I keep seeing these "[insert decade] kids remember and we were the last to have it so good." posts on the interwebs. You know those posts that are like, "We had/did this when we were young, so our generation is better than yours."
I thought we were past this type of boomerism. I'm one these people that grew up in the 80's/90's era. I had a blast. Know who else had a blast? My daughter who was raised late 90's to 2010's. There's always some curmudgeon that always thinks their generation is better than the next. Time moves on. Things change. Even beyond your current understanding. And the generations don't change because of the kids. They change because of the adults that raise and lead them. Kids didn't invent and manufacture cell phones, social media, and the aversion to playing outside. Grown-ups did. Grown-ups from... previous generations... Dun-dun-DUUUUNNNNN! Gasp you should. We tend to blame kids and young adults for the things we give and sell them. My parents nagged me about playing video games. About how I was always wanting to play them. Of course I did! It was an entertainment medium made to be consumed. And then the internet, and so on. Why nag the next generation for consuming the products being made and sold by your own? Being made to be sold to the subsequent generations to follow.
I'd love to break down a time line of inventions and complaints of one generation to the next over said inventions, but this little bloviation was hardly meant to be scientific.
One day I was at my parents' house with my daughter. We were on our phones. My dad chuckled at us. He the paraphrased a quote from Albert Einstein and the quote goes,
"I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots."
Then he said something about us being stuck to screens.
Of course I had to retort. I pointed at his 70" TV and told him that his face was stuck to that screen damn near 24 hours a day. I reminded him that TV was once called the "boob tube". So that from generation to generation there are changes. That what we're up to really isn't any different than what he was.
The funniest part of all that is while looking up that quote, there appears to be quite a bit of contention about if Einstein actually said it. Is it untrue? Mayhaps not. Was the original person that spoke the quote genuinely fearful of such a fate for humanity? I could see where they could think it. But does it hold more weight because Einstein was said to have said it? Absolutely. This leads into a whole 'nother thing. So stay tuned for that mess.
Image credit:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:I_did_not_say_half_of_the_shit_you_see_on_internet_-_Albert_Einstein.png
Quote info:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/einstein-technology-quote/
Comments