My interest in communication technology goes back to the 1960’s influencing my choice of career in the Radio and Television Industry. I later became involved in Amateur Radio and would clear off in an old Hillman Imp weighed down with radio gear just to see how far the signal would reach.
However, one year in particular is etched on my memory, 1981. It was in that year that my first computer came on the scene, the good old Sinclair ZX81. That was quickly followed by my first ( legal) CB Radio. In that one year my love of computers and mobile communication technology was born.
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In a short time the ZX81 gave way to the BBC computer which in turn was replaced by a succession of PC’s. The CB was replaced in 1983 by my first mobile phone, a simple device which just made phone calls and needed the battery recharging twice a day!
Next came phones that offered SMS, then WAP followed by a very cut down mobile version of the internet. Now I have a device that seems to do everything but make a cup of tea. Where will it end, what is waiting round the corner? The internet is full ideas and rumours as to what the next great thing will be.
In the technical world there is an assumption that each new device will be better than the one before. Adverts no doubt will try to persuade us that we cannot cope without this or that latest gadget.
But what about the most technically advanced device on the planet – human beings – have they improved with each successive generation? People would like to think so and our Victorian forebears certainly believed it to be the case. After all, hadn’t Darwin shown this to be true? Well, not really, it was simply people reading into Darwin what they wanted to believe. It is interesting to note that the Victorian idea of the evolutionary pinnacle seemed to be white, protestant and male!
Some people know that my other passion in life is history, not just reading about it but as far as possible re-creating it. The more I read and the more I put things into practice, the more I become to realise that the lives of the people I try to recreate were no different to mine. I may have the ‘advantages’ of technology, but I have discovered that peoples’ reaction to the hopes and fears of life remain fairly constant whatever the age.
That is why I find the Bible and its message important. However far I go back in its page I see in the life of its people many of my own characteristics. They may have dressed differently to me, spoke a different language, but they knew all the emotions, all the hopes and fears that I feel in this 21st century. Because of this the message of the Bible stays constant and up-to-date. It is as relevant to now as it was millenia ago. My copy may now be found on my iPhone rather than bound between covers of black leather but the message is the same: one constant in a changing world
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