I was cruising the internet today and saw an article about the Mindset List, published annually by Beloit College. Every year you see a list like this around the time of graduation or when college freshman are starting school. The lists are designed to refresh the older generations on the relevance of topics and point of view of the younger generations. These lists always provide both a laugh and a shock for me. Case in point:
Kids starting college this fall have always lived in a world with GPS and phones with caller ID.
My kids will hardly answer a phone if they can't see who's calling. My daughter asked me once in disbelief, "How did you know who was calling before caller ID?" "Well, we answered the phone," was my reply. As for GPS, well, people still seem to get lost in spite of it!
"The Tonight Show" has always been hosted by Jay Leno.
Yes, kids, some guy named Johnny Carson used to host that show with Ed McMahon at his side. Yes, Ed actually worked in TV before Star Search! No, Ed wasn't just the spokesman for Publisher's Clearinghouse.
Watergate.
Just ask a college student about Watergate. Go ahead. I did it at work today and my coworker had no idea what I was referencing. She did, however, recognize the name Nixon.
IBM typewriters?
Whenever my children complain of having to write an essay or do any kind of writing project I regale them with stories of the "old days" when we struggled with typewriters. Just one clean page of typing was a nightmare to produce. Spellcheck? It was called a dictionary. Fonts? What??? Seriously, computers make writing such a dream! No backspacing to center your title. When you make a mistake you just delete. Don't like the way your paragraphs are organized? Cut and paste!
This reminds me of the first time I experienced an 'old' moment...and I wasn't even old. I was home from college one summer and I went to a music store at the mall. As I was browsing the selections I overheard a high school student exclaim, "Wow! I didn't know Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings!!!"
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
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3 comments:
hahahha
I didn't know John Lennon did something between
the quarrymen
and
plastic ono band.
Weeeeiirrd...
Ah the good old days. Yes, I remember life before the internet....
I remember when all this was fields... :)
Email, can you remmember life before email? In a dozen years I have gone from hotmail on a dial up connection to blackberry. I still have not started sending text messages (never trust anyone over 40.) Digital cameras, my first one arrived about 4 years ago and I have not taken the film out of my Nikon since. Film, they don't know what film is.
DG
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