Technology and the Boomers
I have lately been reflecting upon my generation. As me and my fellow Post War Baby Boomers reach our AARP years, it is perhaps time to look back over our lives and think about how we can best pass on our knowledge and experiences to coming generations. After all, as with all generations, if we don't make an effort to leave something behind, all that we learned, all that we struggled for, will be for nothing. Knowledge retained is knowledge lost, unless it is passed on to others.
We are a generation upon whom technology was painted on. The core of our mental selves was formed through the old techniques of books, blackboards and typewriters. We learned to read and write at our mothers' knees by listening to stories and in the classroom through repetition and (if we were lucky) through phonics, all delivered by a real flesh and blood human being. Technology, such as it was, was extremely limited.
Born in the years following World War II, most of us began our formal education in the late 1950s or early 1960s, usually by entering a first grade classroom, our oversize crayons and Big Chief writing tablet in our hands. The classroom was not terribly different than that attended by our parents and grandparents. There were bulletin boards on the walls. There were books on the shelves. And there was a teacher standing at the front of the class, a woman with extreme power over our little lives and hopefully enough teaching ability to transfer what was in her head into ours. She was our portal to the outside world. If she didn't know it, we weren't likely to be exposed to it.
While in the lower grades, we listened to science shows on a classroom radio. While in the upper elementary grades, meaning the fifth and sixth grades, we watched science and vocal music shows provided through PBS on classroom televisions, which were still thought to be experimental. Filmstrips and 16mm films were enough of a rarity to actually cause excitement in the younger students. We'd walk in one morning, see the AV equipment set up, and actually smile. Today we were going to see a film.
Communication was largely limited to vocal lecture as well as paper and ink (PandI) books. Teachers would hand out those books and, if they were feeling creative, run off their own mimeograph sheets. Ah, who can forget that wonderful smell of those fresh sheets. Sitting at our desks, we'd take one sheet and hand it back to the student behind us and then, even before reading its contents, bring the purple-printed paper up to our noses. There was no smell quite like it.
As for "hands on" technology ... well that was usually delayed until our high school years. There we learned the mysteries of test tubes and Bunsen burners in science classes. Nearly everyone took typing, back long before it was called "keyboarding." We'd sit at our desks, using an invention dating back to the early 19th century, to create the printed word. To draw from my own experience. I took typing in my junior year. We used manual typewriters to make our creations. Our greatest step forward (technologically speaking) happened during the last couple of weeks of the spring semester. With the seniors already gone, we were allowed to move to another, more advanced classroom, where we got to use electric typewriters.
When it came to computers, as I pointed out in my article Publishing in the 21st century, they were distant, almost mythical things. We'd see them in movies and occasionally on television. We knew they existed in universities and in Washington D.C., in the Pentagon. They were a mainstay of science fiction, where they generally led to dehumanization and sometimes even to oblivion for mankind. As for using computers ourselves, or even seeing one up close ... well, that was still years away.
And so we spent our formative years. If we were intelligent and lucky, we were exposed to science and math, history and English. We knew about Albert Einstein, Madame Curie, William Shakespeare and perhaps even Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell. We could read, write and cypher - all with a book, a piece of paper and a pencil. What advanced technology we learned came much later - in college, on the job, perhaps in the military. It was simply painted on over our already developed psyches and on top of our formal education.
Compare this with our children. They have known personal computers since their infancy. They could probably keyboard before they could speak properly. Television was "old technology" to them, as were personal calculators. They knew how to use the Internet, at least by the end of their elementary school years and, at least by high school, they were likely handed their own laptop computer.
Advanced technology was their constant companion. For them, knowledge of computers and the Internet was part of their basic training. It never had to be painted on. Instead, it was part of their educational fabric.
I'm way too wise to label the Baby Boom generation as a "transition" generation and expect the label to carry any kind of special awe and respect. I believe that technology is likely to advance so fast in the foreseeable future that all coming generations will be transitional generations, bridging the gap between the technology of their own childhoods and that of their children.
But still, I can't help but think that we Baby Boomers are indeed a special, perhaps even blessed, generation. We saw the first astronauts go into space and later land on the moon. We saw televisions go from over sized black and white image cabinets to two-inch, color screen, hand held devices. And we saw computers go from room-sized, government owned oddities to personal laptops.
