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Is the generation that ushered in the information age baffled?

Is the generation that ushered in the information age baffled?

Okay, this question is for Baby Boomers, and be honest!

Who knows more about hardware, software, games, blogs, chat rooms, ‘My space’, ‘Your space’, ‘Our space’, ‘Her space’, – ‘Your dog’s space’, Your cats, hamsters and space goldfish… Aruggggh!!

Well, you understand the drift.

But honestly, is it you or your kids?

Do not you believe it? Well, let me see freehand. Can you download those ‘golden oldies’ rock and disco tunes from your computer to your IPod or do you have to get one of your kids to help you?

Yeah!

Yeah, and unless you’ve signed up for ‘Future Computer Geeks and Star Trek Fans of America’, there’s been no competition thirty or forty years ago, right?

For example, when you get the new cell phone with a million features you never knew existed let alone suspected you needed, are you reduced to whining for help from one of your scornful kids who look at you like you’re the drooling one? , silly people of cyberspace. And then, as if to confirm their humble status as an information-age Luddite, they nonchalantly scroll around and program all the features you know you’ll never remember how to use, let alone access again.

But wait, wait; Weren’t we the generation that gave the world the first ‘home’ computer, the Apple, the Mac, the PC????!

Why We Boomers Almost Invented The Damn Internet, Thank You So Much!

And while I admit we could have had some help from those big mainframe computers the military has hidden under every hollow mountain in the Rocky Mountains, it was the Boomer generation that came up with all the hardware like printers and modems and disk drives/devices. storage and the software to run them. Yeah Boomers, when it comes to technology, we’re cool!

It is not like this? Used to rock? I mean – ah, past tense. Yes… Hmm.

So what happened? Exactly when did we become ‘Grandpa Fudd’ and ‘Grandma Moses’ of online cyber life?

“They were not!” I hear someone scream. “Why do I use the computer to pay all my bills and even do that traveling thing online!” (even if it’s with as much finesse as the ‘traveling gnome’).

OK… but how many ‘chat rooms’ do you belong to? How many groups of ‘friends’ are you part of? How many blogs do you do a week… a day… an hour?

Ah ha, I thought so.

You see, while we Boomers were experimenting with getting more of those cool little 1 and zero binaries into smaller and smaller silicon chips and transforming vacant lots outside of San Jose into Silicon Valley’s multi-billion dollar semiconductor industry, you never did. we gave everything so much thought as to what people were actually going to do with the little gadgets.

I remember going to an electronics trade show in the early ’80s, where I saw a nifty little keyboard that was advertised as a computing device that was actually aimed at the…consumer. The technician who demonstrated it said they were going to call it “Home Computer”. He showed me that by pressing a long string of keys you could actually make the lines on the screen change different colors! Why how cool is that? I went straight out and bought one.

“It’s for the kids, honey,” I told my wife when she asked, puzzled, what the hell were we going to do with a… keyboard in our house?

“Why do you hook it up to the TV in the kitchen and one day you can store all your recipes, honey?”

“Yeah, when pigs fly,” I heard her mutter as she walked away. “But I really bought it for the kids,” I yelled at him.

I then spent the next three weekends trying to teach four- and six-year-olds how to enter long sequences of code on the keyboard to make the screen change color. It was not a happy experience. The only thing that kept me from wearing the official donkey hat of the ‘classic bone head bugs’ family was the arrival of Pong. Yeah! i was saved

Now children could spend hours mindlessly in front of the television, electronically bouncing a cybernetic ball back and forth.

“It will help them develop their computer skills,” one of my engineering friends told me haughtily. (I think I answered something related to flying pigs.)

But you know what? He was correct. The next generations of video games, Internet chat rooms and ‘Your Space’ have not only turned adorable little ‘carpet mice’ into computer experts and programming geniuses, but have changed the world in which we live, work and play. unchangeably and forever.

So the bottom line is, don’t feel so bad the next time you have to hang your old gray head and beg one of your kids or some young computer guru to help you turn off that damn ringtone on your cell phone. what sounds “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” every time the damn thing plays. After all, we were the ones who started the information age by stumbling into the future.

And who knows, maybe one day, with a lot of help and a little luck, we’ll be able to use everything we invent.

As my wife says… “When pigs fly.”

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