Nostalgia For The Pre-digital Age
As generations that grew up surrounded by computer technology come of age and as
the baby boomers reach retirement, there is considerable social nostalgia for a less technology-driven time. It is important to remember, though, that as with anything there is good and bad to technology. For every computer virus there is a site offering online yearbooks. For every e-mail message there is a connection to a loved one.
One of the reasons for this nostalgia is that the baby boomers were born to parents and grandparents who had embraced a collective amnesia in order to deal with the horrors of the first half of the 20th Century. The first world war killed millions across Europe. Quick on its heels came the Great Depression. The second world war, with all its horrors and atrocity, came right behind that. Like a chain of elephants, massive changes shook the world, one right after the other.
The period after the second world war in the United States was blessed by prosperity and growth, which created an idyllic decade in the 1950s. Highways were built; suburbs were created; the GI bill provided a way for servicemen to get an education and enter a profession that would pay them a good salary. A new way of life was born, and that way of life had no room for the pain and suffering of the first half of the century. Even though the Korean War was as awful as any war, the children of the baby boom were protected from it, as they were protected from everything.
In a way, the fact that they grew up in a protected, sheltered intellectual universe left the baby boomers naive. Not that there wasn't great thought or questioning then, but the great machinations of history - wars, plagues, and other hardships that force a society to become introspective - were not present. Instead, it was a time of economic growth, of the establishment of a consumer society, and of relative security. The past was left behind. The future was what mattered, and it was so bright you had to wear shades.
No boom lasts forever, however, and the largesse of the 1950s and 1960s inevitably gave way to the economic challenges and social cynicism of the 1970s. It's no surprise that this change coincided with the time when the baby boomers started hitting 30. After Nixon, the country examined its conscience and re-examined its position in the world. The idyllic post war era was gone, and because it was caused by a unique combination of events it will never be repeated.
In the second half of the 1980s, a new boom began, but this one was fundamentally different than postwar boom. The idea behind postwar America was that if you invest in people, they'll make the country great. The idea behind the boom of the late 1980s and early 1990s was that if you invest in technology it will make expensive people obsolete. While the 1950s were defined by the isolationism that always occurs when nations must rebuild after a war, the tech boom was defined by the things computers do best: connection and communication.
There is no room for isolation, either for nations or for people, in our technology driven world. News travels fast: an event is documented and communicated around the world in a matter of minutes, creating sometimes unpredictable and unstoppable reactions. In a sense, the butterfly of chaos theory is manifest in this time: it flutters its wings on one side of the world and creates a hurricane on the other side. While this is exhilarating for those who grew up with technology, it can be terrifying for those who did not.
This is why as the baby boomers approach retirement, there is such a sense of nostalgia for the way things were. It's not because it was so much better then; it's because nobody can predict where this will all lead. Luckily, technology provides ample opportunities to indulge nostalgia. All those boomers really have to do is get on the Internet, surf through online yearbooks, and remember what life was like when they were kids.
by: BelndaCarson
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