To live to be 100, think about this?

by free2beme 14 Replies latest jw friends

  • dmouse
    dmouse

    The biggest technological changes in my life so far has to be computers and mobile phones.

    Attitudes have also changed - no one bats an eyelid now about 'living in sin', or being heavily in debt, or men being 'house husbands'. I laugh at my granddads old cine films when, in the fifties, the men wore shirt and tie for a visit to the beach!

    When I was a child it was ok for a teacher to physically punish you, and standards of behavior were extremely high in schools. Now teachers have little or no meaningful sanctions for mis-behaving children, consequently there is no respect for authority in schools now - violence, appalling behavior and lack of learning the basics is endemic in our schools.

    As for the future, in the UK I expect higher taxes (disguised as 'green' measures), new stealth taxes, more crime, less justice, less privacy (everything you do will be watched), fewer freedoms ( my favourite line from Demolition Man - 'Salt is bad for you, therefore it is illegal'), illiterate and violent school-leavers, incompetence on a breath-taking scale from the government agencies etc. On the plus side traffic congestion will ease as the poor are priced off the road.

    On the technological front I believe we are just entering a time of wonder - I expect in my lifetime that a cure will be found for the majority of diseases, our average life expectancy will approach 100 while the first person to reach 150 years old has probably already been born. Computers will become so sophisticated you won't be able to tell it apart from a human.

    Hopefully television will be replaced, first by 3D, then something like the holo-suites on Star-Trek.

    But the most keenly anticipated technological advance, from my point of view, is the invention of an android that can do my ironing!

  • proplog2
    proplog2

    I am 61. I was born just before WWII ended.

    No Jet Travel

    TV just emerging.

    No automatic washers in homes.

    No wash'n wear.

    No Microwave ovens in homes.

    No McDonalds etc.

    No Interstate Hwy System

    Transcontinental travel dominated by trains.

    No transistor based technology.

    No silicon chip based technology.

    No polio,measel, chickenpox, whooping cough, flu vaccinations.

    Doctors made house calls.

    No rock n roll stars.

    No FM radio.

    Horses were still used by junk collectors.

    Coal was still main way homes were heated.

    Around 2 billion people.

    "Colored" restrooms.

    Only 2 nuclear weapons. And only one country had them.

    No sattelite communications.

    Most people didn't have private phone lines.

    Tires had tubes.

    No birth control pills

    My father would be 97 this year. He died in 1995. Most of the changes in HIS life took place in my lifetime.

    But most of the major changes occurred before MY children were born.

    So it appears there was a burst of change during my life time. But it is tappering off. The difference between my parents life experiences and mine are greater than the difference between my life experience and my children.

  • proplog2
    proplog2

    Correction: What I wrote in my last post about pace of change is garbage.

    The changes appear minor when they are going on but you can see the trend better after a period of time.

    The computer (micro-chip) revolution is still in its early stages.

    Genetic engineering based on the discovery of DNA is still in its early stages.

    The biggest changes are yet ahead.

  • GentlyFeral
    GentlyFeral

    Let's see...I grew to adulthood without:

    • the Internet
    • personal computers
    • cel phones
    • seeing a US president resign

    When I was born, there was no:

    • gay rights movement
    • civil rights movement
    • ecology or environmentalist movement
    • long hair on men
    • women's liberation movement
    • birth control except barrier methods
    • Hollywood Walk of Fame – surprising - I thought it was at least 15 years older than that)
    • Beatles
    • lasers

    I was born the year Emmett Till was murdered.

    gently feral

  • Gill
    Gill

    The biggest change that I think I might be commenting on at 100 will probably how the climate will change.

    Will I get to tell my great grandchildren how there was six feet of snow in Yorkshire the year I was born!

    They'll say, 'What did snow feel like, Granny?'

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