On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 12:18:53 -0500, Shay wrote:

> "Jim Henderson"  wrote in message news:523def0c$1@news.povray.org...
> 
>> Indeed.  Douglas Adams had a theory about that:
> 
>> "Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary
>> and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's
>> invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and
>> exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
>> Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order
>> of things."
> 
> I agree with the timeline (40 next week), but I have a different
> interpretation. I feel differently about "new" things as my perspective
> increases. I remember being believing in gradeschool that we'd be
> millionaires if we "learned computers." I remember believing in Junior
> High that we'd all be replaced by robots. I remember believing in my
> early 20s that we'd all be working at home by now. I remember feeling
> that history was made up of "before the Internet" and "after the
> Internet."

Yep.

> ... and I hear young people now talking the same way about social
> networking and crowd sourcing. To me, it's the young who feel these
> things are "against the natural order." As a middle-aged person, I see
> them as very much part of the natural order, just more of the same.

Well, yes, but these "new" things aren't really that new.  The way I look 
at technology is that the same ideas get rehashed over and over again.  
"Social media" today is what the BBS was when we were kids.  The numbers 
of people are much larger (and the various systems were more diverse/
separate back then, excluding FidoNET), but conceptually, it's not that 
much different.

> I remember asking my 100-year-old great-grandmother, who crossed Texas
> on a covered wagon, what she thought of modern automobiles and flying a
> spaceship to the moon. She shrugged. "People still get up, put on their
> shoes, and go out to work."

That's an interesting take - I usually apply it to so-called "hero 
worship" that's popular today.  I have all the respect in the world for, 
let's say, people like Mike Massimino, but at the end of the day, he 
still takes his pants off just like anyone else.  (Well, OK, it's maybe a 
little different in zero-G environments, but you know what I mean)

Jim

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