Phone Evolution

When I was young we had about three or four telephones in my house. I remember at least one being a rotary phone and all of them had cords. As I got older I remember getting our first cordless phone and thinking how cool it was that you could walk around the house while on the phone!
As time went on, there were other changes. I remember coming home from school one day and noticed a tall, odd looking, metal pole stationed not too far from our house. I remember wondering what it could be. Are they building some sort of amusement park ride (it was next to a ball park), is it a temporary support beam, what is it? Come to find out, it was a cellular phone tower and it was blocking our view of the valley! My mom was not happy with the eye-sore and instantly went to work making phone calls (no pun intended) to get the tower removed. I remember her saying "I don't know anyone who has one of these cellular phones. I don't see the point of having this tower so close to all of these homes." At that point cell phones looked like this. Surprisingly enough, with neighborhood petitions and the like my mom was able to get an entire cellular phone tower moved!
A few years later I went off to college, where I sent my first email (but that's a different story) and soon started dating Tom, who had a cell phone. At that time cell phones were just starting to get popular. When we got married I'd call him everyday from the courtesy phone on campus and say "hi" to him at work. Pretty soon his work gave him a cell phone so I inherited Tom's old one. My first cell phone! As time went on we upgraded and not only had one, but soon two phones. "What did we ever do before cell phones" we often wondered. Not only did it seem that 9 out of every 10 house holds had a cell phone, but each spouse had one and their kids each had one! People were no longer using their traditional telephone lines and countries where very few people had phones were now abounding in cell phone ownership as well. Then being used as just a "phone" was not enough, soon they could be used as a camera too. Our newest one is a camera/camcorder/MP3 player/Internet/whatever else it can do cellular phone (with Bluetooth and unlimited texting). For some reason we've held on to the last five phone styles because what are you suppose to do with your "old" cell phone?

It's amazing to look at the evolution of phones (or any other technological invention) and think "where will phones be in another 15 years?"