The Times A-Changin'

I was fascinated by this short story in Newsweek in the last edition. I returned from Ukraine after living there for two years in December 1999. So for me adulthood really began at that time. Well, this "Backstory" in Newsweek shared fifteen media changes that have taken place since 2000. It makes me feel like my childhood and adolescence took place during the stone age or at the very least the horse and buggy age. A lot had changed and it blows my mind thinking Henry is going to grow up with all of these media changes being a normal thing.

1. Active Blogs 2000: 12,000 2010: 141 million

2. Daily Google Searches 2000: 100 million 2010: 2 billion

3. Reality TV Shows 2000: 4 2010: 210

4. Video Game Revenue 2000: $207.88 million 2010: $19.66 billion

5. "Law & Order" Episodes 2000: 223 2010: 905

6. Books Published: 2000 282,242 2010: 1,052,803

7. Daily Letters Mailed 2000: 207.88 billion 2010: 175.67 billion

8. Daily E-Mails 2000: 12 billion 2010: 247 billion

9. Text Messages 2000: 400,000 2010: 4.5 billion

10. Hard-Drive Storage 2000: 10 dollars/gigabyte 2010: 6 cents/gigabyte

11. Clowns [available on-line] 2000: 1,200 2010: 2,700

12. Time Spent Online 2000: 2.7 hrs/week 2010: 18 hrs/week

13. Daily Newspapers 2000: 1,480 2010: 1,302

14. CD Sales Revenue 2000: $943 million 2010: $427.9 million

15. iTunes Download 2000: 0 2010: 10 billion

A few things pop out at me. The world was better with less reality TV not more, I thought there were way more episodes of "Law & Order," I refuse to add to the number of text messages, it's impossible to imagine a world without iTunes, and being a guy with a serious clown-phobia that number is disturbing.