By Dan Miller
August 11, 2008
Goodness, that was before I was even b.....uhh, well, ok, it was before I was more than a very, very, very small child.
Such a device was simply unheard of back in the 1940s and 50s.
While looking at Dick Tracy comic books as a boy, and seeing that wrist radio, I clearly recall thinking.... "that's so far fetched, it could never happen."
It was the stuff of science fiction.... the stuff of a fertile imagination conjuring up images of things that were simply beyond human capability.
Fast forward to 2008.
A few weeks ago my wife and I decided it was time to upgrade our cellphones.
It was a decision we made reluctantly after hearing so many of our friends and family laughing and pointing fingers, saying things like, "Wow, do those antique cell phones still work?"
or, "Did you get those as a bonus with your 8-track player?"
We now have identical new phones, and while they're not exactly "2-way wrist phones" like Dick Tracy's... they would have made the old boy very proud.
(And by using the past tense there, I don't mean to imply that Dick Tracy is no longer with us. I like to think he's still using his 2-way wrist phone to check on shady looking characters cheating at shuffleboard in Gainesville, Florida.)
Anyhow these new phones are astounding.
Without even dialing, you can simply speak the name of a person you want to call -- and it will call them.
I couldn't wait for my wife Karen to try it.
I knew she'd be impressed.
She held her phone, and I waited across the room with mine.
She spoke clearly and precisely.... "Call Dan" she said.
The virtual voice on the phone's speaker said, "Did you say call Vicki?"
"No" Karen responded emphatically, "call Dan!"
On her speaker we could hear the little beeps of dialing.......
Followed by an answering machine, "Hi this is Vicki."
(That's Karen's friend Vicki, who lives in Connecticut.)
Well, you'll have to admit the names Dan and Vicki are eerily similar, so it's understandable that the phone would be confused.
Despite that little glitch, these phones are beyond anything I could have dreamed of as a child.
They have voice dialing... email access... text messaging... internet access... music downloading... video, TV & radio... voicemail... a calculator... a stopwatch... a calendar... a camera for stills or video... games... instant weather forecasts... sports scores... and countless other features.
I guess these phones have everything you need nowadays to live your life, with the possible exception of a shower and a good, comfortable bed.
They even have GPS for global navigation.
In fact, other than talking on the phone, the GPS is the only feature I've actually used.
Frankly though, I'm a little uncomfortable with the GPS feature since it suggested -- no, it demanded -- that we do a U-turn in the middle of a busy highway.
The bottom line here.... looking at that picture of Dick Tracy's 1946 wrist radio, I'm struck by the sheer vision of the cartoonist who drew it, and how it looks almost identical to my 2008 cellphone.
I guess the only thing conspicuously beyond our best scientific minds is -- how to comfortably attach these things to our wrists.
Oh, and for me, how to operate all these never used features.
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