On a Sunday afternoon in July of 1969, I sat on an avocado green sofa in my living room along with my family and some family friends as a famous astronaut placed his left foot on the moon and declared, “One small step for man… but a giant leap for mankind.”
And even though I could just barely make much out of the distorted frames of video and much less through the static audio (even though our 14” console Motorola was truly state-of-the-art at the time) still, my 14 year old mind knew that a thing quite remarkable had just taken place. I fact, I distinctly remember saying to myself, "This is it! We’ve made it! There’s nowhere left to go or anything further that can possibly top this! I mean seriously… the moon???"
I’d heard rumors of how there would someday be a television set that you could wear on your arm like a wristwatch!… and how one day robots would take over the everyday functions of normal human beings. But I figured that these ideas were probably just being generated from the depths of someone’s fantasy mind, much like those belonging to the creators of one of my favorite Saturday morning cartoons, "The Jetsons." Although I found it fairly interesting how the characters on that show still had some of the everyday and normal challenges that MY own family had.
Life Back Then and Bit Beyond…
I was born in 1954 (the year of the big polio scare.) I can’t speak from much personal experience of the early 50’s or even much of the late 50’s for that matter. But what I don’t remember from those times I still have lots of photographs to trigger my memories. Tiny black and white ones at that, but still much more vivid and much more memory inducing ones than those developed by the new photo processing technologies of the 70’s, which have since then all but completely disintegrated.
In the year I was born, my parents bought us a brand new 3 bedroom ranch home in the suburbs of Los Angeles for around $13,000. It was a little bit nicer than the one I own now. They made about $5,000 a year… so a little bit less than what I now make. But still…
I think perhaps my first clue as to the fact that technology might be changing occurred in 1957 when our family car upgraded from our Ford Coupe Convertible and I could no longer sit on my daddy’s lap while he drove teaching me the basics of hand signals. This new car of ours had this awesome sort of new doohickey installed in it that could actually signal your intent automatically, with just a flick of a wrist… without even rolling your window down.
Other than that, I don’t think I ever had a clue that anything would ever be any different than it was right then. And it didn’t matter much. Because everything seemed just fine to me!
But if I could paint a couple of small pictures of what my life was like back then, here’s what I would paint: (Not that I can paint, mind you…)
- The little metal trough on the west side of my house where we would feed crickets to the frogs and then watch them spawn tadpoles from time to time.
- All the fields and hills and trails which were available to explore. And we weren’t afraid of them back then, and neither were our parents. So of course, we did just that. Explored them. And sometimes those fields were so tall that we’d literally get lost in them. For days sometimes.
- Playing kick-ball in the vacant lot until the sun went down like the big orange ball which looked surprisingly similar to the big orange ball we’d just been playing with.
- Riding my bicycle, the swing-set, the sprinklers, tether-ball, hula hoop, Slinky, Mr. Potato Head, Candy Land, Tinker Toys, Legos… and well, the list goes on.
But still, there was this technology out there… lurking... somewhere.
We had 13 TV channels, which I assume pretty much everyone else in our neighborhood had at that time as well. But I’m not sure whether or not we had to upgrade something to be able to view that first episode of "Bewitched" in Living Color or not, but I do remember watching it and thinking “Wow!” It was almost as surprising and confusing to me as that first time I wondered where those Mouseketeers would go every time they left the stage. In fact I think I remember checking behind my television set and even inside the vertical/horizontal control flap a time or two… to see if I could spot them.
As a child I loved art! Creating and drawing. Loved it! But I could never do it very well. Stick figures were even a daunting task for me. Yet my love for it continued. So thankfully there was the Etch-A-Sketch, the latest and greatest in new realm of graphic design technology, because I was really pretty good at that!
Given my apparent love for the arts, while realizing my much limited eye to hand coordination, my parents decided to enroll me in ballet classes at five. The recitals, I remember, were the best. Yet I only have my memories to draw from. I know my dad tried to grab a lot of home movies of them, but they are still pretty sad and pathetic mementos. No offense to dad. It wasn’t his fault. Not even my Broadway memories of 20 years later would provide me much to share with my kids. Video just hadn’t become quite "the thing" yet.
And who could ever forget the reel-to-reel tape recorder that took up half of the entire dining room table? I use to carry that 8 inch reel of tape back and forth with me to my voice lessons each and every week. And then I shrieked the first time I heard my thin and tinny voice emanating from it because that voice was definitely not mine!
In the 60’s my mother, who was a school teacher, used to let me skip my own school once or twice a year and would take me to her school and let me be her assistant for the day. One of my jobs was running off handouts in the office using the mimeograph machine. I always loved doing that because of the medicinal way those things smelled, hot off the press, before the ink dried. Another one of my jobs would be to take test papers and insert the grades, line by line, into her grade book. I remember one time, however, putting the carbon paper in backwards and then having to enter them all in a second time. After that, she showed me how to take each person’s grades and calculate them into an average to find their current grade. But not having a calculator, the job would usually take all day. So now, years later, it’s pretty much clear to me why she needed my services.
