Fast times, what a ride ahead

How quickly times have changed! From my great-grandfather’s time to my father’s, not much has changed, except perhaps the introduction of electricity and the possibility of leaving the farm to work in an industry. Cornwall actually claims that Thomas Edison connected the Cornish cotton mills, or so I am told.

My parents, born in 1926, told me that they went to school barefoot as children. That forty year difference seemed enormous. Those were the old days, an era full of schools, houses and outhouses and when we were away from home at a young age. I thought it was a completely different world!

Through my past work, I have met elderly people who are still alive today and have seen so much. They told me they were going to the midnight service in a sleigh, warmed by bison fur. The same people now own a cell phone! Imagine the changes they saw!

My father’s job when they were first married (1947?) was to deliver bread by horse and cart, the horse knew the bread was driven by heart.

The Nautilus submarine was the first nuclear submarine, launched in 1954. If that submarine had existed during World War I or World War II, it would have destroyed enemy ships in no time.

The computers used for the Apollo 11 moon landing in July 1969 pale in comparison to the cell phones every teenager owns these days. Speaking of cell phones, when Captain Kirk used his Tricorder to talk to Mr. Spock, it looks so futuristic! It was science fiction, nothing more.

The technological changes of the last twenty years are overwhelming. The 2012 Chevy Impala with speedometer and CD player is archaic by today’s standards.

I was in my brother-in-law’s new van/suv recently and it has a small tv screen where the speedometer used to be.

All this to say that the hand tools that my great-grandfather, then my grandfather, and then my father used for a while, those tools used for decades before me, are all now cordless tools with laser levels.

We are asking our young people to constantly adapt to faster technological changes than ever before. We ask them to adapt to social changes (they woke up), learning through whiteboards and laptops. They are exposed to multiculturalism, working from home, skipping dishes and Amazon shopping, all of which change at a pace unmatched by any other time in history.

It is time for us elders to realize the stress we are putting on our youth. Recently, a young teenager was telling me that his girlfriend has a GPS tracker to know where she is at all times. I’m not sure if it can all be called progress, but it’s here to stay and will continue to move faster. So buckle up, here it comes! Science fiction is no longer fiction.