Flashback to the Good Days (Blog #4)

I think the most profound idea that I gained from talking with my mother, my father, and my sister was the idea that they weren't growing up "without it" per se.  My mother responded to my question with "But that question comes from the perspective of a person now, looking back – with the assumption that the fact that we didn’t have the technology that we have now means we had “no technology.” But in fact we, like this generation, felt giddy with the amazing rapid pace of the development of technology."

My dad talked a lot about the technology he had available during his time as an airline manager, and how it was not unfamiliar to him: "computers became the norm: we had computers to handle airline reservations, on board computers on the aircraft for navigation – the first GPS systems. Air Traffic Control was increasingly handled by computers. So I think it is fair to say that by the time I was in my early 20s, and I was working in a high tech airline industry, unlike many other kids in my generation, computers and technology was very much a part of my life."

My sister mentioned that she never missed not having access to the latest technology. Our parents didn't have a lot of money when she was growing up, so she never got the latest toy or gadget.  The upside of that? "I read A LOT."

My parent mentioned the simplest things like making a transatlantic call.  Now we can just skype, but when they were young adults: "When we wanted to make a transatlantic call, we called an International Operator, told her the name of the party and the phone number, and then hung up. I can remember the whole family sitting around the phone, waiting for the operator to call back. When she did, she would connect us to our relatives in France. We would marvel at the clarity of the call, often wasting the first minutes of an expensive call saying, 'It sounds as if you are just next door.'"

It seems so odd to hear these stories, especially when my mother described how she wrote papers back at school.  It all seems so complicated and annoying.  I feel very lucky to have grown up in a world where writing school papers includes turning on the computer, typing, and printing, nothing more, nothing less.

I did get the feeling that they certainly believe life was more enjoyable back then.  Both my mother and my father mentioned that days moved by slower, and relationships were maintained and handled differently.  In that sense, I'm quite jealous.

And one last word from my wonderful mother: "There is one big difference between your generation and ours. 'In our day' we marveled at each new technology that came out. We couldn’t imagine “this” was possible. And mostly we were thrilled with it. Couldn’t imagine anything like “this” could exist and certainly couldn’t imagine anything better than “this” ever ever coming out. But now, you Children of the Computer Age, you are constantly looking to the technology that might come out to supercede the one in your hand. You can yourselves imagine what the next technology could be or should be. You love your new technology but very soon after acquiring it you are able to identify what it can’t do, or how much faster it could or should work, or what would make it better. You are never fully satisfied with what you have because you know full well that very soon a newer better version will be produced, and you are certain of the possibility of newer as-yet-unknown technologies that will very likely be invented very soon. We didn’t live that way. It’s such a different mindset."