I moved to New York City right after I graduated from High School in 1972. All alone in a studio apartment on 72nd Street… at nineteen, I had neither a cell phone nor even an antiquated land line. However I did have two cassette tapes which I played incessantly until I completely wore them out… and I wrote a lot of letters. Replies to those letters would sometimes take two, three weeks… or more to get back, but I still have them…every one of them!… to this day. And though I don’t know if I’ll ever read them again they are still really nice to have. There was just something very special back in the day about actually having something to hold in your hand. On the other hand… most of my current emails have all pretty much been deleted.
And then Ziiiiip…Fast-Forward… I Was Raising My Kids…
Needless to say, my children grew up with a little less sense of adventure than I did. However, by the time they reached High School they were both typing around 105 words per minute. I remember thinking how extraordinary that was since at that age I’d average around 28. On a good day! And then I realized that typing was the lifeline between themselves and their friends. It was how they communicated with each other. There was no need any longer to just go “hang out.” And I guess this in a way had its upside.
In 2002, I wrote a paper entitled "The Cyber Habits of Virtually Addicted People" (based loosely on the title of the Stephen R. Covey book of a similar name.) In it I belabored not only the fact that my children were seriously spending way too much time with on-line gaming, chatrooms and instant messaging but that most of the world seemed to be falling into the same groove. In fact, I spent much of the paper discussing the new "dysfunction" conjured up by the founder of Bulletin Board PsyCom.net and a member of the American Psychiatric Association, Ivan Goldberg. This new dysfunction was labeled "I.A.D." or "Internet Addiction Disorder" and was posted to his colleagues primarily as a joke. But the idea of it took off to bulletin boards across the country along with a seven-item questionnaire revealing the symptoms of the disorder… and the response from people believing they might be inflicted with the dysfunction was astounding.
I played the role of the armchair judge.
…And THEN What Happened?
My children are now living their lives, working, raising their own families… busy as ever. And though they both have a FaceBook and a MySpace page, a blog a piece and are still very computer savvy, it’s definitely not by any means their primary focus or major channel of social connection. In fact, occasionally they are off-line for days at a time. As opposed to me…
Perhaps they’ve just not yet realized the gift. Or maybe they take it for granted. Or better yet… I just raised my kids in the practice of moderacy. Yeah, I like that idea the best.
But I admit it. I definitely have I.A.D, if there even is such a thing. All I know is that there are very few things I do anymore in life (that I really love doing) that don’t involve the digital world in one way or another. I’m not sure how it happened, it just did. And it was very timely!... that is, my getting caught up in it all right around the time that my children were leaving home. Because one thing’s for sure… I’ve never had to experience the empty nest syndrome. In fact, it gets so busy around here in the evenings sometimes that I almost forget to cook dinner… or go to bed.
It started out quite innocently, on message boards, learning how to make paragraphs using HTML so that your thoughts wouldn’t end up being one big blob of nothingness. But then it moved rapidly on to the dreaded emoticon … and links… and then glorious images. And before I knew it, I was undeniably and uncontrollably hooked. And though I blame the 2nd runner up in Season Two’s American Idol competition for getting me started on all this, I realize he was just the catylyst.
Every addiction has one…
I would never have believed in the 50’s or 60’s or even in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s that I’d ever be able stream a live cellcert or download high definition videos of concerts I was unable to attend. Or share videos from those that I could.
I also never would have imagined that some of the best friends in my life would reside in Nova Scotia, New Zealand, Toronto, Georgia, Arkansas and California and that I would be able to talk with them all on a daily basis (often at the same time) and even travel with them. And that they would ever come stay in my home and vice versa…. Or that I would meet up with friends that live just miles down the road from me, who I would never, ever have gotten to know otherwise.
And especially… I never would have dreamed that I’d ever run a website or even understand AT ALL how to do it. But now, somehow, I do.
I honestly don’t remember the last time I mailed a letter or a bill or figured my tax return or went shopping or did anything that I couldn’t do on-line, except for sleeping (though I guess I’ve probably done that too!) I even have the privledge, after 15 years, of working from home 2 days a week and logging into my corporate network. It’s just like being at work!... except for the fact that I get to stay in my pajamas. I do go to the grocery store from time to time, but like I said… I still usually forget to cook.
If I Still Lived Back Then…
Well, thankfully I don’t. But if I did, I’d probably be writing this in long hand. I’m pretty sure of that. Or most likely I wouldn’t even be going to school at all and I wouldn’t have any inkling of what was to come so I probably wouldn’t be writing this anyway.
For sure I wouldn’t have discovered my passion, which is creating beautiful things from music and images, video… light… sounds and et al!
I’d probably be doing the same exact job I’m doing right now, however, doing it at a much slower pace. If I were even working at all. So yeah, sometimes, like at 6 a.m. every morning, I sort of wish I still lived in the 50’s and could just get up and make pancakes for my family or somethin'...
Would I rather live then or now? The quieter, less stressful times? There was just something so special about that. But having a world at your fingertips with the wiggle of a few of them is awesome as well. So please don’t make me choose! I just feel so lucky to be among the small percentage of the earths population who have been able to experience both.
Yet still, I sometimes sort of miss the the frog sounds…and most of the time still prefer that memory to all the current, incessant cellphone yacking.
Yes, if I could point out one downside of this new and wonderful world of incredible technology, it would most definitely be THAT.
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