Every generation seems to loose some of the old generations 'base knowledge', and their expectations of their 'basic normal' is upped to the current level of 'consumer tech'.
My Mom told me about kerosene refrigerators, and before that just keeping milk cool in water pumped (by wind) from the well. I remember visiting her mom (my grandmother) when she still lived in a half-dugout house in West Texas. Moving from the well water cooling to a kerosene refrigerator was a technological coups for the day. When my grandmother moved into 'town' into a 'regular house', that was another great advance. Both my parents remember when electricity first came to their homes, and one light bulb in a room was considered a big deal. My parents thought Color Movies were great advances. Their parents thought 'Talkies' were the 'bees knees'. I grew up with a B/W TV and it was my base norm, as was a party line dial telephone. When 'direct dial telephone service' came to the Dallas/Ft Worth TX area, it was a big deal. We went to downtown Ft Worth and toured the Southwestern Bell switching center (relays mainly, before solid state switches). It was really 'high tech'. Not many of us remember doing 'duck and cover' drills in school, in case of enemy nuclear attack. My dad almost put in a bunker, but instead we lived close to millitary bases and manufacturers. He said it was partly so we wouldn't survive the first attack, if it happened. I can go on. My kids don't remember not having a hardwired network at home and computers for everyone (we were the first on our block that I know of). We did 'share' a dialup modem, but via a linux server that did dial on demand in another room (on a separate phone line) so it looked to them like we were 'online all the time'. My kids don't remember dial telephones, or pay phones. And as my daughter is a school teacher, she is running into the 'next generation' effect with her second graders (and she has only been teaching 2 years). I find myself waxing about 'old tech' when I could understand how all the toys work to some reasonable extent. But my 'base knowledge' of how logic gates work (NAND, NOR, AND, OR, Inverters, and how to combine them into state machines or processors) is not common anymore. Most of that knowledge isn't needed even by digital designers. ... Technicians are board swappers not 'repair people', as the cost of people goes up and equipment goes down that is a natural progression. Today, I think of 3D printing as high tech, if I had grandkids (none yet) they would not know a world without it being available, and would ask me what that box on the wall with a hand crank is (it is a telephone from my wifes grandad's home, still has room for B batteries inside, and has a generator on the other end of a crank ... no dial) In 10-15 years we will have Compaq or GE or Fujilkjlfkja :) making 3D printers and scanner multi-function replicators we can buy at Walmart or Best Buy (I would have said Sears and Wards 20 years ago). And that will be the norm for another generation. *"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke* * * *And technology keeps advancing even if we don't. I don't care to live forever, but I would sure like to be able to peek from behind the curtain and see what happens!* ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
