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I don't like playing "what if" scenarios about the past. I have no idea what I would have done if my past were different. It is what it is. And I am certainly not going to get into a game of "my generation is better than this other generation".
If we had what we have today, I would have spent much less time at the library.
I wonder if you are saying that.....with as sinisterly as I thought back then.
That is, I was raised to be blood thirsty to a certain degree, so back then, between the library and the Roger Corman flicks, I was much into torture. One of my "favorite" books in the library when I was 12 was the Amnesty International report about Greece.
So are you a dedicated researcher?
Or are you a Xander? (when he defended himself in the episode of "Witch" in BtVs)
You don't have to answer for we are talking of times before there were such records.
If I had access to porn like kids have today, I never would have left my room. That might have saved me a couple of DWI's but I cringe to think what else I would have missed out on. Kinda glad now that the internet was not invented until I was in my 30's and married already.
I wonder if you are saying that.....with as sinisterly as I thought back then.
That is, I was raised to be blood thirsty to a certain degree, so back then, between the library and the Roger Corman flicks, I was much into torture. One of my "favorite" books in the library when I was 12 was the Amnesty International report about Greece.
So are you a dedicated researcher?
Or are you a Xander? (when he defended himself in the episode of "Witch" in BtVs)
You don't have to answer for we are talking of times before there were such records.
LOL,,, my point was only that, if I wanted information that wasn't available via whatever current Encyclopedia I had, which may have been old and outdated, and whatever newspapers or periodicals available weren't to me personally. Then the library was the only place to go.
I couldn't just "google" a query so that was the best option
This week being the end of a decade, it's timely to reminisce. The past 20 years have witnessed a steady and incessant erosion of privacy and of individual control of computers. Back in the year 2000, it was common for bench-level employees to have their own PC, to administer it and to be responsible for software loaded on it. Computers were networked, but networks were not heavily policed if at all. Much of this changed due to 9/11, and in the ensuing years, with threats of viruses and hacking and so forth. Now - 20 years later - workplace PCs are essentially terminals, with a system administrator who manages the computers from a remote, centralized location... and tracks every move.
The irony is that the prior 20 years - 1980 through 2000 - saw a democratization of computer use. In 1980, the computer was a big throbbing machine in an air conditioned room, managed by a fellow in a white coat. Users sat at terminals, and launched programs that required "time sharing", or rotating access to the CPU. As the 80s wore on, the mainframes and minis were replaced by desktop PCs. Then in the 90s we got networking, which initially was ad hoc and unpoliced.
The 2020s will likely resemble the 1970s: computers are austere, centralized things, carefully watched by professionals. Any user-interaction with the machine is carefully and methodically recorded, and users can do, only what the central authority allows them to do.
A lot of hate is given towards Millenials regarding the ways we use current technology to do bad things, but hypothetically speaking, say when all of you were in your teens/20s you had the all the technology we have today, do you think it would really be that much different? As in everything from cyberbullying to hacking, to girls sending guys....inappropriate pictures to girls posting videos giving makeup/hair/fashion tutorials? By "you" I don't mean you in particular, just that there would be probably plenty willing to do it.
I was bullied bad growing up, from kindergarten until 9th grade. I can't imagine being cyber bullied on top of it. I do understand how kids kill themselves over it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nobodysbusiness
It's a whole new world, and all of those private moments you had at a party as a teen would be memorialized. I thank "God" I was born when I was and came of age in a time before every single dumb thing could be documented.
I was born in 1965. My 1st car when I learned to drive was a 72 gas guzzling Pontiac Grand Prix that my dad took away from me for that reason. I was made to drive the Fred Flintstone (had no passenger floor lol) 1965 Fairlane until I got my 1969 Mustang. They don't make cars like that any more and now you can't get them for a few hundred dollars!
Quote:
Originally Posted by nobodysbusiness
I feel sorry for the kids today - spied on within an inch of their lives and documented. No wonder there is so much depression and suicide. It's a horrible life for kids/teens today.
At some point, people's DNA will be taken at birth. I bet that's what will eventually happen. Crime as we know it; hopefully will change due to it.
I have always said that I am grateful to have been young in a different era. There seems to be nothing that is private and everything is so immediate that something happening at 9A has been circulated and known by many by 9:05A.
What with the typical desire of the young (and even the old) not to be different or left out of everything, I daresay that I might have been much like the young folk of today. I think a lot of we older generations have adopted much of the technology, but I don't think we use it to the extent of the young - and I don't know how they stand the constant bombardment and feeling the need to remain connected or have the fear of missing out (FOMO). It's sad when you see a group of young people out together and they're all on their cell phones.
So I try not to judge the younger generations - I actually feel some sympathy for them for the things they lost that we had. One of the toughest to express is that feeling that you had such a luxury of time on school breaks or weekends as a young working adult - and figuring out what to do - getting together with friends and just hanging out. I guess they still do this, but in such a different way. Do any of them play cards, board games, or put puzzles together? Life just seemed to move a bit slower then - but maybe I just think that because I'm retired now and life still doesn't seem as leisurely as it did when we were younger. Maybe it's the responsibilities we accumulate through life.
All that said, it's really nice that we can remain connected with so many people that would be difficult in the days before we had all the technology available to us. Sorry for the long response.
I have a somewhat unique perspective on this. I'm 52 but was a very "early adopter" of tech and was a Comp Sci major in college in the mid-late 80s. I was sending "internet emails" as far back as 1985 for example and in an internal way on the networked PC's my very tech-oriented university already had things like forums similar to this and online role playing games that I was all over back then like a cheap suit.
Considering how back then I was so wishing for a lot of the things tech can do now, I don't doubt I'd be just like these kids today if I were born 30-35 years later than I was.
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