Technology + Innovation = Love?

This post has been in the works since Oct. 16 05, can you believe it? I thought today would be a fitting day to finally go ahead and finish it, since it's Valentine's day.

What do technology and innovation have to do with love? Well, at least in my personal life there's a small connection, but let's go back in time a bit before we get to it, shall we?

Do you remember when you saw your first computer? (my good friend Marco asked that in his blog last year :) Oh, yes, do you even remember your first email? I recently found out that "email" "was born" the same year I was born: 1971. Exactly 34 years ago last October, according to some newstories.

Anyway, I don't really recall the first time I saw a computer. I don't think it was too long before my dad bought our family's first computer, in January 1994. It was a 386 ( or would it be 486? ) and I immediately started using MS Word (absolutely clueless in the beginning, since I never read a manual or took a class). The computer was very useful, because 1994 was my last day of college, and up to that point I had only handed out handwritten papers (!!), and I was finally able to type and print out my papers. It was also great to organize the list of people to invite to our wedding, in December that year (we sent out over 400 invitations!!). Well, as you can imagine, I was astounded once when I learned that my Californian department colleague who had a geeky dad had received her first computer as a birthday gift around 1984!

It took me two more years to "be introduced" to the internet. It was only in 1996 when we moved to the U.S. that I went online for the very first time. It was some day in early September 1996, and I was delighted to be able to read newspapers and magazines from Brazil and send email to my brother and a handful of friends in Brazil who already had email accounts. The most thrilling moments were those in which we were able to talk "live" with my brother and my husband's best friend in a DOS program, affiliated with "Pine," a world-wide system of communication between universities (I should say that I used my university email in "Pine" until 2001, when I finally started using the web-based university email). It took us another two years to buy our first computer (a Gateway that cost us almost 3k!), in September 1998, the month I started graduate school. We still use the same monitor, even though we updated the computer when we moved to Philly 1 1/2 year ago.

Some other technological or innovational "developments" in our lives in chronological order are (so you can see, we're slowly leaving the status of "technologically challenged" behind):

Mini-DV video camera - we got one on April 2002 to be able to capture our newborn in video.

Laptop - February 2003. We still have the same one, though now it's way too heavy compared with the new ones. We badly need another one.

Digital camera - on May 2003, before a trip to the Grand Canyon and 6 other National Parks. I was not that "late"– but we were without one for over 1 year of 1^st son’s life). It was the best thing that happened to our finances, since I'm a photo fanatic, and would develop several rolls of film every month :)

Cell phones - it was only in April 2004 (before our second son's birth, and our move to PA) that we finally succumbed to cell phones. I have no idea how we could live with them before :)

DVD player - 2004, before then, we watched DVDs only in our computer(s).

OK, and now I get to the "love" part... even though I'm sure this will be completely silly, and it doesn't really have to do with technology and more with internet-related "innovations."

When we lived in MA, there was a very nice local video-store where we could get tons of international films, in addition to the Hollywood staples, and they even had a 5 DVDs or tapes for 5 dollars for 5 days promotion for old releases (awesome, no?!). After we moved, however, we never watched videos anymore. Of course having a young baby who didn't sleep a long stretch in the beginning of the night as our oldest son did was not very helpful either :)
But then last October we decided to sign up for Netflix for the first time, and I was delighted to discover wonderful, marvelous films that I had never seen! Most of them have to do with love (see?).

The very first film we got, I had wanted to see for over a year (just too bad I didn't wait until Christmas) - Love, Actually - I liked it was OK (I'd thought it would be a more "serious" film than it actually is), but it introduced me to a WONDERFUL singer, that I didn't know both because I grew up in Brazil and because she's not from my generation: Joni Mitchell. I bought the very same album that the Emma Thompson character got as a gift in the film: Both Sides Now and I've been addicted to it ever since. I'm listening to it as I type this, together with Sting's ...all this time (which's also awesome - particularly the DVD, coincidentally shot on Sept. 11, 2001).

Now for my favorite films EVER (until now, that is :) Again I have to thank my friend Marco for writing about these movies in his blog: Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004). Talk about great, awesome films about (romantic or not) relationships, love, and related subjects. They're not movies for everyone, I guess, since there's not much "action," but if you like dialogue-based movies and intellectually challenging and tought-provoking conversations, these films are for you. So, now you have my film picks for Valentine's Day, and you know how come I think my own "technological" advances have brought me to LOVE-ly movies (and music)!

P.S.1 Technological advances that we have not yet embraced: ipod or mp3 player (we really want to have one, though), TiVo (OK, we don’t even have cable :), and the new breeds of tvs (we really don't value TV too much, so those will take a looong time to get to us).

P.S.2 I forgot to mention CDs (I grew up with Long Plays, "LPs" and later, when a teenager, cassete tapes). Me and my husband bought our first CD-player and CDs when we visited the U.S. for the first time in 1993.