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Standing still or keeping pace?
24 August 2006
[indent]When my grandfather passed away at the age of 94 several years ago, I pondered how he had seen come into existence most of the modern technology we take for granted.
It’s difficult to comprehend that in a single lifetime, a person saw the spread of the telegraph, automobile, electricity, radio, television, the airplane, the telephone, moving pictures, movies with sound, adding machines, cash registers, calculators, rockets, space travel, satellites, computers, digital watches, submarines, cassette decks, video recorders, paperback books, vitamins, antibiotics, anesthetic, hydroplanes, lasers, diesel engines, motorcycles, fax machines, photocopiers, refrigeration, transistor radios, microwave ovens, VCRs, electronics… and anything digital.
We take change for granted today; we are accustomed to the fast pace of modern life, new technology arriving daily. His was the first generation to see so many changed in a lifetime, to be thrust into the modern world so rapidly and so unprepared. Every tool and toy we treat as commonplace today was new in his lifetime.
When he was a boy, most people travelled by horse, foot, or sail. When he died, you could fly almost anywhere in the world in a single day and the only people who sailed were on cruises. Trains didn’t even last his lifetime as important passenger carriers. He watched airplanes develop from biplanes for adventurers to passenger planes, warplanes and jet fighters. He saw navies develop aircraft carriers, saw the first helicopters, and then the spacecraft that reached the furthest corners of our solar system.
By the time he was a teenager, Henry Ford’s automobile was replacing the horse, and dirt roads becoming asphalt highways. He saw the first motorcycles, trucks, station wagons and vans, and he filled up at the first, rare gas stations – soon to become commonplace. He saw home delivery of ice, bread and milk replaced by grocery and convenience stores. He saw the first malls and big-box stores.
When he was young, the few streetlights burned by oil or gas. There were no traffic lights, no ball diamonds lit by floodlights, no searchlights advertising used car dealerships. There were no flashlights; everyone used candlesThe sky was briliant at night because there were few lights to compete with the stars When he died everyone had electric lights and streets were well-lit at night, but the starry sky had almost vanished due to light pollution.
In my grandfather’s youth, a letter took three to six months to reach England, and the only speedy method of communication was by telegraph – in Morse code, and only to a limited reach of communities near the few railway lines. When he died, you could call or send faxes almost anywhere in the world and a letter to England might take a week. He died before the Internet and email, but not before the first computer bulletin board systems.
When he went to school, the tallest mountains hadn’t been climbed, no one had sent robots to the deepest trenches of the oceans, or landed on the moon. The poles hadn’t been visited. There was still much mystery in the world and atlases had grey areas where no Westerner had yet visited. When he died, you could see pretty much anywhere in the world in National Geographic or on a TV show. There was little mystery left in the world, and even the solar system was being explored.
Gramps grew up with local produce and food as the only available items in stores; and people grew their own whenever they could. He saw refrigeration and long-distance trucking bring in foods from further and further away, soon making even tropical delicacies readily available in local supermarkets. He got to taste foods from places he never would visit. Fortuntately, he never had to worry about genetically modified foods, because he passed away before that madness started.
The first half of his life, no one watched TV – because there wasn’t any. TV didn’t become a commercial venture until the very late 1940s. It didn’t really start growing until the mid-1950s, by which time he was retired. My grandfather grew up reading, then listening to radio, watching silent films and finally talkies. Movies were in glorious black and white until the 1930s. My grandfather was middle-aged before he saw his first colour movie and into his retirement when he bought his first colour TV.
I remember a big, clumsy mechanical adding machine on his desk. It was as big as a breadbox, and had dozens of keys and a handle you pulled to get it to tally up. I recall his look of amazement when I showed him my first pocket calculator – about the size of a paperback book back then, and with only four functions, but battery-powered and lightning fast. He never really adjusted to them.
Nor did he like computers. I showed him mine a few times, but they were simply too much for him. By the end of his life, he had had about as much progress as he could handle. He kept up with the changing technology as best he could, but computers were his technological Waterloo.
No one living during his youth could have predicted a fraction of the technology developed in his lifetime alone. But then, predicting the future is never much more than guesswork anyway.
In 1936, an MIT professor name Dr. Furnas wrote a book called “The Next 100 Years.” Among his predictions for the distant future were hydro corridors, synthetic vitamins and antibiotics. Within a decade, all of those things were already commonplace. He dismissed the fledgling television as a fad with no practical application. Within two decades it would become the most popular form of entertainment in the world.
I look at "here's what the future will bring" books on the shelf today and think each one is a product of hubris more than insight.
Who could have predicted the Internet and its importance to our daily lives more than 10 years ago, aside from a few prescient science fiction writers like John Brunner (The Shockwave Rider)?
I’ve often wondered how my grandfather felt as his world changed so rapidly and so radically during his lifetime. Nothing of his youth was left intact. No corner of the world was left undiscovered, everything around him had changed completely and absolutely. And with it changed all of the values, the society and the culture that he was brought up with. I think that left him more baffled and distraught than any of the technological changes he lived through.
I think of my grandfather a lot as I try to keep pace with today’s technology. There seem fewer revolutions, more evolutions in today’s changes, fewer of the world-shattering inventions or discoveries that affected his life, but they seem to have as great an impact on our values and culture as anything he saw. Does Internet file sharing have any less impact on our culture than the radio did in his day?
