And then the future arrived

In a year's time, pretty much every mid-level and upwards mobile phone will be running a Unix-derived or Unix-like OS. We've got the iPhone OS and Android already, based on BSD and Linux respectively. Then there's Nokia/Intel's MeeGo, Samsung's Bada and HP/Palm's WebOS, all based on Linux. And Research In Motion, the makers of Blackberry, have acquired the realtime UNIX vendor QNX.

If, ten years ago, you'd told me I could not only buy an off-the-shelf UNIX based palmtop, but that I'd be spoilt for choice, I'd have assumed you were daydreaming.

Emancipation

Apparently, Raquel Welch recently wrote a rather negative opinion piece in the Telegraph about the oral contraceptive, which is 50 years old this week. I'll leave it to a a couple of readers of the Guardian to explain what the pill actually meant (and means) for women:

"It was worth it! Reproductive choice, the power to say no in a relationship, the right to choose. An end to the shame and lifelong burden of an unwanted pregnancy, including poverty, secret adoptions, abortions, unnecessary early deaths. I will never forget my mother, born in 1925, tell of her anguish every month of her married life waiting to find out it she had made it through another 28 days unscathed. She had four children that she did not want. For those who want children, the possibility of timing them. The family of choice, not necessity."

The fantasy of moral decline is just that. One cannot deny human nature. What the pill brought about was a measure of equality that has been missing for the duration of history.

"There was always promiscuity - but it was the men who had all the fun. Now women, for the first time in human history, get to call the shots."