Fellow Baby Boomers, do you remember when…

I am a Baby Boomer. I was born before the age of computers, cell phones, digital cameras and other technology.   A lot has changed in the way we do things and act.  I was thinking back and remembering some of them.

Computers

I learned to type on a typewriter, not on a computer.If I was writing an article like this blog post before the computer era and I wanted to change something, I would need to retype the whole thing. If it was only one letter or word, I could maybe white-out it and continue, but it wouldn’t look as nice.  Of course there were no blogs then and unless I was a journalist I would have no way to write something that people I don’t even know will see.  I would have to type it and give a physical copy to whoever I wanted to see it.

Now I can write something, edit and correct it as many times as I like and it still looks good, without retyping everything. I can even edit it after it goes on the internet.  And it can be seen by hundreds of people, most of them who I don’t know and they don’t know me.

If I wanted to find out information, I would first check the encyclopedia that took up a whole shelf  and since the information became old, we got yearbooks that came out every year with stickers to put next to the articles that changed so we would know to check the yearbook, but half the time we didn’t bother putting them in.  Or I would go to the library and look for books and articles.

Cell phones

Cell phones have also changed the way we act. If I made a date to meet someone, we had to make an exact time and place because there was no way to get in touch with each other once we left the house. We couldn’t say, like we do now, “I’ll call you when I get to the mall and we will see where to meet.”

It meant we had to plan more and be more responsible. If you told someone you would be at a certain place, you made sure you were there.

Digital Cameras

I was talking today to someone about taking pictures. Once you would think twice or three times before you took a picture because the film and development cost too much money to waste a picture. Today we take all the pictures that we want. But on some level we have lost the precision that came with taking time to make the one great picture and sometimes the 20 pictures we take aren’t as good as the one we used to take.

There is no going back. The technology is here and I wouldn’t go without it. But maybe there are points where we have lost something and we should try to get it back. Maybe we should be as responsible as we were when there wasn’t a cellphone. Actually it would probably be useful since even cell phones can get lost, break or run out of battery.

We can pause before we take a picture and look for the best angle and light.

We can meet with people and talk to them instead of sending text messages and emails.

These are just a few of the differences.