Farewell to the Old....

[JollyRoger]

I remember when there were 3 tv channels to choose from and if you missed a program or watched something on the other side you had to wait for a repeat (in a year or 2) to watch it.

And you had to get off the couch to change the channel. I believe it was uphill both ways, through the snow on most days.

On a personal note, I used to date women old enough to be my mother and now they are young enough to be my daughter. Their age hasn't changed though.

 

[rah]

And you had to get off the couch to change the channel. I believe it was uphill both ways, through the snow on most days.

Not my father, he claims that what he had us for. The original remote control. And we worked for an occasional sip of beer.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Not my father, he claims that what he had us for. The original remote control. And we worked for an occasional sip of beer.

When I was a youngster I had a TV on the shelf in my bedroom closet. Old style where the volume control knob and the on/off switch were the same. I got this ring with a long set screw out of a busted lamp, slid the ring over the knob and tightened the screw in to make a lever. With a string tied to the end running around the closet pole and out to a handy place I could pull the string to turn the TV off when I heard my parents coming down the hall. This was at least a couple decades before remote control for the TV became available, so I consider myself to have been defrauded on the patent.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I dunno. I've seen a couple crashes with the smaller trucks and they get utterly obliterated by something like a bus or semi. Newer trucks get ruined but the seating area seem relatively intact after a collision.

But I haven't seen enough crashes to know if that's anecdotal or a real difference.

I think that's intentionally done. There's crumple zones so that the car gets destroyed to save its passengers.

 

[rah]

But it couldn't change the channel. But to me that's part of the difference. Today's youth would just download an app.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I've actually thought a lot about the pictures thing. Some friends of mine have had children in the last few years and they post a lot of pictures on Facebook. I think this actually raises considerable ethical issues because if I were in that situation, grew to some level of self-awareness, and realized my baby pictures were all over the internet I would be absolutely furious. I understand that like parents get a lot of joy out of kids and want to share that, but it seems like there should also be some consideration of the fact that babies cannot consent to this stuff. I was reading an article about child "influencers" on Insta whose parents literally exhaustively plan every aspect of their lives to be a sponsored post and it just straight-up disgusted me, I don't normally play the role of the curmudgeon but I gotta say that if exhaustively documenting your life (let alone your five-year-old child's life) on social media to build a "brand" is the future then let's go back to the past...

One of the things the funeral home was pushing when I made the arrangements for my dad's cremation was posting a photo and obituary on their website.

I said absolutely not, that I have never posted any family member's photo other than my cats, due to identity theft concerns. I reminded them that there are people who only read obituaries to find identities to steal - easy enough if the obituary lists such handy snippets as the mother's maiden name, where the deceased went to school, what degrees they may have, where they worked, etc. So I said that if I wanted to have an obituary for him, I'd write it myself, and there would be no pictures.

Gotta be honest with you, that description either paints schooling in the 60s as a hellscape or it implies your definition of bullying has a fairly low bar.

I'm leaning towards the former, of course. It's my understanding back then something like a teacher beating a student was cool beans, at least in Europe. My dad's teacher in Belgium had a metal ruler she'd slap kids with.

Well, I am old enough to have gone to school in the '60s (I started Grade 1 in 1969). Yes, there was bullying going on, some of it very serious. Back in those days it was taken for granted that misbehaving students were likely to get the strap (I never did, but did get detention once). I remember one incident in Grade 4 (1971) when a particularly uncooperative, all-around "bad" kid finally pushed the teacher to the point of frustration where she told him to bend over a table and she took the yardstick to his backside. He just would not behave. And he grinned throughout the whole thing, pleased that he had made the teacher so angry.

Of course nowadays, any teacher doing that would be arrested for assault.

Though I don't miss trying to schedule life around air times or trying to tape stuff with a vcr.

One of the most useful things I ever learned to do was program a VCR.

And I do worry that anyone born after 2000 simply will not know how to go moderate to long periods of time without stimulus.

I even find myself having a much shorter attention span than I used to have. But I can still just sit quietly and let various scenes and dialogue for this ongoing story I started during NaNoWriMo last November play out in my head, trying out various ideas and seeing if they're something I would want to include in the written story.

