In 1976 I listened to Peter Frampton's "Do You Feel Like We Do?" on a
little radio made of hard black plastic and silver grillwork. An
intricate little machine, powered by a 9V battery. A network of holes for
the speaker. You could unfocus your eyes and refocus in such a way that
the holes were combined with other holes, and it was like a 3D type
thing. Put your finger in there, and it was floating in holes.
     Out the window, the smoggy goddamn sun — it was so goddamn smoggy
that year. You'd go outside and play all day, and come in with your lungs
hurting like you'd been smoking. But most days were okay, and who cared,
it didn't seem to damage anything...it was gone the next morning.
     Cheap-ass transistor radio, though most dear to a child, to bring
music with him anywhere, unless the battery ran out and there wasn't
another one in the house.
     Nearly 30 years later I just downloaded it over M——- and am
listening to it in perfect digital detail on my unremarkable computer
speakers — it's a little thing on my hard drive, a little tiny digital
organism coiled somewhere in the massive, quickly-turning-ordinary
technology cumulative of those 30 years.
     "Hey, Jeff," I say to the kid of 30 years ago. "Some day every human
being will have a computer, and all of us will be hooked up to a computer
network over which we'll get news and information of all kinds. Including
the music you're listening to right now on that tinny little paper
speaker!"
     "No shit," I'd say to me, knowing I'd had that certainty ever since
reading my first science fiction novel. "What about moonbases n shit?"
     "Uhhh...no."