So far, this is the oldest I’ve ever been.

I am not a mid-life crisis kind of guy. In fact, I am not really the kind of  guy that gets worked up about birthdays, but I have hit a milestone this week. On the 20th I turned 30 which is weird because maybe now people will stop calling “young man.” I still feel like a young man, but more and more I am moving away from those days.

I was born in 1979, an important year in technology one that marked the end of the analog age and the beginning of the digital age. In a recent series by Gizmodo called “Gizmodo ‘79,” blogger Brian Lam wrote in the last post in the series:

“Pretty much every gadget then-from typewriters to phones to music playback devices-was an electro-mechanic artifact of the industrial age. But beginning in the 80s all those tools began their ascent to the digital. Basically, we’d wind up doing everything differently.

Within a couple of years, the music cassettes we listened to turned would become CDs.

The typewriters would become word processors.

The cassette-based telephone answering machines would become digital playback devices.

Our television choices-four or five channels VHF and maybe four or five more UHF-would be bolstered by hundreds of cable channels. We’d get VCR’s. And tape our own videos. All of that in early 1980′s. Then would come the ubiquity of personal computers. And then the Internet. And cell phones. Are you getting the idea?

It was not just a change in our gadgetry, but also a change in our thinking.”

As I get older there are lots of things I think about, but I am more excited to think about how far we have come and wondering what cool things will come next. Most relevant to this post I am excited about the impact and opportunity of this next year. In honor of that, and mostly because I want to copy the Geek Giant I have decided to give away a present rather than get gifts. I was going to give away a book that I love but apparently it is out of print. Instead the first 15 people who comment on this post will get a Threadless T-shirt from me. I will order them next week and send them out as soon as they arrive. 

Please be sure to post your name and a valid email address as well as the size of T-shirt you want I will contact you to find out where to ship it (don’t post your address in the comments!). Oh and be sure to mention whether you want a girlie tee or a guys tee. 

To my loyal audience, thanks for another year.

Jeremiah Andrick