Even if you try to get away from advances in technology, you will find it hard to do. New ways of doing things that are supposedly more efficient show up everywhere, not just in agriculture. Make no mistake, they’re headed toward your farm. But new high-tech methods for simple things are showing up in society in general, sometimes where you least expect it.

Recently, my wife, Carla, and I did some traveling, heading deep into the heart of Texas. Two glaring examples of finding new technology where you least expect it jumped out. Whether or not this is progress is debatable. The fact that it is happening is undeniable.

How hungry are you?

South of Austin, Texas, and not far from San Antonio is a small, historic, German-based town. Just a few miles off a major interstate, Gruene, pronounced “green,” appears to be a small southern town that time forgot. There is an old-fashioned dance hall that features a saloon. Behind it is the Gristmill, a restaurant located in an old ramshackle building. Once upon a time, it was part of a cotton-ginning operation that began in the 19th century and survived into the 20th century, until a fire shut down the operation and it moved elsewhere.

Once my wife and I were seated in the open-air, old buildings, I looked for a menu. There wasn’t one, at least not one printed on paper.

“You take your phone and pull up the menu off the QR code on that paper taped onto the table,” my wife said.

“Huh?” I answered.

Carla waved her phone over the QR code, and like magic, a menu appeared. I ordered off her phone, and then while waiting for our food, I did something I had never done before. I placed my phone over a QR code and just like it did for Carla, the menu appeared on my phone. I still have no idea how a bunch of dots in a small square on a piece of paper can somehow hold all the information you need to order food, in this case, or to know how to operate a hay baler in other cases.

Like Carla says, “Don’t try to understand it, Tom, just use it.”

High-tech parking

Leave your quarters in your pocket if you pull into a public parking lot just a couple of blocks from the Alamo in San Antonio. You can park there, but quarters won’t do you any good.

Instead, you walk over to an impersonal machine, with no attendants around, and you have a choice. You can go the QR code route again to somehow use a credit card to pay the fee and get a ticket to put in your windshield. Or, as we did, you can use a computer keypad and follow the prompts. Once you place the ticket on the dash, you can see the Alamo knowing your car won’t be towed.

No quarters, no dollars changed hands, no attendants taking money and handing you a ticket. And no wooden arms to go up to let you out or in.

What else is coming? We will find out soon. The only thing we know for sure is that more change is coming, and it may appear when you least expect it!

Comments? Email [email protected].