Has anyone noticed how difficult it is to get a wow!' these days?

This thought came to me when I heard my daughters discussing some new hi-tech equipment that has become all the rage. Even though it was able to both identify your current location and guide to any postal address in the country they were only slightly impressed.

I am part of an age group where such a thing deserves a loud and hearty wow!' Maybe it's because my generation witnessed not only the first human to walk on the moon, but also the even more spectacular feat of moving from black and white TV to colour. We grew up in an exciting age.

When I tell my daughters that there was a time when we didn't have a telephone in the house and that the first one we had, circa 1968, was on a party line meaning that we shared it with another family in the village, they think that I am prehistoric.

When I describe the process of having to actually get up from the chair in order to change the channel on the TV manually they laugh at me as if we had only just discovered fire.

The girls look at the movement of current technology with a sense of expectation rather than excitement. To them being able to store one thousand songs on an item no bigger than a pen is normal. To me it is amazing because in my day that would have been upward of 80 LPs and taken up most of the free space in my car.

The girls have a similar response to quiz shows on TV. I was brought up on Sale of the Century and Bullseye where the winnings were usually modest and even the star prize was the cheapest of cars. We now watch Deal Or No Deal and mock the contestant for ONLY winning £18,000.

The change from black and white to colour was such a marked event in my life that I can still remember the day I first watched a colour TV. We were invited to the house of a family in the village who had their own business and thereby seemed, to my limited understanding, rich.

In truth, the dad drove a coach and worked long hours to ensure that his family had a few more luxuries than most. We arrived after school had finished and huddled with pop and biscuits around the laminated wooden box that contained this new delight.

As soon as the theme tune from The Beverly Hillbillies started we giggled with excitement but were soon silenced by the fact that the episode was filmed in black and white.

Talk about disappointment. We popped in the next day to look at the test card, which had now been produced in colour, and marvelled at the still image of a girl sitting near a chalk board.

When we finally got our own set a couple of years later a good deal of the programmes were being filmed in colour and so our need for the test card was reduced. We now had our own reason to say wow'.

That was until I went to another friend's house and found that he had a set with a remote control. Sure, it was on a long wire that stretched around the edge of the room, but just the fact that you could sit in your chair and decide what you wanted to watch was amazing.

Think of the choice. Think of the relaxed evenings watching your favourite sitcom. Think of the arguments that would be solved about whose turn it was to change the channel. I was sure that this new invention would save many families from internal war. Of course, now we argue about who gets the remote control.

I think my generation have been conditioned into being amazed because of the changes we saw in our youth. As for my children, they just seem to accept change as part of their ordinary lives.

I feel sorry for all those designers of new technology. It is so difficult to get a wow!' these days.