Where Have the Good Old Days Gone?

[brihacharan]

When I sit back and ponder at the times gone by - I cannot help but wonder...
At the advancement of technology & the pace at which its moving...
Like when I come to find a gadget plugged in & my 6 year old grandson telling me...
Don't touch it Grandpa....I'm "Downloading' an app
Its when I recollect....

Log on was adding wood to the fire
Hard drive was a long trip on the road,
A mouse pad was where a mouse lived
And a backup happened to your commode!

Cut you did with a pocket knife
Paste you did with glue,
A web was a spider's home
And virus was the flu!

I guess I'll stick with my pad and paper
And the memory is in my head,
I hear nobody's been killed in a computer crash
But when it happens they wish they were dead!!!
Briha

[Big Daddy]

Those were the days. Reminds me of a boy asking his pop "daddy daddy, tell me again how you needed to walk all the way to the television just to change the channels"

BD

[brihacharan]

Those were the days. Reminds me of a boy asking his pop "daddy daddy, tell me again how you needed to walk all the way to the television just to change the channels"
BD

Ha Ha!
Remotes have indeed saved 6 feet of travel
Briha

[Mark]

Pretty funny! On the same page, this one makes me chuckle too:

[Mark]

Those were the days. Reminds me of a boy asking his pop "daddy daddy, tell me again how you needed to walk all the way to the television just to change the channels"

BD

LOL, in our house it was usually the youngest child present who had the job of turning the channel or adjusting the sound- even if they had to be called from upstairs or another room.

[timmy]

Ha! True enough, it is hard for me to keep up with a lot of this stuff!

Then, I think of my Dad. He was born at the end of WW1.

He fought through WW2 and saw German Me 262 jets parked along the autobahn.

He became an engineer after the war and worked with those IBM computers that used the old punch cards.

A few years before he passed, in his 80s, he was learning Windows on a PC I built for him, and listening to Selena's Tejano music on it. I wish that he'd have been around when I began to watch Bollywood; he'd have liked that, too.

He was born during the days when horse-and-buggy weren't uncommon, grew up during the streetcar era, and was in his prime when Armstrong walked on the moon. He never said "no" to technology, but always tried to come to grips with it, even unto the end. However, he always told stories of the old days, too, and taught me to respect older things and ways, like the amazing stories he told about the supercharged Graham Paige car and his 1939 Buick Special with a Century engine swapped into it. He accepted the new and cherished the old, together. I guess there's a lesson in that for me.

[Big Daddy]

How true Timmy,
the other day I helped a software project manager in my building change his flat. He had the cars instructional manual in one hand and the tyre spanner in the other and was trying to change the flat . I actually kinda felt sorry for the chap.

BD

[timmy]

He he, Big Daddy! You remind me of my old New Mexico mentor and boss. His family came over with Columbus or something like that -- they have been in New Mexico for centuries. He has a ranch that straddles the New Mexico - Colorado border and which has been in the family since the 1800s. His daughter was one of the first women to be accepted into West Point and she graduated at the top 10% of her class. He said she could weld and work on machinery as well as his three boys.

While at West Point, she fell in love with the son of a high powered West Coast attorney, and they got married. The new husband didn't know how to change a tire, since his family always called AAA for that. My boss took a dim view of this. One day, they were living in an apartment and the new husband decided to change the faucet in the bathroom. He figured that if someone "as dumb as" a plumber could do it, he, Joe College, could do it. So he disconnected the faucet pipes. Joe College did not know of the need for shut off valves and didn't look for them -- as it was a cheap apartment, there weren't any. By the time the building supervisor got the water shut off in the street, water was pouring out of their door and out into the lawn.

After the debacle the next day, Joe College went to take a shower and there was no hot water. My boss's daughter said she would look at it, but Joe College insisted on calling a plumber. (He was learning something!) So, the daughter sneaked into the bathroom (where the water heater was) and found the pilot light had gone out, which she lighted. All was find and a plumber (who evidently had become smarter in Joe College's eyes) was not needed.

