http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=4220530&cpp=1#new
The discussion thread stems from a young poster's request to know what life was like before the Internet. This is not unlike certain nameless officers working for me, who have never had the pleasure of shining their Army boots. ({ahem}Jess...{cough})
My response: I memorized [gasp!] phone numbers. I still remember some today that I haven't dialled in 20 years, but I have to look at my business card to find out my own cell number.
More importantly, it reminds me of a visit to my Dad's house about three years ago. My daughter and my nephew, both 7 at the time, were with me. Dad proudly displays a museum-quality, manual typewriter on a bookshelf, through which thousands of pages passed years ago. He asked the kids if they knew what it was -- my daughter did not, but my nephew blithely responded, "I think that's a typewriter. They used those in the Civil War."
About a year ago I related that experience to a superior officer who, despite three redundant network tools at his disposal, insisted on using floppy discs to process and store hundreds of weekly staff tasking requests. His boss, having overheard, said, "So you're calling him a dinosaur?" My reply: "Damn right, sir!"
Our generation was dubbed the X generation because Baby Boomers thought technology was making us lazy. I'd say we did OK. But maybe -- just maybe -- one of the subtler reasons why the GWOT is dragging on so long is because we are spoiling the current generation of our Soldiers with so much technological comfort that our grandfathers never had in previous wars.
I may be getting old, but I too don't know how I ever lived without today's modern technological advances, many of which we never dreamed about when we were kids. I'm addicted to Facebook and its nefarious ways of helping me keep in touch with long-lost friends and their 25 Random Things About Me lists and the endless drives down Memory Superhighway. When searching for a friend to invite to an informal high school reunion, I located his sister on Facebook and within minutes I had all I needed!
I admitted to someone recently that I can't imagine not living with my DVR as it quietly saves my favorite shows, patiently saving them for me to watch commercial-free whenever I please. Or my cell phone tether, despite its occasional midnight cravings, begging me to answer some technological crisis or random power outage with alacrity and dispatch. I haven't caught CrackBerry fever yet, but I'm sure there is no innoculation other than the iPhone.
We think our kids will never appreciate what they have because they haven't had to endure the hardships we did, like: VHS, riding the bus to school as a senior, walking to the corner Majik Market to play Space Invaders, or putting hand-written letters in these mysterious blue boxes and waiting two whole weeks to get a response. And we're probably right. But our grandkids are gonna wonder how we ever got by at the turn of the century with as little as we did.
3 comments:
You will be proud (or alarmed) to learn that I collect “antique” typewriters. Some of which I still use. I’m currently drafting my memoirs on a 1941 Remington Deluxe Noiseless Portable typewriter.
I have been issued my first "crackberry". I hate it.
Sir, I have no idea what life was like before computers and internet and home video game systems and cell phones and cars at the age of 15.
However--now that I'm in Kuwait with no car, a cell phone that only calls work, a computer that works only 60% of the time, no printer, and this box in my room that barely passes for a television, I think I'm starting to experience what life was like in the dark ages (Pre-1985. Yes, my birth year began a renaissance.)
Four words for the both of you: black and white TV.
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