out. The first one was like a brick, and they got smaller and thinner. They kept shrinking until they were able to fit into a watch sized device. Today they are the size they are so we can enjoy a reasonable sized screen, but this could change since holograms are being talked about. They might only need a small projection device and still give us all the convenience of the cell phone we use today. Look what has happened to cameras. They started out as big wooden box like devices which you had to pose for quite a while for, before a photo was complete. Over the years they got smaller and smaller until some became hand held. Then came the digital revolution and cameras no longer used film so when the smart cell phone came along it was able to use the digital process to take photos spelling just about the death knell for the camera for most of us. When computers came out, they filled entire rooms with their massive size. As time went by, they began to get smaller and when they switched over to transistors that was the real turning point. We became able to print transistors on wafers and they were so small we really couldn’t see them with the naked eye. We could only see the chip they were on. This process is continuing today and the central processing chip which contains the transistors and such is still either getting smaller or more transistors are being put onto it. Satellites are another area where things have shrunk. Satellites had to be much bigger and some say more complex than the ones we launch today. As the electronics has shrunk which they use, they either put more capabilities into the same size package or the package shrinks. Today we have a satellite known as a Cubesat which is very small and yet some are very capable of performing the duties of much larger satellites from years ago and sometimes even performing them better or performing more. Today many times we don’t only launch one satellite at a time, but since they have gotten smaller, we can launch multiple satellites at once. Along with computers the devices which attach to them have also shrunk. Take the hard drive for existence. They used to be large and expensive. They were mechanical and many still are, but they have gotten smaller, cheaper and more reliable. As they were getting smaller and more capable, we came out with solid state drives which were even smaller, lighter and some say more reliable. I guess time will decide that issue. We used to listen to records. They started out being a disk about 10 inches in size. Over the years they shrunk down to what is known as the 45. It was smaller having a diameter of 7 inches. As time went by, we got tapes, and then CDs were invented. They used a laser to read the disk and the disc was 4.75 inches. Today we have streaming music which as all but buried the CD. In other words, it has shrunk to nothing. What does the future hold for us with everything shrinking in size? Some believe electronics will get so small and cheap they will be able to be incorporated into our clothing. There will no longer be a necessity to carry any gadgets on us. Then there are the scientists who believe the gadgets will all be able to be placed on a tiny chip and placed under our skin. I personally do not like this idea, but it could become the wave of the future. They might even figure out a way for people to do it themselves painlessly. If antigravity ever becomes a reality, it might eventually be able to be generated by a small device we could hook to our belts and use to fly around without the need for planes and such. I know this sounds absurd, but so did the idea of a smart phone years ago. I also know antigravity has been worked on for years and some say we secretly have it already. There is an exciting future ahead for people as our gadgets get more capable.
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