CRESTVIEW — The years 2020 and 2021 have been interesting, to say the least. However, during this pandemic we have put technology to good use. We now have many meetings and services available by telephone or the internet.
Meetings are now regularly held by way of Zoom and connect people all over the world. Churches now broadcast their services online, by Zoom, Facebook, YouTube or other technologies.
I attended Bible study on Zoom last year and it saved me almost two hours of driving each Wednesday. I now am leading a Bible study on Zoom with ladies from as far away as the United Kingdom and in many different states here in the US. How fortunate we are to have this technology at our fingertips.
I realize children, teens and young adults are much better with technology than I am, and I find it interesting to see how much the world has progressed technologically.
Back in the late 1990s, when I worked for the school district in California, we had meetings by satellite. We would reserve the conference room, invite attendees to our school district and when it was time, we'd dial to the correct frequency and pray it would work correctly.
If it was a windy day or there were sunspots or rain, the conference was cut short due to technical difficulties. Now with Wi-Fi, we can have Zoom up and running and the outside elements don't affect it much. I remember many conferences being cut short because of difficulties.
Think of the many ways that technology makes our lives easier. With computers we can now bank online with services available from paying our bills, checking our balance and making account transfers. We can send instant emails to others around the world and even have the ability to chat with others instantaneously. This type of technology was not available to the general public in the 1980s and 1990s.
We have "smart" technology for our cell phones, our door bells and home security cameras, as well as "smart" watches that do almost anything our cell phones can do. You can set alarms, answer your cell phone, set up apps and more with a smart watch.
My paternal grandmother was born in 1896 and lived to be 99 years old. The changes she saw in her lifetime were phenomenal.
She saw electricity installed in most people's houses, indoor plumbing, heaters and electric stoves being used rather than wood stoves and ovens. There was also the telephone, which was installed in many homes, the rise of vehicles for the common household as well as air travel.
When she was born, her family's mode of transportation was by horse and buggy. In 1895 streetcars were introduced in Los Angeles, where she was born. Going from streetcars to rockets in one's lifetime is amazing.
We can now throw a load of laundry in our automatic washing machine, attend a Zoom meeting and after the meeting throw the clean clothes into the dryer. Years ago, it took an entire day to wash the laundry and hang it out to dry, then another day to iron it all. Now we have permanent press fabrics and clothes dryers that sense how dry the clothes are getting and turn themselves off so the clothes don't wrinkle.
We are truly living in an interesting era. Never have we had the amount of gadgets to help us with so many of our everyday tasks and never have we had our privacy so exposed to others.
Guard your privacy and your passwords and stay safe!
Janice Lynn Crose, a former accountant, lives in Crestview with her husband, Jim; her two rescue collies, Shane and Jasmine; and two cats, Kathryn and Prince Valiant.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: HAPPENINGS: How technology has changed our lives