Fast times, what a ride ahead

How times have changed and how fast! From the time of my great grandfather to my father, not much changed, except for maybe the introduction of electricity and the possibility of leaving the farm to work in an industry. Cornwall, in fact, claims Thomas Edison wired the Cornwall Cotton Mills, or at least, that is what I am told.

My parents, born in 1926, used to tell me they went to school barefooted as a children. That forty year gap seemed enormous. Those were the olden days, an era filled with schools house, outhouses and when we were out of the house at a young age. I thought it was a whole different world!

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

My dad’s job when they first got married ( 1947?) was delivering bread by horse and wagon, the horse knew the bread run by heart.

The Nautilus submarine was the first Nuclear sub, launched in 1954. If that sub would have been around during the WWI or WWII, it would have wiped out enemy ships in no time.

The computers used for the Apollo 11 moon landing in July 1969 pales in comparison to the handheld cell phones every teenager owns nowadays. Speaking of cell phones, when Captain kirk used his Tricorder to speak to Mr. Spock, it seem so futuristic! It was science fiction, nothing more.

The changes in technology in the last twenty years are overwhelming. My 2012 Chevy Impala, with its dial speedometer and CD player, is archaic by today’s standards.

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

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

We are asking our youth to constantly adapt to faster-then- ever technological changes. We ask them to adapt to social changes (woke), learning via white boards and laptops. They get exposed to multiculturalism, working from home, skip-the-dishes and Amazon purchases, all these changes at a rate uncomparable to any other time in history.

Time for us old folks to realize the stress being imposed on our youth. Recently a young teen boy was telling me that his girlfriend has a GPS tracker to know where he is at all times. I’m not sure if everything can be called progress, but it is here to stay and will continue to move faster. So, buckle up, here it comes! Science fiction is fiction no more.