It seems to me that every generation sees things as getting "worse." Elvis was actually, at one point, considered sexual....compared to a video I saw about what? 10 years ago? Watched HBO lately?
"In 1963, the year of the Equal Pay Act's passage, full-time working women were paid 59 cents on average to the dollar received by men, while in 2000 women were paid 73 cents for every dollar received by men."
Okay, it's not great...but I don't want to go backwards. I can do things now I couldn't do in this past people seem so determined to romantisize.
Here's my theory (based purely on bits of mundane knowledge I've picked up here and there), take it, chuck it, argue - doesn't much matter.
It's a paradigm shift - we had the industrial revolution - age of machines, right? Now we're in the information and technology age. We are living through a paradigm shift. There are people only 4-5 years older than I (I'm 31) that have no understanding of computers. We are expected to process more information now in a day than ppl did in the middle ages from birth to age 35. I can't remember where I saw that, but I didn't make it up. Think about how much your life, because of technology, has changed even in 5 years. I never used to text message...now I use a few hundred a month, long distance phone chatting is not an issue, I have 3 IM programs, 2 websites, 4 e-mail accounts, a cell phone, a home phone, a laptop, a PC, fax machine (at work), voice mail (home and cell)--- there is no way I can hide.
Where a report used to take a while to type, proof, mail out....Now, with fax's, answering machines, word processors, laser printers...What would have taken a few days takes mere hours. The brain is processing exponentially more in a few hours than it would have needed to years ago in the same few hours. (that was shitty syntax, but ya get ma point)
Okay, so I see a couple of possibilities. We are going through a change in the way things just ARE. There are those that embrace it - run forward. The one's in the middle maintain some constancy and stability. And the other end of the spectrum - those that will revolt. How much is too much information? How much more quickly can we find ways to learn more, do more, and do it faster? At what point do our minds and bodies say "fuck you" and there ARE sects of people that chuck their phones, PDA's, TiVo's, and laptops into a river to go raise beets n sheep?
I believe there will be a technological revolt. People will hit their input maximum and productivity demands will get so high that we'll all feel an urge to return to simpler - not necessarily BETTER - times. Some already are.
When a culture experiences a paradigm shift, it does feel like your whole world is unraveling. You search for a scrap of familiarity to grab onto. Our norms, values, customs - they're changing. It's inevitable. Cultures are mutable, not static.
Remember that pop culture book "Who Moved My Cheese?" It's about this very thing. While I'm not one to jump on catch phrase bandwagons - that book sort of walks one through a metaphorical world about how to cope with this type of immense change.
Holding on for dear life to a past that won't come again...it's a coping mechanism. Just remember, the past ain't all it's cracked up to be - advancement is a GOOD thing..it's just that right now - advancement is at a frantic pace...we aren't being given time to digest and adjust.
I always have trouble with my concluding paragraph.
Hrmph.
