Generational Designations/Names

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

Well, Sweden bordered the Soviet Union. They were right at our doorstep (and sometimes they snuck in, with their submarines), so we definitely had a Cold War experience.

[honeybee]

Yes, the big stuff - wars, cold wars. . .global economics would probably be the same. The smaller stuff - television shows, music, fashion - would probably be a little different, a little the same.

We've got a border with what was the USSR, too, and I think submarines lurked all around the Alaskan coast pretty routinely. Ah, the Cold War, it was way better for spy novels.

[Alelou]

I hail from the very last year of the baby boom (1960). This means I get associated with Vietnam War protests and Woodstock and all that, even though I was really far too young to participate. However, I think growing up in a journalist's house I was probably a lot more keyed into the events of the 60's than most of my classmates were. I remember watching coverage of the King assassination and the first lunar landing, the retreat from Hanoi, the Watergate hearings. I remember younger reporter friends of my father coming and going from Vietnam War service. So I have a similar sensation of identifying with people older than I am.

[panyasan]

Being born in 1968 I feel I have a more similar outlook, and memories, with people born ten or even twenty years prior than someone born ten or fifteen years later. I grew up during and experienced the Cold War. The younger whipper-snappers feel that is just history - the same way I view WW2. The Nazis are history to me, but the Commies aren't in the same way. For them the Commies are history.

So what am I? A generation X-er?

Born in 1967! So I am a real generation X-er. Growing up in a country that tried very hard to heal the wounds of the Nazi occupation, so that did influence me. As for the Cold War: I remember pop songs like "If the bomb drops". It didn't matter which country was going throw a nuke - one nuke and my entire country would be gone. It sort of created a very anti-nucular movement and an attitude to live your live to the max.

[aadarshinah]

Born in 1988, I logically understand that I fully belong to Gen Y, but it's kinda funny.... Looking back, in a way I feel far older than I should. I remember our first computer - one of those huge floppy-disc models with the huge monitors that showed only like 16 colours and even then everything was pixilated, with a printer with the little notebook-paper bits you had to tear off it. That was, what, 4th grade? Then a CD drive one later, in late middle school. And now.... Now there are 3 laptops (1 of which is actively used), 2 of those solid-state mini-computers, and 2 desktops in active use in my house, not counting various hard drives, gaming consoles, and whatnot. The disconnect from my earliest memories to now is disconcerting to look back on. Can't imagine how it's like for people older than I am who grew up before the idea of personal computers even caught on...

[panyasan]

I realized I come from a totaly different time when I was strolling around in a second hand store and they had a collecting of LP's. My daughter had no clue what they were. (If you don't know either: it's the forerunner of the cd). I remember those computer floppy's, o we were so cool those days. (dreams away, thinking about the good old eighties).

[Silverbullet]

I can remember a time when none of it was even a possibility. the first computer was as big as a house and men ran around in back of it with a box of Vacuum tubes to replace burned out ones. It had a few K of memory.

Telephone, Radio, TV just gettng started, black and white, NO cable or Satellite so everything ws by kinescope (recording on tape) shows were months out of ate when played in certain areas. To place a Long distance call one had to book it in avnace and go thrugh a series of opertors. None of this calling on a cell phone from the middle of Walmart all the way cross country to talk to your daughter about somethin g you want ot buy for the grand kid. 78, 45, 33 1/3 speed records and record players, HiFi. That was th estate of the art then. Saying that something like the IPAd was possible would earn you a nice rubber room all your own.

Many of you will be aroud for the turn of this century. You might sit down and wonder what new things will be invented during that time. Write them down and see if you come close.

Eveything you have has been invented since I was born. What will be invented during your lifetime?

SB

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

My first computer was a Commodore 128 (called that because it had a memory of 128 kB) that used a cassette player to run programs.

My first encounter with a computer was in 7th grade where we had something called an ABC 80, which had a memory of 16 kB.

This laptop computer I write on has a memory of 320 GB, to which an external harddrive of 1,5 TB is connected. Things have changed indeed.

[panyasan]

I remember coming back from Japan and looking for a internet provider. The fast internet was about the slowest in Japan. We had no choice then to laugh and get used to it.

The first word program I used was Word Perfect. I have a Word Perfect diploma! That was before Windows became standard.

[Alelou]

My first job after college (other than packing groceries) was editing technical articles on utility programs (all written in BASIC) for Radio Shack's TRS-80 personal computer.

At least at that company I could do my work at a computer. Eight years later, at Prentice Hall, I used to get permission to go home to my own PC to rewrite really bad manuscripts because they still had us all working on typewriters and carbon paper. Even the poorly-funded high school where I had taught English in the years between managed to get us at least one Apple IIe in each classroom, but this New York-area publishing company hadn't updated its editorial staff to computers yet.

(I guess it's no wonder that particular division eventually slid into oblivion.)

[aadarshinah]

Oh my god, Alelou, please tell me you're not actually responsible for those awful Prentice Hall books I had to suffer through in middle school. Please, for the love of all that is holy, tell me it's not true.

[Alelou]

No, that was the school division, which is still torturing students today. I might be responsible for some of the reproducible worksheets you got, though, especially if they said copyright Center for Applied Research in Education (or occasionally Prentice Hall) up the side. I acquired and edited books written by teachers for other teachers.

[aadarshinah]

I can breathe more easily then. Thank God. Those books were horrid... though the worksheets were never much better. Well, they were shorter, but still

[honeybee]

I had a serious Gen X moment yesterday - driving around on a beautiful fall day, REM's "Radio Free Europe" came on the radio. *sigh*

[Yashida]

Great, so according to the overview I'm a confirmed border-case now, dangling between Generation X and Y with my birth year of 1982. Why doesn't that surprise me?

Ah well, I guess it does explain why I often feel that my two year younger brother definitely belongs to another generation than I do; of course he could also just be that childish...

Anyway, I recently too got to stand still for a moment contemplating all these rapid technological changes. My son also looked up rather strangely fascinated by those 'big, black cd's' on the few occasions when we play an LP at my mother's house. As a child my brother and I had several children's songs and fairy tales on LP and we enjoyed listening to them while drawing and such. Also the fairy tales books narrated on cassettes were a great hit. We didn't own a video-player before I was 9 or 10, and then suddenly a just few years later everyone has cd's, video's are replaced by DVD's and us young teenagers are bugging our parents for a dvd-player...
My first computer experience was a commodore 64, and man, no matter how much more elaborate the games on pc's are now, they're not even half as fun as those on the commodore. There's also something to be said about being able to fix almost any glitch or malfunction of said computer by just giving a hearty bang on it! Computer frustration as I sometimes have the misfortune of experiencing today just didn't exist. Oh, and everytime I watch that scene in Star Wars where Han Solo just gives the Falcon's computer a good bang to get it functioning again I am reminded of my old commodore. I'm sure that's where they got it from too.

I sometimes wonder how my son will look at me in a few years when I explain to him his mom didn't exactly grew up with a PC (unlike my brother who was pretty much stuck to his PC most of his teenage years, I didn't began to actively use a PC for anything else besides the occasional essay or such for school in WORD before college) and as such can't be expected to know how to fix any more serious glitches or malfunctions. I fully expect him to be explaining computer matters to me in a few years...