Dick Tracy - Eat Our Dust

I remember reading color comics section every Sunday in the newspaper .. One of my favorite main characters was Dick Tracy. Each week to capture the bad guys outsmarting them with his new secret wristwatch phone. As the years passed, the secret is not just a wristwatch phone, but through technology advancements, the phone also had a television screen on it (sound familiar?). Remember this was back in the fifties and sixties when the Dick Tracy was using this type of technological gadgets. With his famous telephone / TV wristwatch, he was always out-smarting crooks and make law and order in the city.

I believe that the technology of strip shows helped fire up the advancements in technology, real world today.

Dick Tracy's wristwatch gadget reminds me of today's cell phones and technology products iPod/MP3 forty years later. Dick Tracy is not popular in the comics and any more, but the technology that was used was getting old, outdated, even. We now have electronic products that are a hundred times better. new technology is as small as a wristwatch, but many more times faster and more capable.

I remember back in the late sixties and early seventies, when cell phones looked quite different from those of today's standards. They were ugly, they were about seven inches long, three to four inches wide and three inches thick. They are also black with white numbers and had a long antenna. To operate your phone, you had to have an FCC license and in addition, can not be used for business or entertainment, only on-site communications. They were expensive, and most phones are used by the U.S. government and utilities. Radio frequencies are bounced from one tower to another translator. Each transfer is taken to make sure that the rules are followed (remember Dick Tracy used a small handheld satellite phone and the TV screen with video capability in the late sixties and early seventies ).

In the late eighties, the federal government started getting pressure from big companies to loosen restrictions on federal airways. Private companies saw the potential of radio waves and many other types of frequencies. They lobbied Congress for the purchase frequency air way. Also remember that Ma Bell was split in the eighties and there are many private companies in competition with others who have purchased the rights to air the way many frequencies, and with the development of technology and digital electronics, with satellite transmission, this soon gave way to the bustling, new mobile phone industry.

with the major advances in digital electronics, increased memory capacity, and the emergence of smaller computer chips, have catapulted all electronic products at a very high level of quality. More features in the electronic products have helped mobile phones are becoming a necessity for everyone. For example, land lines (regular telephone service) opportunities offered are call waiting, caller identification, recording messages, re-dial, a date and time.

Mobile phones today offer the same features as land lines, plus more, for a small fee. Additional features include color digital camera, a list of contacts, calendar, built in recorder, text messaging, music rings, (My daughter is off her cell phone with a special song for each of her frequent caller, my ring is an old song "Big John"). Other features include music downloads, Internet access, e-mail, blue tooth and blackberry features, text, images and video.

I have a phone that has more features than I know how to use. The main thing I use a mobile phone to call or being contacted by friends and family. Another feature that I use is to check my e-mail when I travel. My phone slides in half. The lower half is a miniature keyboard, so you can enter or view pictures or use the Internet screen, even at wide angle. If you want to pay extra money, they can be hooked to digital satellite.

So, if you think about how mobile phones have advanced since the Dick Tracy comic strip, you could say, "Dick Tracy, eat our dust !".