Technology

In the 1970s, Americans adopted a hedonistic lifestyle. The technology that helped power the attitude they had has matured into the cool technology we have today, the one most of us take for granted.
Ping Pong
Every year hundreds of millions dedicated gamers spend billions of dollars (all together) on what has become a national obsession, video games.
The monster success of this multibillion dollar industry can trace its origin to a simple blip of an icon that's completely 70s, pong.
Before the video game "pong" there was a video game called ping pong. In 1966 Ralph Baer, the brainchild television engineer, came up with the idea of a device that would allow people to play games using their television sets. Two years after, Baer and several associates completed the construction of a prototype. They called it the "the brown box." It stored 128 kilobytes of memory, equivalent to one page Microsoft word document. It was enough brain power to generate simple shapes. In, 1968, using these simple shapes, Baer's team came up with an idea that helped create entertainment renaissance. A series of circuits controlled ping pongs game play, when the ball appeared to come in contact with a paddle, an electronic signal was sent to a logic circuit that triggered an output signal so called flip-flop switch. The signal caused the flip flop to alter its state and change the direction of the ball. This occurred every time the ball touched a paddle or a wall. In the beginning, the game lacked some fundamental elements. For example, it did not have sound or a score counter. In 1970, Baer licensed his brown box to TV manufacturer Magnavox.

It evolved into "pong." A young engineer named Nolan Bushnell designed one of the first arcade games. Bushnell recognized the potential of "ping pong" and went on to create an arcade version of it called "pong" with his new company called Atari.

Polaroid

In the early 1970s, most photographers had to send the film they shot, away for processing. In 1972, the polaroid corporation released the sx-70, it would take out the picture you took and you would be able to see it in a matter of seconds.

Americans would spend so much money on film and they would hardly spend money on what they actually needed like soap and shampoo.  

The sx-70 was sold for over $200.00 which is around $900.00 today.

How did it work?

As the film would exit the sx-70, it would pass through two rollers that burst a pod of chemicals spreading them across the negative while the image was developing a so-called opacifier, a highly colorized dye mixed in the chemical pod shields the negative, acting like a liquid darkroom door. The opacifier absorbs all ambient light. After sixty seconds the picture is processed and the pacifying dye becomes colorless gradually revealing the image as if it is magically appearing before your eyes.

Trans Am 455

Trans Am 455 super duty, 1973. The most powerful muscle car of the decade, muscle car and more. These were THE muscle cars, nothing could have topped them. It had a Firebird emblem on the hood which was and eye-catcher, what was under the hood of the Super Duty blew away competition. It would go from 0 to 100 in just 10 seconds. In 1975, their horsepower dropped to 200. In 1977, the car dame out in a movie called "Smokey the Bandit" and their production doubled, the public was enamored with the car, everyone wanted it. Sales went through the roof.

In 1977 & 1978 Pontiac sold over a hundred and fifty thousand Trans Ams. The Trans Am model was sold up until 2002. It is a collectors item today and it is worth $40,000.

Today
Technology is only going to keep getting better. Styles are going to be changing and things will be more advanced. Children, teenagers, adults, everyone uses technology. Now, technology is doing both good and bad things. Laptops are more advanced and help kids in school, with their homework, and much more. It also helps teachers, it makes it easier to teach, books are not needed all the time, you can make PowerPoints and you don't need to be writing things down on a board. All of this can be bad because it makes us lazier. We don't use our brains as much as before. Now we have a really smart phone that can give us directions, or it includes a calculator so whenever you come across numbers you can use that instead of having to think a little. It can come in pretty handy of course and if you are lazy (like me) it may seem like the best thing ever created. But all this social media and all these new games take time away from us. A lot of people don't spend time with their family because they'd rather be on their phones listening to music or watching videos about a bunch of random stuff.
Things are getter smaller, thinner, and smarter. Nearly everything now is touch screen. Whether we like it or not, we need technology around. It helps us so much and it is an amazing thing. We need it more than we know. Although it does has its ups and downs, it definitely makes things a lot easier. Things would be different without but I think it'd be better to keep things the way they are now.