Things to ponder on my birthday...

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Today I turn a half century old and as I reflect on my life so far, I contemplate the changes the world has gone through since I was born. When I was born, very few people had TV's, and even fewer had color TV's. Telephones were all black, and had dials on them. You had to dial the operator to make a long distance call. Tobacco companies were major advertisers and sponsored many of the television shows we watched. A computer was something the government used, and it was as larger than the house I live in now. Kids did what they were told, and were expected to be seen and not heard. Men went to work and supported their families, women stayed home and took care of the household and very few people got divorced. A car phone was a luxury that only the rich had, and regular folks only knew about them because Perry Mason had one in his car. Most movies were in black and white, and on Saturday mornings, cartoons were on till lunch time. Everybody went to church, and most people never travelled more than 50 miles from home in their lifetimes. The average salary was about $75 a week, in the US, and most employers provided health benefits for their employees. You had to be 21 to vote, to live in your own place and to drink or get married, although you could do the last two with parental consent. Now 50 years later, I marvel at the things we take for granted that were just so much science fiction in 1957, when I was born. Man has walked on the moon, and we have a spacecraft that is sending NASA information from outside our solar system. Students can attend virtually any college they please without leaving their homes via the Internet, something that was only a tiny idea in 1957. Instead of spending hours on the phone talking with friends, teenagers spend hours on their cell phones texting with friends. The list goes on and on, but as I ponder just the evolution of mankind in the past 50 years, I wonder how much of what our ancestors thought impossible will be obsolete in another 50 years. What will cars and computers be like? Will our homes be like those of the Jetson's, or will Artificial Intelligence try to take over the world like in Asimov or Bradbury novels. Will we have colonies on moons and planets in our solar system, or maybe even travel to other solar systems or galaxies? There's no way to know for sure, but I hope I live another 50 years so I can find out.