Some Gen X thoughts...

[johnnydawg68]

...listening to a podcast that brought up these issues and it brought up some stuff that has been swishing around in the back of my mind.

I'm 42. Which means I'm part of the last generation that had to wait for things. In other words we live in an on-demand world now, but it's light years from being a kid in the 70's and 80's.

Simple stuff like you don't have to be home to watch a show at specific time. I remember during the height of the Seinfeld show, I just didn't schedule anything on Thursday night. If I missed it, I had to wait until reruns in the summer. Plus if you missed it, you missed all the banter the next day at work. Programming a VCR back then was far too complicated. I just watched movies on it.

When I went off to university, I kept in touch with my friends at other colleges by...writing letters. You had to wait a week or more for it to get there and get written back to. It was a unique experience that I doubt anyone under the age of 30 or more has any knowledge of.

A kid in college at work asked me not too long ago what we did before cell phones..."what do you mean" I asked. "Well how did you meet up with people when you went out, or what if your car broke down?" I had to think about it and said, "well we said we'd be somewhere at a certain place and time and then we showed up, or we went over to someone's house and left together" (more likely). If our car broke down, we hitched to a gas station.

Watch Everton in my hometown in the US? Forget it. I might have been an Evertonian 30 years ago and lived through the glory days. Who knows?

TV? Before the early 80's we had like 5 stations to watch and that was it. No VCR, no DVD. We sat in the living room as a family and watched TV.

And then in our adulthood, the world has COMPLETELY changed. It's kind of hard for anyone under a certain age to empathize because they've simply grown up in a world with this stuff, but looking back, it's almost like I've lived 2 completely different lives. The one I lived before I was, say 30 and the one since then.

It's amazing. In many ways for the good, but life seems so much faster now than it was.

 

[spikeman]

Part of me wants to see what it was like to grow up back then. I imagine life was a whole lot simpler then.

But I do have to say, cable, internet, cell phones, etc. have made things a whole lot easier. I grew up while these things were becoming popular back in the 90's.

 

[johnnydawg68]

I was MADE for the internet, dvr, texting, etc. don't get me wrong. Things were more frustrating, BUT some things have been lost. It's unavoidable. We "hung out" more and did nothing. Because there was nothing to do. Sometimes we were bored, but sometimes the best stuff came out of nothing. It's hard to be bored anymore because everything is available to us if we have DVR, internet, cell phones, etc.

 

[zed]

Part of me wants to see what it was like to grow up back then. I imagine life was a whole lot simpler then.

But I do have to say, cable, internet, cell phones, etc. have made things a whole lot easier. I grew up while these things were becoming popular back in the 90's.

dont sweat it spiker, there aint no salad days. today is the best day of our lives

 

[atrottel]

Watch Everton in my hometown in the US? Forget it. I might have been an Evertonian 30 years ago and lived through the glory days. Who knows?

As an expat, I remember passing around two-day-old copies of any British newspapers you could get just to read the sports pages. (Three paragraphs on a draw with Southampton.) Out of the country and out of contact unless we made the FA Cup final. It's why Latchford and Lyons mean more to me than the team of the Eighties because I'd gotten to see them in person.

Now you get radio commentary and dodgy streams on tap and official highlights within hours. (And copy-and-paste internet warriors...)

And spikeman, you need to get to Goodison for a night match. With our pillars blocking your view and our wooden seats, and the stink and the smoke from the bogs, walking to the match through the houses in the drizzle, with the mist coming in through the glow of the floodlights and the crowd up for it. It's not the Seventies, but for a Sky Sports/FSN breaking news graphic city-financed luxury stadium property development ownership Twittering players generation, the sound of Z Cars and the roar and the feeling will bring tears to your eyes and, for a moment, take you back in time.

 

[Alio]

I think there are millions of people who don't even know how to speak to people any more, you know, like in the flesh. Unless they're communicating through a computer or phone, it appears weird to them I'm sure

One thing that blows my mind at the moment, is that I keep seeing a bunch of kids walk past my flat in the town, where they all just seem to sit around, not talking to each other, but listening to their iPods. For one, I hate to think what they're listening too, but surely it's good to talk?

I remember when I first had a phone in my room, I actually think my friends from the street came up to see it? Ha. I was about 13 at the time, so before mobiles were obviously taking over the world. How times change. That was when things suddenly changed in communicating with my chums. We just used to run down to each others houses and ask our mom's if we could come out to play. Now we text, email, facebook each other in advance. There's no time to be wasted there any more. Trying to meet up with someone in town without a mobile used to be muchos fun. "Meet you in Maccy D's, I'll be the one with 6 nuggets and and a insanely hot apple pie....."

