One Technological Revolution After Another

This piece is a personal reflection rather than home-upgrade news, so there isn't a program, deadline, or rebate to act on here. The writer, a retired NASA meteorologist now in his 80s, looks back at a lifetime of technology shifts he's watched firsthand: transatlantic ship crossings giving way to jet travel, slide rules giving way to calculators and then smartphones, film cameras giving way to digital ones, and encyclopedias giving way to internet search and now AI chatbots.

The one thread that touches homeowners thinking about their own energy choices is his experience driving electric cars almost exclusively for the past 12 years. He notes that EV adoption is now common in Norway, Finland, Sweden, and China, while many drivers in his part of northern Wisconsin still stick with gas cars. He also describes trying out Tesla's "Full Self Driving" software and the Grok AI assistant built into his car, though he's uncertain whether self-driving technology will ever fully deliver on its promise.

There's no new rebate, incentive, or rule change here that affects your house or your utility bills. It's simply one person's account of a lot of change over a long life, offered as a reminder of how quickly things once considered ordinary — steamships, slide rules, encyclopedias, gas cars — can become obsolete.