Dick Tracy Never Had It This Good!

WHEN I WAS A KID, my friends and I were in awe of a comic strip detective named Dick Tracy who had a miniature two-way radio watch on his wrist that he used to talk to his colleagues. It was all fantasy 50 years ago, but today it seems everyone has a cell phone and a Palm Pilot doing things that Detective Tracy only dreamed about. The idea of a stranger on a train passing information in a split second via the infrared port on her Palm Pilot to another stranger on another train aiming his Palm Pilot at hers is proof enough we're living in the early 21st century.

Other dreams have become startling reality. Lugging around many pounds of 78 rpm records that housed Richard Wagner's "Ring," one swooned at the idea of carrying all of that music in the palm of one's hand. Now, that is possible with CDs. Watching movies at the local cinema, one barely could imagine what it would be like to have copies of cherished films and play them at home in a miniature theater. Now, DVD and HDTV make all of this possible.

The idea of a video phone has been with us for decades, but now, with the computer and digital cameras, we can send live pictures to relatives and friends, and the old photo album is an electronic smorgasbord. The electronic equivalent of the oversized leather address book and appointment calendar now fits in a pocket. Portable TVs, MP3 players, and the old favorite boom box reconfigured in smaller yet louder packages let us take entertainment anywhere we want to be.

One company that always offered watches that did a lot more than tell time, Casio, offers a wrist audio player, which holds 16 megabytes of music (about half an hour at CD-level sound quality) that connects to your PC through a USB port so you can transfer music files from your hard drive. Another one of its products is called PCUnite, a personal-digital assistant watch that holds addresses, phone numbers, and appointments. It can swap data with your PC or Palm Pilot through its infrared port. Or there's a Wrist Cam watch that not only tells time, but is a digital camera that stores about 100 pictures in its memory banks. And the Global Positioning System watch tells you exactly where you are via satellite and tracks you as you move about. If you punch in where you want to go, the watch will tell you how to get there and how long it will take you. If your kids ask, "When will we get there?," you can give them an answer within a moment.

The real question is: How do all of these 21st-century gizmos improve a life? Most of us don't know how we managed before copy machines and computers. Some of us feel naked without our Palm Pilots to tell us what to do and when to do it during a busy day. Once you've bought a cell or car phone, you can't imagine what life was like before you had one. Instant communication. For this worried husband, the car phone has saved many an ulcer or possible heart attack by keeping constant track of a wife driving alone. Those of us with long commutes find such a phone invaluable in making use of what otherwise would be wasted time. And e-mail has made it possible to keep in touch at our pace and on our time schedule. Crumpled photographs in wallets were never as effective as digitized pictures sent over the Internet in seconds to happy parents and grandparents. And seeing a sick friend on a computer video phone thousands of miles away makes the conversation even more personal and satisfying.

There are some out there who still long for purple carbon paper, manual typewriters, and rotary telephones. There are some out there who worry that all of these infrared and microwave devices are going to give us brain tumors and other horrible illnesses. There are some out there who think the computer and all of its handheld derivations are dangerous toys destroying true knowledge and privacy. There are some out there who believe the glut of music and movies will destroy the written word, resulting in a world of self-satisfied ignoramuses.

These are the same pessimists who have complained about every new invention that has become popular. Their 20th-century ancestors insisted that the mass-produced penny press was corrupting civilization and rotting the brains and eyesight of working people; that radios were destroying the peace and sanctity of the home--giving women strange and dangerous ideas; and that TV was downsizing the brains of all who watched it, damaging fragile eyes, and even causing cancer.

What all of these inventions so damned by other generations have in common is that they opened up new worlds to millions of people without discrimination as to wealth, power, or geography. These inventions make democracy viable in the 21st century. Today, the World Wide Web and Internet, for example, even with all of their indiscriminate information and trivia, are giving more people the opportunity to learn and discover than any invention in history. If knowledge is power, these inventions have given the power to most of the people--at least until those who control governments and businesses harness the inventions to their own profit.

The idea that anyone, regardless of race, color, creed, or status, can listen to Beethoven, watch "Citizen Kane," or have a conversation with anyone in the world is a wondrous concept that overwhelms the petty criticisms of the elite who simply do not like anyone but themselves to enjoy the art, culture, and knowledge available in the 21 st century.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Joe Saltzman, Associate Mass Media Editor of USA Today, is professor of journalism, University of Southern California Annenberg School of Journalism, Los Angeles, and associate dean of the Annenberg School for Communication.