Generations.

No not the Star Trek movie but actual generations. I'm usually the first one up in the morning and go get a coffee and paper for some quiet time on the deck. Some mornings I just kick back after and let my mind wander. This morning I was contemplating the differences of the generations. Mom is one of the first Baby Boomers and I'm one of the last.

I don't recall a time without TV but she knew it. Radio was the thing when she was young. I knew radio too. I'd listen to the fights with my grandfather in the early 70's. They wouldn't be on the Wide World of Sports for about a month. It was cool picturing them in your head. Reruns. That was something that came along later in my life. If you missed your show you missed it period. My daughter couldn't imagine that. My kids are Millennials.

Banks. If you needed cash you had to make it to the bank before they closed. No money dispensing machines then. I remember carrying a pay cheque around all weekend because I missed the bank. No direct deposit either. That also is foreign to the kids of today.

Another thing that is relatively new is constant communication. You couldn't just dial anyone up then. They had to be home or at work, or some other place they knew you were at that had a phone. That means landline. Hell, you could be in Pango Pango today and anyone that wants to can call you up. I kinda miss those days where you could actually be "incommunicado." "Sorry. I wasn't home." And the death of the phone booth. Those are still around but they are few in number.

Games. Well our games were pretty much the same as our parents. Cards. Chess/checkers, Monopoly, etc. Dad brought home Pong back n the early 70's and we were amazed by it. We had pinball, same as the folks but video games were unknown. That came along later in the decade and not really for home use. I actually played that Killer Shark game that you saw in Jaws. It was in an arena. Today? Holy cripes. Well you've seen the games today. Unless you were raised on them you have to be a combination fighter pilot/rocket scientist to play them.

There are many other examples of the difference in the times but I'll leave it at that for now. When Mom's generation passes there's going to be a lot that will be forgotten. When ours does that's going to leave a BIG hole between then and the future now. In the meantime what will we see that was completely foreign even today? I can see interplanetary travel. Useful holograms. Who knows what else?

Thanks for sharing this. It's really relaxing and interesting to me to think about what those who came before us had or didn't have in comparison to what I was born and raised with as a child of 91.

My great grandmother was born in 1908 and died in the early 2000's. I also thought of how amazing her life must have been. How spectacular and interesting it must have been to be her. To see all the political changes, geographical changes, wars, depression, the bounce back, and even the start of the recession. All the presidents she lived through, to see telephones, pagers, computers, gaming consoles, flat screen TV's, cell phones, and even the start of the smart phone era.... glass-top stoves, INDOOR PLUMBING!! I think the outhouse is actually still standing on her property that our family still owns.

It's just amazing how quickly things can and do change.

You've already seen quite a few yourself. I just wonder what kind of things I'll see.....
I was just telling my sons father, you know his children, our grandchildren, will joke about us, "our grandparents who lived through the stone age of the VHS and DVD player. Our grandparents who actually paid for Cable, can you believe that?! They had a thing called Dial-Up even! Grandma said she had to plug her headphones in with A WIRE!"

I knew things were changing for us too when the first car I bought, didn't have a CD player, just a radio, and a AUX jack.

I'm only 26 and I already feel outdated by new tech.

-Alee

I look back at my childhood, the games we played, the things we did and then see what my kids have had available as they grew. I've always thought cell phones are a curse and a blessing. You can call for help from anywhere...but then again, you don't learn independence. How to fix that car or problem on your own..
And anyone can call you anywhere.
TV wasn't 24/7 anything/everything you could want, it was just for Saturday morning cartoons or Batman once a week. Rest of the time it was boring adult stuff.
We played outside. Riding dirt bikes, hunting, fishing, just exploring..hell, 20 of us would get together and play football in the field next to the church. It was the biggest space we could find, because none of the parents wanted us tearing up their yard. We didn't kill 50 people with a joystick, we tried to mangle each other For Real. Well, not to really hurt each other but We Played To Win. And it taught us to get along or work out our differences. Yeah, sometimes with fists, but we always played again next Sunday. And you'd probably be on the same team with the guy you got in the fight with last Sunday.

It's a whole different world and advances in technology are not always good.

Im still trying to figure out where (and how) people separate "Generations". Is it separated by social economics, home structure, technology, belief systems, etc?

Looking at charts, some generations are only 15-17 years, with others lasting 30 years - for example, I was born in 88. I grew up before smartphones were invented, landlines were the norm, and music was still...... well, good. I believe in science, there only being 2 genders, still refuse to use twitter or watch E!.

Somehow, I am lumped together with Millennials that were born as late as 2015........ That have the overbearing sense of entitlement, tech is everything, science means nothing, everything is "on fleek", pop culture is idolized, and I am truly frightened tat these people will eventually have the ability to vote.

What happened? How did this start? What group of ass-clowns decided to bunch together some of the last hardworking individuals with the laziest, dumbest people to ever walk the face of the earth?