I'd make up adventure stories in my head. I started to actually look forward to that quiet time. I wonder if constant entertainment will stifle their creativity.

Have you ever written any of them down?

And people her age and a bit younger are like always mad they don't get to say Checkoslovakia or Jugoslavia anymore

They can if they sing along with the theme song of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?".

Most men wearing hats was common until the 1960s. Then the basic men's fedora and caps disappeared. Hair flourished! Hats went dormant until the baseball cap brought about a revival of men's head wear.

I was at the nursing home this morning, packing up my dad's clothes. I found about half a dozen caps, several toques, and a couple of fedoras. My grandfather usually wore a fedora when he went out, and this occurred well into the 1980s (he died in 1986).

 

[AmazonQueen]

And you had to get off the couch to change the channel. I believe it was uphill both ways, through the snow on most days.

On a personal note, I used to date women old enough to be my mother and now they are young enough to be my daughter. Their age hasn't changed though.

With no shoes because we couldn't afford them.

 

[dusters]

I liked when phones were phones with a string attached, actual numbers to ring and talking on them were practically free. Like 25 years ago paying for a home phone was as cheap as paying for garbage service - like 10 dollars.

Nowadays you are forced to buy a mobile phone which has a magnetic field, which makes head ache after long talks and which is overly irritating. Glad I can survive without buying a smart phone. I don't plan to. And I hope somehow non-smart mobiles survive. I need to talk and send sms, all other stuff is better done in real life for me.

I liked when people had fun strolling around parks. Nowadays young people meet to drink together at a noisy chain caffeteria, back then people were happy to slowly, slowly walk and talk in a beautiful and mostly silent park .

Silence has become a commodity. If I want to live in a silent place, I have to buy a house 5-10 km from city centre. Otherwise than that there are many neighbours in 9-story house which means there is complete silence only like 5-7 hours per day.

 

[Sommerswerd]

And you had to get off the couch to change the channel. I believe it was uphill both ways, through the snow on most days.

On a personal note, I used to date women old enough to be my mother and now they are young enough to be my daughter. Their age hasn't changed though.

Reminds me of a line in Dazed and Confused

 

[tjs282]

First time I felt old was talking about films with someone, I mentioned Apocalypse Now, and they said they didn't watch old films.

For me it's music. I'm still listening to stuff that I bought in my teens in the late 80s/early 90s. Yes, this is probably a bad case of Arrested Development — who were also cool, although I never rewarded them for it (and high-fives to anyone else who recognizes the name without Google-ing!) But it's kinda sobering to reflect that these CDs (yes! CDs!) are now older than most if not all of the Beatles' albums already were, at the time when I was buying the 'new' stuff... (if that makes any sense)

And I have always been quite happy to watch old movies. Though e.g. Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction — both of which I saw not long after they were released — would presumably also count as 'old' these days. Hell, even The Matrix will be 20 this year...

 

[stinkubus]

Did you guys get free long distance in Latvia? Cell phones have considerably lowered the cost of acquiring service in the US.

 

[AmazonQueen]

For me it's music. I'm still listening to stuff that I bought in my teens in the late 80s/early 90s. Yes, this is probably a bad case of Arrested Development — who were also cool, although I never rewarded them for it (and high-fives to anyone else who recognizes the name without Google-ing!) But it's kinda sobering to reflect that these CDs (yes! CDs!) are now older than most of not all of the Beatles' albums already were, at the time when I was buying the 'new' stuff... (if that makes any sense)

And I have always been quite happy to watch old movies. Though e.g. Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction — both of which I saw not long after they were released — would presumably also count as 'old' these days. Hell, even The Matrix will be 20 this year...

I've still got all my LPs and 45s as well as CDs. I did get rid of my cassette tapes a while back. Their annoying habit of getting chewed up in the player mean they are one aspect of the past I'm not sorry to see gone.

 

[civvver]

True, but getting a lot harder to do. When I was a pool man a little truck with a four cylinder was ideal, and still would be, but it seems like the "mini-truck" now is as big as a half-ton used to be, and my sister has an F-150 that won't fit in a parking space. A one ton crew cab has turned into a house with a yard.

