Our 11-year-old son is often amazed by our tales of the depravations we lived through when we were his age.
Of course we did not know we were being deprived in 1972 because the internet had not been invented.
We do remember being bent out of shape living in Boise that boasted two television channels (three if you counted PBS but who ever counts PBS?) When our California cousins bragged about have 20 with cable and seven without.
But on the whole we were pretty satisfied with our lives and the level of technology way back when. What fools we were. No e-mails, no cel phones, no texting, no facebook, who could be happy? No dvd’s not even the video tapes, there weren’t even any fax machines though we heard rumors about something like that.
We used to be similarly regaled by tales from our parents’ or our grandparents’ childhoods. For them in door plumbing was new, as was television, radio, and talking pictures.
We laughed at them and considered ourselves lucky. But thinking back our childhoods were much more similar to our parents and grandparents than our son’s is to our past.
Apart from not having to use an outhouse we pretty much had the same constraints. We went to school to learn, the library for books, we consulted a many volumed encyclopedia for information we knew might be outdated. The only way to stay in touch with far away friends and relatives was either a costly long distance phone call or writing letters. Mostly we just saw them on summer vacations. Besides being the grandchildren of immigrants our family was none too large, at least not large just by counting the people our parents stayed in contact with.
We wonder what tales our son will regale his children or grandchildren with?
We think it highly likely that our future descendents will only know of the postal service from the memory of their father, the same might be true of the local library, perhaps schools, the brick and mortar and prefab buildings will also live only in quaint tales of a past age gone by.
Actually going away to another city to go to college might also become just something that will not be done anymore.
People being people will still want to meet other people, see other people but with communication so easy and information so readily available the difference between wanting to and needing to will become greater and greater, especially if there is money involved.
Already our new age of information has meant a growing number of people who can work quite comfortably from home and it will only grow larger. Perhaps in our son’s grandchildren’s time the phrase: Honey, I’m home will no longer be commonly heard because they will already be home when they finish work.
While it is just speculation on our part perhaps seasoned with optimism of the future we foresee a brave new world that less resembles our lives today than it does of the daily lives of the ancient world.
Back then most people lived in pretty much self sufficient families a mile or more away from each other.
Cities existed but not the metropolises of the last 200 or even 500 years.
And as for keeping in touch, today our son knows the names, ages and location of some of his third cousins twice removed. Who knows what tomorrow may bring?
Perhaps when he speaks of the olden days it will be in real time to his grandchildren on Mars. And like him today we doubt very much they will look on the past with any envy.