Asking for a friend...

a reply to: intrepid

My Mother was born in 21 and Dad in 24. They often talked of 'the good ol' days' and a simpler time, for them. Knowing that they both went through the depression, I always found that ironic. Perhaps they just meant that even though times were lean, they were happier and closer?
Technology scared/frustrated (at times) my Mother in later life. Part of that could have been her age (mental healthwise) or it truly could have been scary watching things 'progress' so quickly.
My parents were amazed at modern medicine though. When my Mother was very young, she suffered an 'illness' that left her with some brain and physical injuries and that led to a radical nephrectomy among other things that could likely be prevented these days.
I am scared and excited for the world that my young girls will see one day.
I suppose I miss some of the 'simpler times' of my generation also!

Thinking of my Aunt (Mother's sister) who will be 104 Valentine's Day 2018. I miss talking with her as she has seen it all! LOL

I just turned 33.

I'm just thankful that all the stupid crap I did between the ages of 13 and 21 are nowhere to be found on the internet.

Also Generations wasn't as good as First Contact.

originally posted by: projectvxn
I just turned 33.

I'm just thankful that all the stupid crap I did between the ages of 13 and 21 are nowhere to be found on the internet.

Also Generations wasn't as good as First Contact.

Odd Trek = bad

Even Trek = good

Statistical proof of concept.

a reply to: ketsuko

That's probably the nerdiest thing I will read all day.

a reply to: projectvxn

If you've seen them all, then it's pretty obvious without some guy actually doing numbers on it. There are so many that it's almost like a conspiracy because the pattern gets so obvious.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: projectvxn

If you've seen them all, then it's pretty obvious without some guy actually doing numbers on it. There are so many that it's almost like a conspiracy because the pattern gets so obvious.

I've seen them all more than once. Way more than once..

I'm a Trekkie.

I'll admit that when I read the title my first thought was Star Trek Generations. I know the OP is a Trekkie because he felt the need to mention that in the first sentence.

a reply to: projectvxn

Star Trek ... Star Wars ... Dr. Who ... I admit to being a huge geek.

I was interviewed at home by a very pleasant young lady from Barclay's Bank about whether I would use a cash dispenser if they introduced them. I'm not sure now (having forgotten what the original letter said) whether this testing of the waters was a national exercise, or just an initiative from the local branch. I told her I would have no problem using one when the branch was closed, but would prefer direct contact when it was open.

It's not just differences in technology, but differences in quality of technology. The picture on the old black-and-white television sets was subject to fluctuations which needed to be controlled by delicate adjustments at the back of the set. Woe betide the child who fiddled with the buttons, forcing Dad to spend ten minutes carefully re-setting them and stopping the movement of the picture up or down the screen. Hence the opening words of the old Twilight Zones; "We will take over your television set- we will control the horizontal, we will control the vertical". I believe they kept that wording when Twilight Zone was revived, though it must have been meaningless by then.

Again, I was given a long-term phone phobia by our original home phone, simply because I could not hear what was being said. I was being expected to "talk to Granny", who was going "crackle, crackle, crackle". It was quite a revelation to phone home from my first college interview and get a clear voice through the receiver.

I remember paycheck Fridays.

My folks banked in a little town outside of ours. So we'd all load up in the car, hit the Dairy Queen drive up on our way out of town for some ice cream and go deposit the check in the overnight deposit.

I still have a savings account in that very same little credit union. We deposit a little here and little there into it trying to build up a true emergency fund. It's the money you know you have, but that you also know you really can't touch without some actual effort on your part, meaning we can't drain that account without expending real effort which usually stops us from touching it at all. The ideal rainy day fund.

I remember how we never had a VCR growing up until I was later on in junior high. But, the CO-OP where dad worked did have one. On Saturdays, we would occasionally go to the video store and rent three movies and then go up to the back office of the CO-OP with them and and some snacks and have a movie marathon. We watched the Star Wars trilogy and the first three Star Trek movies like this.

I used to spent my Thursdays watching Nature shows on PBS on a little black and white TV in our kitchen. I sometimes watched Magnum PI on it too.

We didn't get a push button phone until after I went to college. Until then, all our phones were rotary.

a reply to: ketsuko

That reminds me. We used to have Drive Ins, not drive thru's. Pull your car in an you ordered into a mike and your food was brought to the car. A&W in particular. That was cool. Drive in theaters are also a thing of the past but they were fun too.

And yes, I'm a Trekkie. As was Dad. We saw TOS in it's original run. I remember these HUGE disks for movies before VHS/Beta. They were the first players. Before that you needed a projector to watch something recorded.Streaming has pretty much killed everything that's recorded now. No need for even a dvd library. I can see in the near future my grandson's generation scratching their heads going, "You actually wasted space on your movies/music?"

a reply to: intrepid

The first time I saw The Search for Spock it was at a drive-in, but I shouldn't say I "saw" it because the movie was rained out by an enormous electrical storm. We ended up watching a bunch of nasty cloud to ground lightning move into the area before the theatre gave everyone free movie vouchers and sent us home for our own safety.