It is very hard not to become rabbits (or Deer to you) in the headlights of hi tech and use it without it using you - but I think we see more of the day to day shenanigans of the Grandkids than would be possible without it, and our kids phone and converse weekly or more still.
My wife's does Ceramics - turns raw clay on the Wheel, fires and finishes it here at home and sells World wide through an Etsy store and has pieces in around 15 different countries - it's not all bad if you think of it as a tool and not entertainment.
As far as the newer style amps I have a suspicion the a lot of the percieved "Loss of Balls" people talk about is actually the low end getting clearer and less muddy.
I don't think there will be many "traditional" style jobs in the future - the Bots will do them. That could release people to follow there dreams or trap them in a world of haves and have nots.
It's a tool and it all depends on how we use it - it's like a gun ......... wonderful tool to gather food - or kill each other.
Just depends on how we use it, up to us.
Maurie.
TL;DR: Change has always been a thing.
I've worked with PCs and business software since 1981. Learned about accounting, business and psychology for a few years before that.
First cell phone in 1986, $1,300. Used to make and receive hands-free business calls with a wired mic routed up to sun visor. Paid for itself in less than a year. Couldn't do my consulting job properly without it.
Smart phones, PCs, tablets, smart TVs, wireless, wired, Win 10, Android, etc. have all been integrated into my life. I play video games with the grand kids. I help with trouble shooting and installs. They bring all their electronic and non-electronic stuff for me to fix. (The kids are all familiar with the phrase "Papa can fix it".) I use what little I know to do the best I can to live up to their expectations.
With AI and big data a thing now, the way we live will change again, similar to when the industrial age came about through electricity, natural gas, sewers and indoor plumbing, etc. Along with telephones, cars, tractors, movies, records, etc., life as it was known then was gone forever.
Each generation needs money to survive. Reinventing the wheel doesn't cut it. So, the new kids on the block push things around a bit to come up with new products, some the older generations aren't comfortable with using.
Well, as an example, my mother -in-law passed on 12/2/17, 98 years young. Imagine what she has experienced!
Born in 1919, after WWI ended, race riots, industrial strikes, prohibition, women's voting rights, anarchist bombings, the Socialist party, lynching, vigilante riots, air ships(blimps) were all things going on then. Model T's everywhere with lots more on the way. Hitler just 10-15 years away from getting started on a street corner. Scientists and vaccines on their way...everything we depend on to stay alive.
The "Spanish flu", 1918–1919. First identified early in March 1918 in US troops training at Camp Funston, Kansas. By October 1918, it had spread to become a worldwide pandemic on all continents, and eventually infected about one-third of the world's population (or ≈500 million persons).[70] Unusually deadly and virulent, it ended nearly as quickly as it began, vanishing completely within 18 months.
In six months, some 50 million were dead;[70] some estimates put the total of those killed worldwide at over twice that number.[71] About 17 million died in India, 675,000 in the United States[72] and 200,000 in the UK. The virus was recently reconstructed by scientists at the CDC studying remains preserved by the Alaskan permafrost. The H1N1 virus has a small, but crucial structure that is similar to the Spanish Flu.[73]
When the last time 50 million of anything died during our lives?
