“Nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide” – Edward Jr. Holland / Lamont Dozier / Brian Holland, Martha & The Vandellas
In part one I left you with a warning. A warning that change is going to happen despite us and we can’t stop it. There is literally nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
Sitting around with friends, reading magazines, listening to music, riding bikes, playing football, playing ding dong ditch, or whatever it was, we were always looking to have a good time. Even if we were just sitting around doing nothing, hanging on the corner, sitting on our skateboards talking about this and that while waiting for another VW bug to go by so we could punch our friend. We made it fun.
The thing we weren’t doing was imagining that one day our very own kids would be hanging out with their friends each on a different couch, in a different house, in a different state playing video games; chatting, playing, live in real time while snap chatting, or insta-posting, tic toking, or whatever it is they do now.
You know how I know what they are doing? Where they are doing it? Who they are doing it with? There’s an app for that! Even that is a decade or so old at this point.
No, we weren’t just lazy, we were very active, very creative, and very imaginative; we had to be or we would go crazy. Sure we thought, “man it would be rad if we could play Atari outside on a nice day like this.” And, that is how it all starts, with a simple thought like that.
What came later from a thought like that was hand held video games. It was probably thought up by some kid once sitting on his skateboard with his buddies on a nice summer day. OK, we had hand held games too, remember the ones with water that you had to try to get the balls in the basket?
I bet RockBand was probably created by kids like us too. Friends hanging out playing air guitar concerts performing to a sold out crowd in their living room, in their tighty-whities no less, maybe even underoos! “All the world’s indeed a stage.”
Yes, we were imaginative kids indeed. Most of that stuff seemed great and awesome, but it seemed like far off, space age, Star Wars stuff. Except it wasn’t because someone, thought “It might sound far off but I can do it!” And they did. That’s the difference. That’s the secret sauce. It’s not some fancy formula. You think it then you do. That’s it.
People who know me, know I say things like “that was my idea”, “They stole my idea”, “If only I did something with that idea”, or “why didn’t I think of that?” That’s the deal. That’s the regret. If only I did. A life of “would ifs.” Unless, you do something about it.
Ideas are a dime a dozen and they are useless unless you do something with them. Remember in part one I ended with “someone has to invent it, why not you?” Be a doer and push us and the next generation forward. Fortunately, and sometimes unfortunately, there are people who did something to push technology forward to make our lives, our work, our hobbies, our free time, better, easier, faster, recordable, traceable, sharable, portable, playable, and so on.
I say unfortunately, because there are times I hate new technology. New inventions. What happened to “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it?” Sometimes I just want to unplug and go off the grid. It’s getting harder and harder to do that because there truly is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
Or is there? Come back next time and see where I’m going with this. Because if you don’t I’ll know. So will everyone else!
Talk Soon,
Kevin W @LEAP272
Owner-Operator
You have to leap if you want to live
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