Something To Think About/ Perhaps Discuss!

[📚 Dianne 📚]

What was the most fascinating event of your lifetime?

The most horrifying event of your lifetime?

What do you think is the biggest change in the world today - since you've been born?

What is the worst change since the 50's in the world today?

What is the best change in the world since you've been borne?

What changes are you most fascinated with?

What changes are you most thankful for?

What changes do you think we can expect to see later in this century?

I brought this up because something had me pondering today just how long I've been around (and it isn't as long as you'd think).  But the fact is I've seen two centuries, two millennia and changes out the whazzoo since I was born in the late 50's:







I can't agree with everything in this attachment but I do agree with most of it. 

The younger members of my family just don't seem to get it when I try to explain the changes that have happened to the world and life in general since I was born.   Maybe you all here can explain to me why people born around this time haven't seen so much or done so much (as a whole, not me personally) as those born later in the 20th century or the early part of the 21st? 

And remember--- 60 is the new 40! 

[Bugme]

Let me pop Led Zeppelin into my 8 track in my 1970 Olds 442 and we're gonna go cruisin' on the strip.

I agree 100% with the meme. This was my era!

[📚 Dianne 📚]

Nov 16, 2018 16:50:11 GMT -8 Bugme said:

Let me pop Led Zeppelin into my 8 track in my 1970 Olds 442 and we're gonna go cruisin' on the strip.

I agree 100% with the meme. This was my era!

Hey, we of the greatest generation definitely had the best music and the best cars, but I had kind of hp[ed that you might answer one or two of the questions!


Ahhh American made cars using US steel ruled the US then (mine was a '66 Mustang convertible V8 350, man she was agile)  -you rarely had to worry about killing yourself in these.  They were so well built that they never needed all the safety devices we have now. Just add updated seat belts and you're good to go.



Seriously, I think the biggest change is the availability and ease of use computers (nothing like Emerac lol).  The computer I worked on in high school took up a whole room -now they do everything, fit in the palm of your hand and even keep people alive.  Amazing.

[📚 Dianne 📚]

PS- I added two more questions based on a conversation I had with my hubby last night over this post!

[Ameline]

I can hardly imagine what it must be like for people my grandparents age. The amount of change even from the 90's to now is mind boggling.

In as little as 15 years we went from cord and dial home phones to wireless phones that you can take anywhere. We have internet where thoughts and information can be sent and received in a minute as oppose to the postal system that takes weeks. We saw the fall of our beloved VHS as it was replaced by DVDs, then we saw the concept of renting movies basically disappear all together. Just to name a few things.

[Retread]

What was the most fascinating event of your lifetime?
Apollo 13, without a doubt. It was the world's most successful failure, do to the efforts of a highly functioning team, a few of whom were in a relatively isolated and remote environment.

It held the entire world captivated with hope.

The most horrifying event of your lifetime?
Difficult to choose just one.
The Kennedy Assasination.
9/11
The Challenger disaster. (Not that Columbia was any less horifying, but all eyes were on Challenger while it happened.)
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Any and all wars.

What do you think is the biggest change in the world today - since you've been born?
Our ability to harness technology.

What is the worst change since the 50's in the world today?
Our reliance on technology.

What is the best change in the world since you've been borne?
The slow but steady shift toward tolerance.

What changes are you most fascinated with?
The social and ethical challenges our rapidly advancing technology brings.

What changes are you most thankful for?
That celebrities like Hanoi Jane no longer encourage the general population to spit on our returning soldiers. For the most part, society can now separate our abhorrence for war from those who serve.

What changes do you think we can expect to see later in this century?
I can't even begin to imagine. Rate of change has been remarkably slow through the centuries but the 20th century saw us pass through the knee of an exponential curve.

[📚 Dianne 📚]

[Syko Nachoman]

I'll attempt to answer such things despite having been born at the tail end of the 1980s.

What was the most fascinating event of your lifetime?

Super Bowl LI

The most horrifying event of your lifetime?

Super Bowl XXXIX
Super Bowl XLII
It has to be 9/11. Considering when I was born, I don't really think anything else comes close.

What do you think is the biggest change in the world today - since you've been born?

Computers went from being a weird, expensive nerd hobby, to a household item for the middle-class, to a household item for everybody, to something everyone keeps in their pockets at all times. I remember my family paying close to $1,000 for a Macintosh computer when I was about seven (calendar year 1996/7), and it was the greatest thing since my cousins gave me like thirty NES games a year earlier. We didn't have internet, but boy did I have fun wasting time on that thing.

In 1998, we got a Windows computer with *internet*, and a whole new world opened up. In this amazing new world, I could learn and name of every single Simpsons episode and its production code. It was pretty incredible. I would just spend hours scrolling through those episode lists and trying to figure out which episodes I hadn't seen yet, making lists of my favorite episodes, etc. Oh, and occasionally I did non-Simpsons things too.

What is the worst change since the 50's in the world today?

This is a tough one to answer, considering I was born four decades too late, but I'm curious to know whether having an abundance of information at our fingertips has taken the wonder out of things. Like, if I saw a gorgeous waterfall, it probably would have been much cooler if I hadn't already seen a bunch of photos of waterfalls and other nature-y scenes all over the internet. Or, I can imagine looking at Stonehenge in person and thinking, "Wow, my old Windows XP wallpaper sure looks nice!"

What is the best change in the world since you've been borne?

Since I've been carried, computers in general have been a pretty gigantic thing, and I'd argue that the benefits are indeed very nice. I suck at verbal communication and enunciation while speaking, so it's much easier to communicate my thoughts by typing them, so talking to people online is way simpler than it would otherwise be. Online ordering means I can buy pretty much anything I need without having to physically go out, find the thing (assuming the thing I want is even located in a nearby store -- no need to check every one for that rare CD/book/whatever!), and then transport it back to my house. I've discovered a ton of great music, TV shows, movies, books, and other media that I probably never would have known existed if the internet didn't serve as a catalog of everything that exists. My job wouldn't be possible without computers, and I love my job. I've literally met a ton of great people (I'm assuming they collectively weigh more than 2,000 pounds) thanks to the magic of the interweb. And computers are just fun to use in general, so there's that, too.

What changes are you most fascinated with?

Probably GPS, just because of the complexity that's apparently needed to make it work. It's the only thing that needs both special and the other type of Einstein relativity, or something! I don't know.

Either that or space travel, just because of how little we've done with the technology we have. I mean, OK, we went to the moon a few times, and it turned out to be kind of a dull place, with some white rocks and some white craters and not a whole lot to do up there. I can understand not wanting to go back. But I'm kind of disappointed that humanity (read: people/agencies with the money to make it happen) seemed to lose interest in space travel in general for a few decades, and we're just now beginning to hear about companies -- like, you know, that Elon Musk one, SpaceX or whatever -- with plans to build Mars colonies.

What changes are you most thankful for?

The answer I gave two questions above probably covers this.

What changes do you think we can expect to see later in this century?

For a while, I've had a mental list that I call my "passive bucket list," which is a lamer version of a bucket list in which I list the things I want to see happen during my lifetime, even though I, personally, will likely have little or no role in making them happen. My passive bucket list, as of the last time I thought about it:

1. Watch Eagles win Super Bowl
2. Watch humanity establish first Mars colony
3. Witness liberation of North Korea

OK, so I didn't have very many ideas, but I feel like all of them could happen within my lifetime, if not within a decade (and maybe that's optimistic, but I prefer optimism). Heck, if the Eagles can win a Super Bowl, anything can happen.