It's amazing the capacity of our memory for trivial detail - particularly when that detail is associated with music. We spent a good part of yesterday sorting through old cassettes, most of which originated in the 80s. Bands like Nirvana, Depeche Mode, Men without Hats, Rick Springfield, Honeymoon Suite, Led Zeppelin all mixed together and it was amazing that you could play a tape of a song you haven't heard in 10 or 15 years, and still remember all the lyrics. We even found a copy of Bob & Doug McKenzie's "Take Off" on one of the compilation albums!

Also brought back lots of other (particularly) 80s memories. You know, I'm not even old enough yet to start a sentence with "In my lifetime...", but, in my lifetime - as short as it has been - I remember my parents first buying a microwave (one of those ones that was the size of a small dishwasher!), VCR, and computer, which was a Commodore 64 of course. My father purchased it when I was in grade 10 I think and I remember him coming home from buying it (at Zellers of all places if I remember correctly) and saying "I paid $200 for this computer, so you'd better use it!" And I of course felt quite intimidated at the time since I had no idea how I would fulfill that imperative since I had no idea what to do with the thing! But man! What a feeling of accomplishment when I learnt Basic and wrote my first simple program. Sorting through our cassettes reminded me of my first computers class in high school since we actually stored our data on cassette - we didn't have floppy drives till my second year. Computers seemed a lot simpler then, even if I did struggle to avoid looping in the program I tried to write for my final project.

But then I had kids and I really didn't come back to computers until I went back to school, and by then, the things they could do were mind boggling and still confuse me at many turns... (as anyone in my address book discovered this week - I'm still pretty embarassed about being caught on that one)

I also remember buying my first CD player - first anniversary present to ourselves (first marriage), and first cell phone - yeah, one of those ones that was the size of a small dog! Let alone laptops and the internet....both of which I don't think I could imagine living without...anymore than I could imagine life without a TV or a microwave.

But the pace of change in just the last thirty years is nothing compared to what I'm sure my children will see in the same amount of time.

I wonder what the ever accelerating pace of change will do to us... some people just don't respond well to change... and even those who handle it better than others still like things to remain stable for a time. There are a few things that you'd like to be able to count on in your life. Other than of course death and taxes. Will we adapt to such changes, or will it continue to alienate people from each other? Will things become more gray, or will we revert into some kind of dystopian image of the future in which white becomes whiter and black blacker and there is no middle ground? Maybe I've just read too many apocalyptic books.