Look who else was born in 1919(long Wiki list), some still influential and recognizable:
January 1 – J. D. Salinger, author notable for the novel Catcher in the Rye (died 2010)
January 10 – Amzie Strickland, actress (died 2006)
January 13 – Robert Stack, actor (The Untouchables) (died 2003)
January 14 – Andy Rooney, journalist (60 Minutes) (died 2011)
January 25
Edwin Newman, journalist and writer (NBC Nightly News) (died 2010)
Eula Beal, contralto (died 2008)
January 27 – Ross Bagdasarian Sr., actor, pianist, singer, songwriter, record producer and creator of Alvin and the Chipmunks (died 1972)
February 9 – Langdon Brown Gilkey, Protestant ecumenical theologian (died 2004)
February 12 – Forrest Tucker, actor (F Troop) (died 1986)
February 13 – Tennessee Ernie Ford, musician (died 1991)
February 16 – Charlie Parlato, musician (died 2007)
February 18 – Jack Palance, actor (died 2006)
February 26 – Mason Adams, character actor (died 2005)
March 2 – Jennifer Jones, actress (died 2009)
March 4 – Buck Baker, racecar driver (died 2002)
March 14 – Max Shulman, comedic writer (died 1988)
March 15 – Lawrence Tierney, actor (died 2002)
March 17 – Nat King Cole, African-American singer (Unforgettable) (died 1965)
March 24
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, author and publisher
Robert Heilbroner, economist (d. 2005)
March 28 – Dewey F. Bartlett, United States Senator from Oklahoma from 1967 to 1971 (died 1979)
March 29 – Eileen Heckart, actress (died 2001)
March 30 – McGeorge Bundy, U.S. National Security Advisor (died 1996)
April 13
Howard Keel, singer, dancer and actor (Dallas) (died 2004)
Madalyn Murray O'Hair, née Mays, atheist activist (died 1995)
Phil Tonken, radio and television announcer (died 2000)
April 16 – Merce Cunningham, dancer and choreographer (died 2009)
April 22 – Donald J. Cram, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2001)
May 1 – Lewis Hill, broadcaster, co-founded Pacifica Radio (d. 1957)
May 3
John Cullen Murphy, comic strip artist (died 2004)
Pete Seeger, folk singer and musician (died 2014)
May 4 – Dory Funk, professional wrestler (died 1973)
May 8 – Lex Barker, actor (died 1973)
May 10 – Daniel Bell, sociologist (died 2011)
May 16 – Liberace, pianist (died 1987)
May 17 – Ronald Verlin Cassill, novelist, short story writer, editor, painter, and lithographer (died 2002)
May 31 – Vance Hartke, United States Senator from Indiana from 1959 to 1977 (died 2003)
June 11 – Helen Tobias-Duesberg, Estonian-American pianist and composer (died 2010)
June 14 – Gene Barry, actor (died 2009)
June 15 – Charles Kaman, aeronautical engineer (died 2011)
June 19 – Pauline Kael, film critic (died 2001)
June 26 – Richard Neustadt, political historian (died 2003)
June 30 – Ed Yost, inventor (died 2007)
July 19 – Dallas McKennon, voice actor (died 2009)
July 26 – Virginia Gilmore, actress (died 1986)
August 13
Rex Humbard, television evangelist (died 2007)
George Shearing, Anglo-American jazz pianist (died 2011)
August 14 – Isaac C. Kidd Jr., American admiral (died 1999)
August 25 – George Wallace, 45th Governor of Alabama (d. 1998)
September 4 – Howard Morris, actor (d. 2005)
September 27
Jayne Meadows, actress (d. 2015)
Charles H. Percy, United States Senator from Illinois from 1967 till 1985. (died 2011)
October 3 – James M. Buchanan, economist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2013)
October 11 – Art Blakey, jazz drummer (died 1990)
October 12
Doris Miller, sailor (died 1943)
Mary Ainslee, film actress (died 1991)
October 16 – Kathleen Winsor, writer (died 2003)
October 18 – Anita O'Day, jazz singer (died 2006)
October 26
Edward Brooke, United States Senator from Massachusetts from 1967 till 1979 (died 2015)
James E. Myers, songwriter (died 2001)
November 3 – Spider Jorgensen, baseball player and coach (died 2003)
November 4 – Martin Balsam, actor (died 1996)
November 5 – Myron Floren, accordionist (The Lawrence Welk Show) (died 2005)
November 10 – Michael Strank, U.S. Marine flag raiser on Iwo Jima (died 1945)
November 15
Carol Bruce, singer and actress (died 2007)
Joseph Wapner, lieutenant and judge (died 2017)
November 26 – Frederik Pohl, science fiction writer (died 2013)
December 9 – William Lipscomb, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2011)
December 14 – Margie Stewart, model and actress (died 2012)
So, hold on to your shorts because pretty much everything we know today will change in importance over the next 20 years, replaced with ideas, inventions and products already in the pipeline. And, a few things unknowable right now will probably be discovered that will possibly change everything again.
Our families will grow up knowing no difference, just like we did.
Third rock from the sun, change is is a coming, like Bob Dylan waxed prophetic:
Bob Dylan
A Change is a Comin'
Come gather around people, wherever you roam
And admit that the waters around you have grown
And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'
Come writers and critics, who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide, the chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon, for the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who that it's namin'
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'
Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin'
Will soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'
Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don't criticize what you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly aging
Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'
The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast
The slow one now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'
Just a few thought my hampsters were considering.
Have a nice day.
