It’s a safe bet that most of us won’t be going to the store as often in 2004 to get a roll of film.
The decline of film photography and the growing dominance of digital photography already have happened. For the first time, high-quality professional digital cameras can produce pictures that are indistinguishable from what you would get with a 35 mm film camera.
While professional digital cameras have been able to do this for a while now, the same sort of quality shift is happening with consumer digital cameras.
Prices also are reaching the sanity level.
If you don’t yet have a really nice digital camera as well as an inkjet printer that can be used to make photographic prints, now’s the time to make the leap.
If you can afford it, get a camera with 5 megapixels or more of resolution. (Digital cameras produce a picture using tiny dots of light called pixels. The more pixels the better. Even a 3-megapixel camera can produce images that are photo-shop quality at 5 by 7 inches and even some really nice 8 by 10 prints.)
Bargains ahead
This also will be the year when prices begin to fall for the big wide-screen televisions. Plasma TVs — those hang-on-the-wall marvels — will drop from the $6,000 range by a thousand dollars or so. But if your heart is set on plasma, I suggest you keep your wallet in your pocket. By 2005, the thin-screen TVs will get really affordable.
I have a second reason for suggesting the wait. Within a year or two, other technologies — including LCD (liquid crystal diode) and others — will offer something that has some advantages over plasma screens of today. Let the technology shake out a bit when it comes to thin screens.
But you can go ahead and get a wide-screen high-definition TV. The bargains are going to be in the old-fashioned type that use a cathode ray tube (a picture tube). That’s OK.
In fact, it’s great. You’ll see real price breaks on these TVs, and they offer a digital picture that is clearer and has truer colors than most plasma screens.
Cellular telephones will continue their evolution into becoming pint-size computers that also can place a call.
Some of you will be kicking yourselves when it comes to cellular phones in 2004. You rushed to the store and locked yourself into a two-year contract in the weeks after it became possible to change carriers and keep your old number. Heck, you wanted a free phone and couldn’t wait.
Cutthroat competition will heat up in the first part of 2004, creating some unbelievable cellular deals. If you’re in a long-term contract, you only can hope that your carrier will let you change the contract terms in exchange for extending the life of the contract. Luckily, that probably will happen.
The cellphone you use will change. Features like the ability to browse the Internet’s Web and built-in wireless e-mail — already available at extra cost — will become standard with many calling plans.
Cellular safety
I have a cellular worry too. Remember when cellphones first became common and some scientists said there could be a link between cell usage and brain cancer? Those fears were pretty much discredited. But keep in mind that, in those early days, we didn’t spend as much time talking on a cellphone.
Obviously I can’t know this, but as our time on the air with a cellphone increases, justified health worries might crop up again. I know people who don’t even have a wired phone. So they spend a huge amount of time talking on the cell.
My advice: Get a plug-in earpiece with a microphone and keep the cellphone away from your head. Even if I’m wrong about radiation, it’s sure a lot safer way to use the cellphone in the car. One way or another, it could save your life.
Here’s another techno-fear of mine: Viruses, spyware and other menaces are increasingly common on the Internet. Any home user who does not have a firewall and an anti-virus program is walking around with a virtual “kick me” sign on his back.
OK. Enough with the fears and worries. Let me end with my hope for 2004.
There have been real advances in the labs over the past few years, with technologies that may someday let the blind see and the deaf hear.
I’m not talking about technologies that researchers dream about. The first crude efforts are reality. While the first efforts may not — for instance — let a blind person enjoy a movie, the technology may help him distinguish a wall from a tree.
As cool as MP3 players are, as wonderful as it is to be able to talk to my mom while walking down the street, these coming technologies really could change the world, one person at a time.