I believe that knowledge begets knowledge. If you learn something and know it, it is easier to add more knowledge to it. But many folks don't want to bother learning anything -- they just want someone to give them a quick answer. This only solves an immediate problem and doesn't give them anything lasting.

[Ramandeep]

The technology has changed so rapidly since the 80s that i myself being a kid from the 80s has used "technology" which might turn out to be ancient and funny to the newer generation, this pic i would say is a classic example of it

[timmy]

Oh, yes, that's a good one! I've spent too many hours twisting pencils!

How about this pair:



+

[Big Daddy]

Oh, yes, that's a good one! I've spent too many hours twisting pencils!

How about this pair:

[ Image ]

+

[ Image ]

Lol...the good old cartridge.... and those matches.....was a style statement to tear up one of those and light a cigi

[timmy]

The thing with the matches is that those 8 tracks would never work right. So in the car, you had to stuff matchbooks into the slot to cock the cartridge at just the right angle to make the thing play. I understand that the 8 track was an invention of Bill Lear, the same guy who developed Lear Jets. Thank goodness Lear Jets didn't fly like 8 track tapes worked. Back in the day, one would always see globs of tape beside the roads from people whose 8 tracks "ate" the tape cartridges and filled the unit with a ball of tape. Those things were really an endless loop that pulled tape from the center to be played and then wrapped it around the outside of the reel after it was dragged across the head. Cassettes were SUCH a step forward in those days!

Anyway, if you wanted the coolest setup, you mounted one of these Craig Powerplay monsters to the transmission tunnel of your car. They worked well, but you still had those junky cartridges to fight!

[youtube][/youtube]

[ckkalyan]

Good one!

[brihacharan]

Hi Big Daddy, Timmy, Mark, Ramandeep, CKK,
> I didn't have the faintest clue that my innocuous post on technology would attract such delectable & nostalgic responses
> Each of your narrations are so very apt & reminiscent of those golden bygone days
> After seeing the pic of the cassette & pencil alongside...I was reminded of an incident where I was involved....
"A little over a decade ago when I was teaching in a business school, which also had a 'graphic design department', its head a product of the famous 'Swiss School of Graphic Design' requested me to talk to the freshmen at the beginning of the semester...
> I began by saying that 'Hand Skills' were important to develop even before one attempted to learn computer graphics....
> I then asked each one of them to take out their new pencils & sharpen them - not with a sharpener - but using a pen knife!!!
> Boy! You should've seen them struggle - some of them even whittled the pencil to half their size
> The head of graphic design who witnessed the entire incident had the biggest laugh of his lifetime
> How true that in the good old days youngsters were made to learn a few basic hand skills that came to their rescue even when they became 'grandparents'....much to the surprise & amazement of their grandchildren!!!!

Briha

[timmy]

Brihaji, you are so right about kids and manual skills. Nowadays, velcro has even eliminated the need to learn how to tie one's shoes! On the other hand, look at the manual dexterity that kids display while texting or playing one of these current computer games -- that is quite amazing.

I wonder whether our idea of art (connecting this with the skill of whittling) will change, or is even in the process of change?

People will say to me, "I don't like the looks of those new CFL light bulbs."

I try to point out that this taste is only, in most cases, a matter of social conditioning. Would our "idea" icon in documentation look like a conventional light bulb if Edison had come up with a CFL design, instead? No, it would look like a CFL bulb, and most folks would consider the conventional light bulb to be an oddity. I think a lot of our tastes are driven by the effects of social conditioning, telling us what is "normal."

My Dad used to be able to tell me what car was what of the 30s. I can do the same for cars of the 60s and most of the 70s, and do pretty good with the 50s, but new cars all look the same to me. Kids of today can tell the new ones apart quite readily, however.

But when it comes to those manual skills you describe, I've had young folks look at me like I was from Mars because I change my own timing belts on my cars. When my girls got their first cars, I made them change their own oil. If the boys had to learn to cook, the girls had to change their own oil. They haven't done this for years -- as soon as they got married, that stopped. However, at least they know what's involved and won't be fooled by some joker in a repair shop.