The power of any modern (non-bricked, obviously) smartphone is greater than that of every computer used in all of the Apollo missions combined.

The computers that put human beings on the Moon were basically glorified calculators. Honestly, more than anything, I think that goes to show how insanely smart and resourceful the people at NASA were/are.

Within my lifetime, though:  Back when I was in Jr. High (in the ancient past of the years 1999 and 2000, during the Great Y2K Scare), students were required to bring typed essays to the teacher on 3.5″ floppy disks.

Yes, you see that right, that disk holds 1.44 MB. Your Adele song of choice wouldn’t fit on there without first being horribly compressed. If you can find a computer with a drive that will even accept one, anymore.

Right now, I have one of these in my phone (which is a computer that fits in my pocket and can talk wirelessly to a global network of other computers):

It has 45,511 times as much storage as a single one of those 3.5″ floppies, and it’s the size of my fingernail.

Maybe I’m wrong, but, it feels like I was born at just the right time to both witness and naturally adapt to this technological explosion. I remember computers running out of space on the C: drive and me desperately trying to find a few forgotten, expendable .bmp or .wav files to delete so I could install a game (off of 5-6 of those 3.5″ floppy disks). Now, I could walk into a Walmart and grab an external drive the size of a deck of cards that can hold 2 terabytes for less than $100.

Admittedly, I tend to take this all for granted when I don’t think about it, which is why I try to think about it, and you should, too, because it’s fucking amazing.

Man, I remeber THESE floppies (which were actually thin and floppy hence the name) Admittedly they were already out-dated when I was a kid. 

These majestic beasts can hold like 250 KB.

Found one in a drawer many years ago and I still have it as a memento. 

I remember the 5 inch floppy disks.

I remember when are Apple computer was such a big deal that we had to sign up for time to be on it and we couldn’t use it more than once a week. It was used as a reward, even.

So yeah I agree with the OP’s point that being born in a transitional time between technologies is actually really cool because it means that I have gotten to experience the lack of the things that make our lives so cool and so connected.

I don’t think I’m wrong in thinking there a lot of people my age ( I’m 38) get really frustrated with older people telling younger people that technology is disconnecting them for that the things that they do with that technology or trivial. We were around the counter stuff but we all wanted it, we all wished it was true, we all saw the ways in which kind of thing could change our lives for the better but we didn’t have access to it yet.

It makes me angry to see younger people getting shit on for using technology too much. All I see are people who are able to use the technology that I wished had existed at the time.

It takes a twisted old fuck to wish away things that make life so much better just because they don’t understand how people benefit from it.