About 8 years ago, I read a piece about how that year’s crop of Freshman College students had lived such a different life from their parents’, in the sense of rarely, if ever, having used vinyl albums and record players, Beta or (even VHS) VCR’s, or any rotary dial telephone. I wish I would have kept that article, because so many terms have hit our vernacular since then, it makes the freshman class of 2007 even that much more removed from past generations.
How many times a day-or week-do you use the term “blog” or “google”? Perhaps not that much, but I bet you say “cell” a lot more. If someone used those words 10 years ago, they would have been looked at strangely. A cell, after all, is the most basic structure of nature, or what holds people as prisoners. Aha!! Now I can see the similarity between those definitions and our phones of today! (Think about it.)
What about email? That only came into being less than 10 years ago. That means, for the 65% of the population of us who are baby boomers or older, we lived the majority of our lives thinking in terms of envelopes and stamps. Heck, 25 years ago, we thought a toll free number to call was the height of convenience, since it saved us postage! Just the idea of being able to zap a message to someone across the world that they’d get immediately would have been staggering to us 15 years ago, let alone 50.
On the news yesterday, someone was describing how he uses his cell phone to access the internet to turn on the lights and other appliances in his house. Whoa. That’s the stuff of yesterday’s sci-fi. And I thought those timer devices that we used for vacation were pretty amazing. (But I bet they’re still more reliable!)
Our new TV has so many features, and cable brings more into our house than I could ever have time to watch. Do I use any of it? No. It’s too confusing, with 3 remotes and a speaker system; even turning the thing off is tricky. There are more features on my computer and phones than I care to even read about, let alone try to learn. Oh my, I’m starting to sound like an old person! But it’s really a matter of need. Eleven years ago, I did not need a computer and was just fine without one. Now, the need is there and I’d be lost without access to places such as this. My daughter has never known life without a computer, and I find that rather scary. Think about the world in 25 years, when everyone will have access to almost everything on their wristwatch or in their pocket. That’s even beyond the imagination of the best fantasy writers.
Well, somehow we did manage without all of this sophistication, and most would say their lives were none the worse without it. I think we’re getting an idea of how every generation has been astounded by the changes they’ve witnessed as their lives progressed. One can only wonder what our kids and grandkids will be surprised about in a hundred years or so.