It's even got to the point where at work, we're told to go and speak to our colleagues rather than just emailing each other all the time. Yes, its vital for tracking things, so I usually back it up with an email, but there's people I still haven't spoke to since Christmas in the next office to me, as its so easy just to email them!

I do feel like I've become very lazy, and most of friends of recent years. We appear to count "poking" each other, like we've actually seen each other that day/week/month now.....damn you internet (I love you)

 

[Reidy's Bottle Of Grecian]

We'd never had these things back then so they couldn't be missed,l you just got on with doing what you were doing, probably more efficiently due to less distraction, you made plans for things in advance (like watching fav tv show) as opposed to whatever, whenever, wherever. although all the tech can structure peoples lives it also leaves them somewhat unstructured as well.

1 of the things that I enjoy most about my hols is NO MOBILE PHONE* which I find to be very liberating, I only took the netbook last year 'cos of the ashcloud and the possible need to rearrange travel etc.

For some things the tech is superb but it has passed the stage of being just for usefull stuff and is incorporated into daily tasks so much that people have to check their schedule on their blackberry to find out what they are doing in a couple of days time.

Sat navs, as fantastic as they are, I find that you go to places blind and after going there you would struggle to find your way there again as you ignore everything between start point and destination.

God knows what the kids will turn out like, very tech savvy but entirely dependent on it.

*almost as liberating as the 3 weeks without clothes, where does one carry it for a start ?

 

[johnnydawg68]

I think there are millions of people who don't even know how to speak to people any more, you know, like in the flesh. Unless they're communicating through a computer or phone, it appears weird to them I'm sure

One thing that blows my mind at the moment, is that I keep seeing a bunch of kids walk past my flat in the town, where they all just seem to sit around, not talking to each other, but listening to their iPods. For one, I hate to think what they're listening too, but surely it's good to talk?

So true. It's stuff like this that, while I'm a total internet addict and fan of modern technology, makes me wonder what's being lost? Zed's right, there ain't no salad days, but it does make you think back to those days.

 

[johnnydawg68]

We'd never had these things back then so they couldn't be missed,l you just got on with doing what you were doing, probably more efficiently due to less distraction, you made plans for things in advance (like watching fav tv show) as opposed to whatever, whenever, wherever. although all the tech can structure peoples lives it also leaves them somewhat unstructured as well.

1 of the things that I enjoy most about my hols is NO MOBILE PHONE* which I find to be very liberating, I only took the netbook last year 'cos of the ashcloud and the possible need to rearrange travel etc.

For some things the tech is superb but it has passed the stage of being just for usefull stuff and is incorporated into daily tasks so much that people have to check their schedule on their blackberry to find out what they are doing in a couple of days time.

Sat navs, as fantastic as they are, I find that you go to places blind and after going there you would struggle to find your way there again as you ignore everything between start point and destination.

God knows what the kids will turn out like, very tech savvy but entirely dependent on it.

*almost as liberating as the 3 weeks without clothes, where does one carry it for a start ?

Great post. I forgot my phone at home today and went through a moment of panic. Which is f'd up, but there you go. I've become dependent on technology too.

 

[Alio]

Great post. I forgot my phone at home today and went through a moment of panic. Which is f'd up, but there you go. I've become dependent on technology too.

I once told people on facebook that I forgot my phone at home that day....

I returned home to receive over 100 missed calls and about 287 messages, mostly off people telling me I was a c*cknose or just listing the alphabet one letter at a time....

Using facebook to say I had no phone? I deserved it.

 

[johnnydawg68]

I once told people on facebook that I forgot my phone at home that day....

I returned home to receive over 100 missed calls and about 287 messages, mostly off people telling me I was a c*cknose or just listing the alphabet one letter at a time....

Using facebook to say I had no phone? I deserved it.

Been there done that my brother haha!

 

[Reidy's Bottle Of Grecian]

I have to carry mine 24/7 as I'm on call, mass panic when I forget it. Turning it off when on hols is bliss.

 

[a2b chris]

Anyone remember life before microwaves?

I was just warming everything up after cooking christmas diner for 15 and the microwave packed up. my mrs (only born in 75) went into a panick- cue pans of boiling water on the cooker with plates on to warm things up

Strangley, cos we all mucked in, it seemed to make the whole day more special

 

[johnnydawg68]

Anyone remember life before microwaves?

I was just warming everything up after cooking christmas diner for 15 and the microwave packed up. my mrs (only born in 75) went into a panick- cue pans of boiling water on the cooker with plates on to warm things up

Strangley, cos we all mucked in, it seemed to make the whole day more special

I remember my mother cooking before microwaves. No way I could survive as a single man without a microwave. Not a chance in hell, LOL.