I think we have a great deal to be grateful for, such as modern new inventions and greater prosperity.
With all the news talk about how this decade compares with that, it’s often not even comparable.
My first computing experience began in High School with a Wang card-reader that barely did arithmetic.
Shortly thereafter, a hand calculator emerged, priced about $450 that could do multiplication and division and even had a percent key. Wow.
By 1980, my College had a computer that worked with punch cards. By 1985, it was fully integrated with computer data consoles and a few programming languages. Apples, Amiga, Commodore and IBM laptops had all entered the market.
I started out with a 16k laptop that was an amazing 4 times the previous model for data storage, with a floppy disc, rather than cassette tape storage. We also had the first COLOR “RGB” consoles. I started out with amber and green screens. You can see where this is going.
I used to stay up nights drinking beer with computer geeks and downloading data on a 1200 baud modem. Soon we got a 2400 bps modem and WOW, we doubled out data stream. It was like magic.
WE didn’t have the WEB, web-sites, internet access (only university inter-library access and bbs services). We didn’t have Cell Phones. My first dial-up systems used a rotary telephone. Most kids don’t even know what that is.
My college car was a 1972 Datsun pickup. It was built poorly, but mechanically unstoppable.
Cable TV? You must be joking. We started out with 5 network channels in the 1960s. That was it.
World satellite communications? Didn’t exist.
VCR’s had begun to be developed. Then we got DVD’s around the 1990’s or so.
My 8-track and cassette players have been replaced by CD’s. Online music?? MP3 players?? what’s that?
Shopping “malls” were new creations. WE had local stores and strip centers for 1/2 my adult life.
Jet skis? What are you talking about? Snow mobiles?
Look around your house. I still have VINYL records and still play them. I like to put the stylus down on the track i want to hear.
But lots of the stuff you have didn’t exist in 1980.
ONline library? Forget about it. You need to look something up? A trip to the local library and a dig through the Card Catalog (no computer files). 3×5 cards. Index cards. Rotary Business lines with Phone books delivered for every phone.
The advances of medicine and available care could fill a book. I never had an MRI before 1999.
I could go on for the rest of the day.
A lot has changed and in many ways our lives are much easier and more efficient. I think my standard of living is mostly improved. I am communicating with you in ways that were not possible in 1980 or even 1990.
But all this has come at a cost. We spent way too much to achieve a greater, bigger and richer society. I say that collectively, as I personally did not. I got dragged along by the purveyors of Big Government as the pandemic to every social ill.
There have been vast improvements to people’s lives, but societies live by way of comparison. We all live better than most Regal Elites of past generations to whom “salt” was a luxury, Ice was shipped around the world for cold (before refrigeration), Books were rare, and “climate controlled” buildings were simply a dream.
The simple truth is that whatever “new thing” some people are able to possess, others will feel left out and “oppressed” because they don’t have one, too. And somehow, it’s not fair and the government should “do something” about it.
We live in a world of scarcity, not abundance. Human efforts have created more abundance, but the desire to “fairly distribute” it will remain a source of conflict so long as humans are working to debate and resolve the issues.
Unfortunately “credit” allows people to live more abundant lives and create the illusion that they are more “wealthy” than they really are. This includes societies as well as individuals. While my personal fortunes are ones of comfort (not rich) and occasional luxury of “dining out”, I FEAR for the future, as my SAVINGS are the target of people who think they deserve to have my past work “re-distributed”. I am better off now than in 1980 when leaving school and continuing to work. I don’t think I will be in 5 more years. Who can say?
As for the vagaries of “timelines” whereby we delineate certain “ages” , “events” “dynasties”, etc., i’ll pass on that for now. History is a dynamic flow from one generation to the next (even the idea of “generations” is difficult to pinpoint). Ideas and laws are constantly changing and evolving even before some event X is used as a trigger or motivation for the events that follow. Slavery was a dying institution before the Civil War and given more time would most likely have been legislated away. We’ll never know.
Had war not been declared over the occupation of Danzig, would there have been a WWII? We’ll never know. WE only have past events to judge, and make conjecture about what “might have happened”. It’s like a “pre-emptive strike”. The new thinking here is that the government can arrest you for what they suspect you might do.
That’s Constitution Law at its finest.
It’s a “new way” of interpreting our most honored traditions. I fear this, too.
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