I suppose that we - the Baby Boomers - could do worse than to devote our own coming decades to making sure that the best of our tech-restricted education is not lost, but carried over to coming generations. We can ensure that Shakespeare and Hemingway will still be read, even if it is over a computer screen. We need to embrace technology, realizing always its liberating properties, as well as its restrictions. We need to remind people that technology without content is only a toy.
We are a generation upon whom technology was painted on. The core of our mental selves was formed through the old techniques of books, blackboards and typewriters. We learned to read and write at our mothers' knees by listening to stories and in the classroom through repetition and (if we were lucky) through phonics, all delivered by a real flesh and blood human being. Technology, such as it was, was extremely limited.
Born in the years following World War II, most of us began our formal education in the late 1950s or early 1960s, usually by entering a first grade classroom, our oversize crayons and Big Chief writing tablet in our hands. The classroom was not terribly different than that attended by our parents and grandparents. There were bulletin boards on the walls. There were books on the shelves. And there was a teacher standing at the front of the class, a woman with extreme power over our little lives and hopefully enough teaching ability to transfer what was in her head into ours. She was our portal to the outside world. If she didn't know it, we weren't likely to be exposed to it.
While in the lower grades, we listened to science shows on a classroom radio. While in the upper elementary grades, meaning the fifth and sixth grades, we watched science and vocal music shows provided through PBS on classroom televisions, which were still thought to be experimental. Filmstrips and 16mm films were enough of a rarity to actually cause excitement in the younger students. We'd walk in one morning, see the AV equipment set up, and actually smile. Today we were going to see a film.
Communication was largely limited to vocal lecture as well as paper and ink (PandI) books. Teachers would hand out those books and, if they were feeling creative, run off their own mimeograph sheets. Ah, who can forget that wonderful smell of those fresh sheets. Sitting at our desks, we'd take one sheet and hand it back to the student behind us and then, even before reading its contents, bring the purple-printed paper up to our noses. There was no smell quite like it.
As for "hands on" technology ... well that was usually delayed until our high school years. There we learned the mysteries of test tubes and Bunsen burners in science classes. Nearly everyone took typing, back long before it was called "keyboarding." We'd sit at our desks, using an invention dating back to the early 19th century, to create the printed word. To draw from my own experience. I took typing in my junior year. We used manual typewriters to make our creations. Our greatest step forward (technologically speaking) happened during the last couple of weeks of the spring semester. With the seniors already gone, we were allowed to move to another, more advanced classroom, where we got to use electric typewriters.
When it came to computers, as I pointed out in my article Publishing in the 21st century, they were distant, almost mythical things. We'd see them in movies and occasionally on television. We knew they existed in universities and in Washington D.C., in the Pentagon. They were a mainstay of science fiction, where they generally led to dehumanization and sometimes even to oblivion for mankind. As for using computers ourselves, or even seeing one up close ... well, that was still years away.
And so we spent our formative years. If we were intelligent and lucky, we were exposed to science and math, history and English. We knew about Albert Einstein, Madame Curie, William Shakespeare and perhaps even Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell. We could read, write and cypher - all with a book, a piece of paper and a pencil. What advanced technology we learned came much later - in college, on the job, perhaps in the military. It was simply painted on over our already developed psyches and on top of our formal education.
Compare this with our children. They have known personal computers since their infancy. They could probably keyboard before they could speak properly. Television was "old technology" to them, as were personal calculators. They knew how to use the Internet, at least by the end of their elementary school years and, at least by high school, they were likely handed their own laptop computer.
Advanced technology was their constant companion. For them, knowledge of computers and the Internet was part of their basic training. It never had to be painted on. Instead, it was part of their educational fabric.
I'm way too wise to label the Baby Boom generation as a "transition" generation and expect the label to carry any kind of special awe and respect. I believe that technology is likely to advance so fast in the foreseeable future that all coming generations will be transitional generations, bridging the gap between the technology of their own childhoods and that of their children.
But still, I can't help but think that we Baby Boomers are indeed a special, perhaps even blessed, generation. We saw the first astronauts go into space and later land on the moon. We saw televisions go from over sized black and white image cabinets to two-inch, color screen, hand held devices. And we saw computers go from room-sized, government owned oddities to personal laptops.
I suppose that we - the Baby Boomers - could do worse than to devote our own coming decades to making sure that the best of our tech-restricted education is not lost, but carried over to coming generations. We can ensure that Shakespeare and Hemingway will still be read, even if it is over a computer screen. We need to embrace technology, realizing always its liberating properties, as well as its restrictions. We need to remind people that technology without content is only a toy.
posted by dlh | 4:16 AM
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