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I'm from the 1950s and I'm doing okay. The thrust of technology, beginning with mobile phones and laptops and then smaller tablets, etc. was a challenge and still is for some. Do you remember pagers? They were such a nuisance that people were happy to get simple cell phones. Then cell phones became portals into the internet and are less of a phone.
Ward and June Cleaver might have a few problems with the way things have turned out. The fact that we still do not have personal jetpacks is a big disappointment. If I think about my grade school teachers who were adults in the 1950s I think they would be okay with most things. There would be a few exceptions -- the music teacher would not be able to cope.
Exactly. I think that today, people who actually get married do so because they really want to do so not because of the dictates of society.
LOL. One of my good friends, who is two years younger than me, is the same. Technologically, she's stuck in the 1970s or early 1980s. I think she'd be perfectly happy to return to that era.
She finally has a cell phone that she actually uses, but no computer. She has never figured out how to set the clock on either of her cars or even how to use her intermittent wipers -- in a light drizzle, she keeps turning the wipers on and off which just drives me nuts. She is a very well educated person (PhD) but she is the most anti-modern technology person I've ever met.
I get how she feels. I share her distain of the latest and greatest. If she can make a living and live her life happily without technology, that’s great.
DH and I push back against this stuff too. We have had the same smart phones for 5 years+, and they were obsolete when we got them. Someone gave us a smart doorbell for a gift but we hate it.
I will admit though, that we’ve often said how great it would be to go to school with computers and online information, instead of slide rules, notebooks and textbooks.
Technological bells and whistles are of no use to millions of people who are independent, self-assured, and capable of managing without them. The first version of most of the PC software that we installed did the job we wanted it to do but every 6-9 months you are blugeoned with an update that we didn't ask for and do not need. The same with techie do-dads that we all are supposed to buy...fit-bits and Apple watches and whatever.
I use hearing aids and there is no end to what a hearing aid can do. It is great for hearing -- like the early flip-phones were great for calling. But now it has bluetooth so my hearing aids answer the phone, read to me, serenade me with music or pod casts, and send me little messages about how they are getting along. In the 1950s I had school friends who were hearing impaired who wore a harness-like boxy thing, bigger than a pack of cigarettes, on their chest that connected by wires to their ears so they could hear. I have a friend now with a permanent implant in the bone of his skull behind his ear that physically connects to a very small removable device that allows him to hear. Pretty soon that little device will not be connected physically but may be in his pocket and connected by bluetooth and will do a half dozen other things (if not already). Technology is great and we have seen wonderful improvements but we do things because we can not because we need to and then we create a demand for the new set of bells and whistles. That is most often what confuses people...the constant learning curve for things that we really don't need.
Exactly. I think that today, people who actually get married do so because they really want to do so not because of the dictates of society.
That would depend on the society. There are still many people who still get married due to family pressure.
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LOL. One of my good friends, who is two years younger than me, is the same. Technologically, she's stuck in the 1970s or early 1980s. I think she'd be perfectly happy to return to that era.
She finally has a cell phone that she actually uses, but no computer. She has never figured out how to set the clock on either of her cars or even how to use her intermittent wipers -- in a light drizzle, she keeps turning the wipers on and off which just drives me nuts. She is a very well educated person (PhD) but she is the most anti-modern technology person I've ever met.
Yeah, there are people who think along those lines. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that line of thought. The big problem is that you get left behind. Many jobs require you to utilize , at the very least certain aspects of modern technology. Even simple jobs like being a professional cleaner, might have you use your cell phone to clock in at work or fill out a time sheet.
Would it be fair to say that people from the 1950s would be horrified by the employment practices of the 2020s?
The 1950s were the heydey of labor. Now you have workers in Amazon warehouses peeing in bottles so they don't have to leave their stations. And up in corporate in Seattle, Amazon hires people with the intention of firing them within the year because managers have firing quotas to hit.
Maybe it has gotten better in that work is easier and safer. Work also seems to have gotten more demeaning and demanding.
A number of years ago, I read a book which was written by a woman who came of age in the 1950s. The title is "Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen." Its author is Alix Kates Shulman.
She characterized the 1950s as 'conformist, prosperity driven, and communism obsessed.'
That is just one person's opinion.
Everyone I asked who was alive in the '50s said it was their favorite decade. Their ages in the '50s ranged from 18 to mid-30s.
I was born in ’48 under Truman and graduated from HS under LBJ in ‘66. There were huge changes and a huge difference during those years, give or take. I recall all of the independence movements in Africa and the demise of colonialism there and in Asia. The war in Vietnam grew out of turmoil of WW2 and colonialism. The “crisis of rising expectations” in the newly independent countries was a concern. It caused minor local wars and repeated coups and assassinations. India and Israel are less than a year older than me. The Iron Curtain and the commies were behind all this turmoil.
Americans discovered television and air conditioning and the family car and an end to the post war housing shortage and have babies out the wazoo. Last one to the suburbs is a rotten egg. Schools were overcrowded in short order. Where are all these negros coming from? We started to get interstate highways. The big worry was what to do in a nuclear attack. Then came polio. All of the stuff that was happening in the world was background noise for the greatest country in the world but it still happened. Then a few things broke through the awareness. Francis Gary Powers and his U2 were shot down inside the USSR. Well he strayed over the border and innocently flew his reconnaissance plan almost halfway across the USSR. An honest mistake. Freedom Riders, lunch counters, marchers and protests. There was a revolution in Cuba that kicked out the bad guys (Yay!) but Castro was pro-Moscow (Boo!). Good heavens a Catholic wanted to be President— what next? Elvis went in the Army in ‘58. Not so bad after all. JFK was assassinated. Where is that grassy knoll, exactly. Later Cassius Clay, now Muhammad Ali, said no to the draft. Vietnam was now our war — how did that happen? The kids need a haircut. Where are the kids anyway? San Francisco?? What?
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