I wonder what sort of changes I’ll look back on as he did, and what will be the breaking point at which I too will simply be unable to adjust, as my grandfather did with my computers. [/indent]
It’s difficult to comprehend that in a single lifetime, a person saw the spread of the telegraph, automobile, electricity, radio, television, the airplane, the telephone, moving pictures, movies with sound, adding machines, cash registers, calculators, rockets, space travel, satellites, computers, digital watches, submarines, cassette decks, video recorders, paperback books, vitamins, antibiotics, anesthetic, hydroplanes, lasers, diesel engines, motorcycles, fax machines, photocopiers, refrigeration, transistor radios, microwave ovens, VCRs, electronics… and anything digital.
We take change for granted today; we are accustomed to the fast pace of modern life, new technology arriving daily. His was the first generation to see so many changed in a lifetime, to be thrust into the modern world so rapidly and so unprepared. Every tool and toy we treat as commonplace today was new in his lifetime.
When he was a boy, most people travelled by horse, foot, or sail. When he died, you could fly almost anywhere in the world in a single day and the only people who sailed were on cruises. Trains didn’t even last his lifetime as important passenger carriers. He watched airplanes develop from biplanes for adventurers to passenger planes, warplanes and jet fighters. He saw navies develop aircraft carriers, saw the first helicopters, and then the spacecraft that reached the furthest corners of our solar system.
By the time he was a teenager, Henry Ford’s automobile was replacing the horse, and dirt roads becoming asphalt highways. He saw the first motorcycles, trucks, station wagons and vans, and he filled up at the first, rare gas stations – soon to become commonplace. He saw home delivery of ice, bread and milk replaced by grocery and convenience stores. He saw the first malls and big-box stores.
When he was young, the few streetlights burned by oil or gas. There were no traffic lights, no ball diamonds lit by floodlights, no searchlights advertising used car dealerships. There were no flashlights; everyone used candlesThe sky was briliant at night because there were few lights to compete with the stars When he died everyone had electric lights and streets were well-lit at night, but the starry sky had almost vanished due to light pollution.
In my grandfather’s youth, a letter took three to six months to reach England, and the only speedy method of communication was by telegraph – in Morse code, and only to a limited reach of communities near the few railway lines. When he died, you could call or send faxes almost anywhere in the world and a letter to England might take a week. He died before the Internet and email, but not before the first computer bulletin board systems.
When he went to school, the tallest mountains hadn’t been climbed, no one had sent robots to the deepest trenches of the oceans, or landed on the moon. The poles hadn’t been visited. There was still much mystery in the world and atlases had grey areas where no Westerner had yet visited. When he died, you could see pretty much anywhere in the world in National Geographic or on a TV show. There was little mystery left in the world, and even the solar system was being explored.
Gramps grew up with local produce and food as the only available items in stores; and people grew their own whenever they could. He saw refrigeration and long-distance trucking bring in foods from further and further away, soon making even tropical delicacies readily available in local supermarkets. He got to taste foods from places he never would visit. Fortuntately, he never had to worry about genetically modified foods, because he passed away before that madness started.
The first half of his life, no one watched TV – because there wasn’t any. TV didn’t become a commercial venture until the very late 1940s. It didn’t really start growing until the mid-1950s, by which time he was retired. My grandfather grew up reading, then listening to radio, watching silent films and finally talkies. Movies were in glorious black and white until the 1930s. My grandfather was middle-aged before he saw his first colour movie and into his retirement when he bought his first colour TV.
I remember a big, clumsy mechanical adding machine on his desk. It was as big as a breadbox, and had dozens of keys and a handle you pulled to get it to tally up. I recall his look of amazement when I showed him my first pocket calculator – about the size of a paperback book back then, and with only four functions, but battery-powered and lightning fast. He never really adjusted to them.
Nor did he like computers. I showed him mine a few times, but they were simply too much for him. By the end of his life, he had had about as much progress as he could handle. He kept up with the changing technology as best he could, but computers were his technological Waterloo.
No one living during his youth could have predicted a fraction of the technology developed in his lifetime alone. But then, predicting the future is never much more than guesswork anyway.
In 1936, an MIT professor name Dr. Furnas wrote a book called “The Next 100 Years.” Among his predictions for the distant future were hydro corridors, synthetic vitamins and antibiotics. Within a decade, all of those things were already commonplace. He dismissed the fledgling television as a fad with no practical application. Within two decades it would become the most popular form of entertainment in the world.
I look at "here's what the future will bring" books on the shelf today and think each one is a product of hubris more than insight.
Who could have predicted the Internet and its importance to our daily lives more than 10 years ago, aside from a few prescient science fiction writers like John Brunner (The Shockwave Rider)?
I’ve often wondered how my grandfather felt as his world changed so rapidly and so radically during his lifetime. Nothing of his youth was left intact. No corner of the world was left undiscovered, everything around him had changed completely and absolutely. And with it changed all of the values, the society and the culture that he was brought up with. I think that left him more baffled and distraught than any of the technological changes he lived through.
I think of my grandfather a lot as I try to keep pace with today’s technology. There seem fewer revolutions, more evolutions in today’s changes, fewer of the world-shattering inventions or discoveries that affected his life, but they seem to have as great an impact on our values and culture as anything he saw. Does Internet file sharing have any less impact on our culture than the radio did in his day?
I wonder what sort of changes I’ll look back on as he did, and what will be the breaking point at which I too will simply be unable to adjust, as my grandfather did with my computers. [/indent]
