GENERATIONAL DIVIDE

 

Yesterday I sold a set of snowshoes to a retired State Trooper in northern Maine.   It dawned on me that I was seeing a generational divide that goes further than old people aren’t techno-savvy.

 

I was seeing a gap in basic values between the old and the young.   I had had those snowshoes advertised for two years, and no one showed interest.  This was because wooden snowshoes are large and heavy.  You can buy aluminum snowshoes that are small and lightweight.

 

But it goes beyond that: My snowshoes were made by a person. Someone shaped the wood, steamed it until pliable, formed it on a jig, then someone with skill laced them with leather thongs, varnished them, and put their stamp on them.

 

I bought the shoes in 1976 - fifty years ago.   I have revarnished them numerous times.   I stored them carefully when not in use.   The value of these shoes, to me, was more than just their use.   I cared about them and took care of them.

 

Who cares about a factory-bent oblong piece of aluminum with a plastic sheet filling?  

I have a Silva compass that is sixty years old, a pocket knife that is ageless…

What does a young person have today that they value so highly they will still have it fifty years from now?   Their cell phone?   

the Ol'Buzzard

DID I RUN and AM I TIRED ?

 

I am in my eighth decade and getting more absent minded.   Yesterday I put together a bread; and when the bell rang on the bread-maker I took out the dough and realized I had not mixed in the yeast. 

 

Last night I made a fish chowder: sautéed onions, carrots, celery and garlic, put in two bottles of clam juice, added diced potatoes, a hand-full of thyme, and cooked until tender.   Finally, poured in a pint of Half and Half cream and a quarter-stick of butter.    Then realized the fish was still in the refrigerator. I had to add the salmon and halibut late to the recipe.  A fish chowder without fish?

 

Ok, twice in the same day: fuck me silly with a handy-billy.    But I am not overly concerned. 

 

Our brains are computers and have a finite storage capacity in the hard drives.  Some young people are just starting to fill their hard-drives; some people will never fill them, and most of us are overloaded at my age. 

 

Before covid, my wife and I would often go into the college cafeteria for a coffee and a sandwich after our walk around town.   The young twenty-somethings would look at us dismissively.   We were obviously  below their level of competence, knowledge and experience: old people. 

 

Fifteen years prior, these same young people were just learning not to crap their pants and piss their beds.  The spent the next seven years learning to read, write, and retain some basic math and science facts. Their last five years in school were consumed with the idea of sex, and trying to figure how to put what in where.  Now they are in college and know everything - and old people are just in their way.  But in reality, their hard drives are practically empty.

 

I have done everything these young people have done-plus.  I have lived in eight states; spent 13 years in the arctic and sub-arctic; I have spent seven years deployed between Italy, Spain, Portugal, Azores, Bermuda, Cuba, Porto Rico, Iceland, Vietnam, and Newfoundland; I have been to Turkey, Greece, Libya, Scotland and England; I have almost a thousand military flight hours and have been in two crash landings; I have been a winter-bush survival instructor, Maine State Guide, a school teacher and a principal. I have canoed the Allagash River and the Okefenokee swamps.  I have met thousands of people, and had thousands of experiences – many forgotten.   

 

I don’t use a cell phone, have a Face Book page, Tweet, play War Craft and video games; because I don’t care to.    I don’t take make-believe parachute jumps with virtual reality glasses – I have already done that in real life.   And I definitely get annoyed when Microsoft wants to download and update on my ten-year old computer.

 

Young people are not at fault.  In reality this is their world, and my time is past.   But in their egocentricity they don’t realize my hard drive is full and theirs are virtually empty.

 

Does it bother me that I can’t always come up with the word I want to say, or forget to put the yeast in the bread or the fish in the chowder?   A little.    But that is the cost of a world of experiences I have lived.     

 

All those experiences are downloaded on my hard drive, and unfortunately there is not an optimize button to sort and order all the data: so occasionally I am going to grope for a word or forget to put the damn yeast in the bread.  My hard drive is full.    It comes with the age .   But this is still the best time of my life. 

 

Did I run and Am I tired?

the Ol’Buzzard

 

TECHNOLOGY AND ME

I have a new cell phone.  It is a flip phone and it can access the internet, send and receive text messages, take and send pictures – and I don’t know how to do any of that.   

Basically, I don’t have a need for any of that.   I keep the phone for emergencies if I am traveling, and I will probably use it less than fifteen minutes this year to contact my wife if I have a question while I go shopping at the grocery store by myself.

I don’t feel the need to stay connected every minute - 24/7.   But that doesn’t mean the world shouldn’t.

Though I am not connected, I am not decrying the rest of the universe that obviously is.    I am a dinosaur and have chosen to let technology leave me behind.

The children of the millennials are growing up plugged in to iPads and computers instead of watching Sesame Street; technology is replacing toys.     This will cause a rewiring of the brain producing a techno-generation that will accept rapid change and think and respond differently than their grandparents.    These children are the new aliens on planet Earth. 

What used to take decades to research, produce and market is now done in months.   New products, new ideas, new parameters are being introduced daily. 

In 1985 there was no internet being used by the masses.   An Apple Mac computer could store one megabyte of data.

  

In the last forty years there has been more change in human innovation than the forty-thousand years preceding.    We have satellites giving us GPS with accurate to within a foot; space telescopes exploring the distance galaxies of the universe; computers capable of massive compilations within seconds; and exploration of the genome systems that in the very near future will cure most diseases and allow humans to drastically extend their life span.   Not to mention creating a new generation of children adapted to dealing with technologies and this rapid change.  

the Ol’Buzzard

IT’S A LEARNING CURVE - AN ADJUSTMENT TO A TIME WARP

Kids today are born with a special DNA strand for technology usage.

People of my generation – somewhere between World War II and Vietnam (note: here in the U.S. we can always distinguish time periods as between wars) – have had to make the transition to technology from an era when black and white television was the new innovation.

 

This week I was trying unsuccessfully to down load a clip from YouTube to my blog.  That same day I noticed that SQUATLO was displaying the clip (John Oliver’s roast of Trump) on his site.  I left him a comment asking how he had managed and he answered that he embedded by copying the HTML.

Now most men my ages understand the web to be a marvelous invention that allows you to access porn without an eight millimeter projector – and if you are old enough you will know what I am talking about.

However, something called HTML is a total mystery.

 

But the WEB is a marvelous place and recently I have discovered that anything I need to know can be found on YouTube.    So off I go to YouTube and ask how I can embed video in a blog using HTML – and the first one up gave the answer.

In case there is anyone out there besides me that doesn’t know how: you find your clip on YouTube; you right click and select - copy HTML; you go back to your blog post and select paste.   That's it!

Technology is wonderful: now all I have to do is go to YouTube and find out how to text with my new cell phone. 

It is all a learning curve - an adjustment to a Time Warp.

the Ol'Buzzard