Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Change....

I had my little rant the other day about not really 'getting' Facebook.  It got me thinking about the changes going on in the world.  It's really rather amazing when you think about it.  Now I'm ancient,  born in the first half of the 20th century if that means anything to you, but it's not just me who is noticing these changes.  A professor at Beloit College (a small mid-western US school) has been making a list every year for the last twelve years of what sets his incoming students apart from us older folks.  Here's the article.

A few of the items surprised me (well, most did but....)
  • few can write in cursive 

  • a quarter of young people under 18 have at least 1 immigrant parent

  • DNA fingerprinting has always existed

  • phones have never had cords

  • Russians and Americans have always lived together in the space station

  • US companies have always done business in Vietnam
  •  
  •  they never worried about a missile strike.
What amazing changes these are.  Some are societal, a few technological, economics certainly plays a huge part.  I certainly wasn't smart enough to buy Microsoft stock when it first came out; nor Amazon; nor Google!  I guess that as a futurist I make a great rear-view mirror.  

No, it's not the end of the world, it is only change.  Maybe some of us older folks ought to relax and accept that change will happen.   We can just try to keep up with the parts we really need and forget the rest.  Guess I ought to go fool around with Facebook some more.  Either that or go hire a 10 year old to help me!

Have a good one!

2 comments:

JoeinVegas said...

Looking forward to your upcoming tweets (though I don't do that either)

Croft said...

I had to look up "cursive".