People who used to buy like small ford rangers are turning to these kind of vehicles.

Spoiler :

Parking meters now take credit cards; can Apple pay be far behind?

I think that is fantastic. I've paid by phone app before too but it kind of sucks if it's one you don't have and now you have to download something and register. I love the vending machines that take cards as well. I never have cash. Because I get paid by direct deposit I have to go out of my way to an atm to get cash and then it's in 20s.

A have a veruy strong impression that the rate of change came to some kind of abrupt stop around 10 years ago. Not much new happened either in technology or society. It is as if the possibilities are all spent. Notice the remakes in the media...

And in fact the two big changes were the internet swallowing TV time, and the Internet becoming mobile through smartphones. That apart, not much changed from 20 years ago. The world changed far more in the 7 decades before 1945 than in the seven decades after 1945.

Perhaps it is that I thing much of what is being peddled as imminent change now (electric cars, electronic payments, etc) are not really going to take over and replace the old. Much as ebooks were supposed to have killed printed books and failed. I wonder when the limit of online retail will be hit but I think we're neat it also.

I disagree. Our energy model is still not changing fast enough and self driving cars are right around the corner and going to be a huge change. Also internet retail hasn't peaked. The growth may have slowed by online grocery shopping is in its infancy and I really think it's going to take a new generation to launch it. I don't think millennials are even totally sold on it, either not comfortable with having someone pick out their groceries or they see the fees as too expensive. It'll be children of millennials who see it as a normal thing I believe.

Have you ever written any of them down?

A couple. I posted the beginning of one here a few years ago, not one from my childhood but later. I mostly wrote songs to perform on my guitar.

 

[dusters]

Did you guys get free long distance in Latvia? Cell phones have considerably lowered the cost of acquiring service in the US.

The thing is, since calling got so expensive in late 2000s and early 2010s, people have stopped calling each other for long talks. Everyone uses whatsapp/facebook messaging instead.

Even if it is cheap again (just checked, 10 euros/month to call inside Latvia) not many people would call. When I arrived in my new flat in 2005 it didn't have a cell phone line.

 

[rah]

Back in the 70's long distance in the US was quite expensive.

 

[AdamCrock]

Internet changed a lot ! (imho for the worse) . Some of the most notable changes.
1. Youtube has become a TV station (sadly with all of the TV stations flaws) .
2. Social media sites become a tool of the governments their aganda (including spying).
3. Google has become a commercial giant.

Also PC gaming is not what it used to be - sadly it's dying off

 

[Farm Boy]

Are you sure? PC gaming seems at least as alive as its ever been. Bigger than the movies, at any rate. Just a lot of major/popular releases have moved to Free to Play models which include a fundamental element of providing constant dissatisfaction as part of their commercial model.

 

[rah]

Yeah, with the rise of making money playing games, the interest won't diminish.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

For me some of the most interesting are:

- The amount our information/history/choices are tracked, logged, sold, monetized. Every single person posting on this forum has their entire life story owned by a ton of corporations. It's almost weird how little stuff changed because of this. I mostly try not to think about it. I didn't change any behavior.
- The change from owning physical goods to using/essentially leasing digital ones. Most of my video games are now digital. My music is. Many of my movies and TV shows are. Even, slowly but surely, some of my books are now things I have "in" a Kindle. The other day I was browsing my entire music library and a good 5% of my songs are now "unavailable" because Amazon lost the rights to them.
- I can buy everything online now, effectively, and no longer have to spend time going to stores or calling places or coming out empty handed
- Highway overpasses have changed big time! The traditional clover design is being phased out in places where there is space to do so. Having a turn you are supposed to take at 25 mph right before you merge onto the highway (or vice versa) is no good! Tons of clovers in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio I used to see have been upgraded to easier to drive designs.
- Weather forecasting is really accurate! Up to about 7 days! Wild! We can forecast the weather and do so really well! Advanced computer modeling really upped the ante on this and made it quite reliable.
- It's funny to me that we just discover planets and stuff all the time now. Like oh, what did Kepler find today? Oh ok. Cool. It's almost become routine.

 

[rah]

We were the first house in our neighborhood to lock it's doors during the day.