[lit-ideas] Re: Are you really that old?
- From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 22:36:19 -0700
From: "Erin Holder" <erin.holder@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Every generation has things from "growing up" that they talk about and feel
> nostalgia for. Even my generation. And when I talk to my kids (well, not
> my kids, I'm not having any) about things that I grew up with I'm sure
> they'll be similarly astonished that there was no Internet, and people used
> DOS, and there were no such thing as CD's or DVD's, etc. Really, it's all
> the same.
I was talking a few day ago about how funny it was that Jessica Simpson came
out in favor of
Bush, and a friend (in her 50s) asked "who is Jessica Simpson?" That in itself
was pretty
funny.
I don't think erin's future generations will really care about what "didn't
exist back
then", because the rate of significant change has slowed down. from the 60s to
the 90s,
there was an enormous change of entire technologies (for example, from rotary
phone to
Internet) and these caused massive social changes. But now, it's just normal
that all sorts
of new stuff appears literally every week. 22-years olds in 2024 will just
assume that it's
always been this way.
Back in the 60s and 70s, something new appeared and it took years for it to
spread. Now, new
technologies spread like wildfire. It took literally decades for radio to reach
50% market
penetration; now, MP3s do that in months.
Another example: Remember when GPS was rare? GPS is standard now in many new
cars. It used
to be that only Boy Scouts knew longitude and latitude; now it's common to talk
about
latitude and longitude.
yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com
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