{"id":78,"date":"2007-09-26T01:17:55","date_gmt":"2007-09-26T06:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.efsavage.com\/blog\/posts\/21st_century_game_changers\/"},"modified":"2010-10-15T08:27:34","modified_gmt":"2010-10-15T13:27:34","slug":"21st_century_game_changers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/efsavage.com\/blog\/posts\/21st_century_game_changers\/","title":{"rendered":"21st Century Game Changers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A post on the <a href=\"http:\/\/freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com\/2007\/09\/11\/advice-for-a-chronic-late-adopter\/\">Freakonomics blog<\/a> got me thinking.  What inventions have genuinely improved, or even affected, my life.  I drew up a list, and decided to constrain it to the 21st century, so things like the cellphone, the VCR, the CD, the ATM, instant messaging, and online banking aren&#8217;t on the list.  Here they are, and where possible I put the approximate year I adopted them.<\/p>\n<h3>Major Improvement to Daily Life<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Tivo (2000) &#8211; Definitely #1 on the list.  I don&#8217;t consider myself a couch potato, but this completely unshackled me from the network&#8217;s arbitrary scheduling.  It also make more shows enjoyable, or even watchable, by cutting out commercials.\n<li>RSS\/Google Reader (2002, 2005) &#8211; RSS enabled me to keep track of a much broader set of sources, and Google Reader took RSS to the next level by making my subscriptions and unread articles available anywhere (including my phone).\n<li>Smartphone (2006) &#8211; I&#8217;m far more organized now that I have my full contact list and calendar on me at all times, as well as being backed up, plus last-resort internet access is a nice bonus.\n<li>TV shows on DVD (2003) &#8211; There&#8217;s now a new category of TV show, the ones I don&#8217;t even bother to Tivo and just wait for the DVD.\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Minor Quality-of-Life Improvement<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Netflix (2002) &#8211; Like they say, no more late fees.\n<li>Wifi (2004) &#8211; Adopted later than most geeks, has proven useful in many ways.\n<li>Wikipedia (2003?) &#8211; Coming from someone who used to read the encyclopedia for fun, Wikipedia is like crack.\n<li>Text Messaging (2006) &#8211; Late to the game here.  Enables a new layer of communcation and makes me both more responsive and more proactive.\n<li>GPS (2007) &#8211; I waited a while for the price dip, and now consider GPS a mandatory item for my car.\n<li>mp3 player\/iPod (2002\/2004) &#8211; No more discman and CD cases is a good thing.\n<li>Digital Camera\/DSLR (2001, 2004, 2007) &#8211; I&#8217;m too lazy to deal with film.  I got my first digital in 2001, my first nice one in 2004, and my first digital SLR in 2007, each a vast improvement over the previous.\n<li>Firefox (2004) &#8211; Firefox has gone from lightweight security-minded browser to bloated, customizable security-minded browser, both of which I&#8217;ve found value in.\n<li>Eclipse (2002) &#8211; Java wins in my book because of Eclipse.  Having a program that thinks for you enables you to think about the real problems.\n<li>Launchcast (now Yahoo! Music) (2002) &#8211; One of the earliest and still one of the best customized music services.  If you&#8217;re not sold on Pandora and Last.fm it might be because they are are inferior versions of Launch.\n<\/ul>\n<h3>(supposedly) Major Advances, Adopted by Me, Negligible Impact<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Social Networks (2004) &#8211; I use LinkedIn as a sort of resume-light, and myspace to keep up with my sisters, and facebook as the site du jour, but they are all just curious diversions.\n<li>OS X (2005) &#8211; Scores high on sexiness.  Scores low on stability &#038; usability\n<li>XP\/Vista (2003) &#8211; Windows 2000 made computers better and more useful.  XP and Vista seem to just make them slower.\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Major Advances, Unadopted by Me<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>VoIP\/Skype &#8211; I don&#8217;t use landlines.\n<li>Fastlane\/Speedpass &#8211; I still find the ease with which someone can track me disturbing, plus the lines these days are usually shorter at the cash lines.\n<\/ul>\n<p>There&#8217;s probably some that I missed, or just weren&#8217;t important enough to remember.  My main question is, what&#8217;s next to get on the list, and where on the list will it end up?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A post on the Freakonomics blog got me thinking. What inventions have genuinely improved, or even affected, my life. I drew up a list, and decided to constrain it to the 21st century, so things like the cellphone, the VCR, the CD, the ATM, instant messaging, and online banking aren&#8217;t on the list. Here they&hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"simppeli-read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/efsavage.com\/blog\/posts\/21st_century_game_changers\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">21st Century Game Changers<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,21,39,31,41,3],"tags":[37,382,383],"series":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-internet","category-movies","category-music","category-random","category-software","tag-apple","tag-mac","tag-windows"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1AkJt-1g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/efsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/efsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/efsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/efsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/efsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/efsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":357,"href":"https:\/\/efsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/efsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/efsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/efsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/efsavage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}