Off-topic #12
Several recent events have me thinking about a couple of non-tech things.. which since it is a summer holiday, I hope you’ll forgive. One is.. I am again reminded how different things are today..
For example.. Sunday nights were special nights when I was a lad. My statistics tell me that quite a decent percentage of my readers will recognize these short video clips.. and understand what I mean.
Which was followed by..
Yes.
Television before “ripped from the headlines” dramas, and “Reality TV”. A few decades ago, now. (My, how time passes..) Many things have changed with the years. Agreed?
When I was boy, wearing my PJ’s (with feeties) and watching these shows, there were still many things that hadn’t been invented yet– such as cell phones, ATM cash machines, magnetic stripe readers, video games, CD’s or DVD’s or VHS/Betamax (we had 8-Track tapes).. heck, we didn’t even have cordless phones yet, much less personal computers.
For fun, we skipped rope, played soccer, threw dirtclods/water balloons, rode bicycles, and read books. (Don’t snicker too much, you younger readers; we had Lawn Darts [fun for the whole family!])
Lawn Darts
I am a member of what is known as “Gen-X” (as in, mysterious).. the first generation after the “Baby Boomers”. As I understand it, there’s also a “Generation Y“.. and even a “Gen-Z”.
Some Gen-Y fun facts, according to Wikipedia:
97% own a computer
94% own a cell phone
76% use Instant Messaging and social networking sites.
15% of IM users are logged on 24 hours a day/7 days a week
34% use websites as their primary source of news
28% author a blog and 44% read blogs
97% have downloaded music and other media using peer-to-peer file sharing
49% regularly download music and other media using peer-to-peer file sharing
75% of college students have a Facebook account
60% own some type of portable music and/or video device such as an iPod.
I think some of those numbers are on the low side. Like, by a lot.
Needless to say, I don’t view the world in quite the same way as a Gen-Y does.
There is a definite “gap”.
I’m not sure where I intended to go with this.. so I think I’ll stop. But I will continue just long enough to tell you that more of my thoughts on this can be read by clicking this link https://techpaul.wordpress.com/2008/03/03/the-new-generation-gap/
And I will invite you to leave your thoughts on this as comments, if you’d like.
I’m pretty sure I have more to say, but …
Today’s quote: “You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.” ~ Douglas MacArthur
From the Don’t Ask Me Why Department: (Hey. Cyber Czar. I don’t want to see this *stuff* anymore.)
Alice and Ali,
Check your Inbox.
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• About Tech Paul
I am a Retired computer & network technician. I used to think the machines were pretty cool. Now I don’t.
They’re anything but.
I regularly posted how-to’s and tricks & tips and general computing advice here starting in 2007. (Use the Search tool to find answers. But be aware, many are rather dated.) Sometimes I answered (your) specific questions in an article if I believed the answer was generally helpful to “everyone”. All the writing you see was my own, typos and all. There always is/was an implied “IMHO” in what you see here.
Note: You are responsible for using this blog and its content. I am in no way liable for any losses caused by user error, viruses and/or other malware, hardware or software failure, or any other conceivable reason.
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Tech - for Everyone 
I Guess I’m old, I am in the first “Baby Boomer” group. The first computer I had came from Radio Shack and you needed a cassette player for memory, wow. Privacy as I know it just does not exist anymore. The key words, ” as I know it” only pertain to people who remember back when we had more privacy than we do now. This generation will grow up knowing the limits of privacy and learn to deal with it or pay the price, just as we did when we couldn’t keep our mouths shut. Somehow or other the world has survived all the changes that have occured over the past years and we will continue to survive.
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Jim,
You got me beat. My first computer was a 128K Mac.
And, yes, I think you’re right.
But I also think we are, in many ways, on the path to building a frightening dystopia, and we need to start thinking beyond a quick profit. (I’d like to see a future that looks more like Star Trek than 1984.)
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I’m pretty sure I’m in the last of the baby boomers group, But yeah Jim. The Radio Shack Tandy TRS-80. How I hated the cassette tape drive. I wrote a text based adventure game for it and then converted it to Commodore 64 later on. Took forever to load the program with that tape…. Gen-Y and Z have it pretty easy in that regard methinks.
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kstinman,
Today, for $20, you can get a 32GB microSD card (the size of my pinkie’s nail), so, yeah, I’d say there’s been a few changes since the Tandy! (But you knew that of course.)
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