When telling stories about high school and college years she asks things along the lines of "Why didn't you just e-mail them?" Uhhh, because e-mail hardly existed back then, because we didn't have cell phones. Growing up my family had a black rotary dial phone and a tiny black and white TV for untill around the time I was about 12 years old. I'm not even forty years old! One time I asked my grandparents, who grew up without electricity, indoor plumbing, or central heat if they thought that the world would be, when I was became thier age, as different to me from the one I grew up in as their world is to them when compared to their childhood. You could see them both give a little jerk at the thought and they got strangely creepy knowing smiles and said "yes, yes it will be." I found it a bit unsettling, they memory will hopefully help me keep in touch with changes in technology. I think the internet is changing our lives as much as any invention ever has, in ways that we can't even yet comprehend, and it is a technology still in it's infancy. The mobile phone is mostly a just another gate way for the internet to act upon our lives.
it is one of my prized pieces of nostalgia.
It's a pity most history is written about the past, really. A lot of our lives are spent looking forward and wondering what's coming or trying to influence it, but that probably won't be recorded, even though it's probably shaping what we do. Re those old rotary phones: can you remember how slow they were to dial?! I can't imagine using one now. It would seem like forever to wait for that circle thing to return after each number is dialed. Just thinking about that makes me feel impatient :)
Actually, remembering how it was I realize it seems kind of alien to me too now. I wonder how we ever managed the inconvenience of it all. But then I also remember how nice it was before you were expected to be so accessible. You never had to answer the phone, because you always had an excuse for not answering: "I wasn't home."
I still manage to not answer the phone, though, thanks to Caller ID :) Yay! That's been a huge change for me. Before that, I used to dread picking up the phone until I knew who it was. The whole thing of feeling old when technology changes - I know what you mean. I feel old anyway, regardless, but it does feel strange to have witnessed society changing so drastically. But maybe the changes tend to fade into the background after a while. I once asked my grandmother what it had been like to live through all the many changes she'd seen over her lifetime (she died aged 99) and her answer was the equivalent of "Meh!" She'd experienced the introduction of electricity, home phones, cars, planes, space travel, television, mobile phones, computers, and then the introduction of the internet age, and it was like she hadn't really noticed any of it as being unusual. Maybe that was just her, though.
Anyway. It's pretty liberating. This is my family's cottage, and I am considering just making a 'no contact' rule next time I go. We are social animals, but even social animals need alone time.
And I don't know anything about sci-fi movies. I've never seen or read a sci-fi anything (unless Star Wars counts, and I only saw the original one and only like Yoda. And Harrison Ford). I did try to read a Robert Heinlein book once, but didn't get past the first chapter. Sorry about all these "I, I, I"s, but here's a few more: it seems like I'm having a Ypsilanti day. Yesterday I saw in your band video caption that you were playing in Ypsilanti, a placename I've never seen before. And less than 24 hours later I've just seen it mentioned again, in something about road signs:
http://www.danpink.com/archives/2011/03/emotionally-intellig...
Great name, Ypsilanti! You're memorable!