So many of the technological advances that have changed our daily lives are taken for granted. For a compelling interaction with your children, sit down and discuss all of the new gadgets or processes that they use without thinking about it, and the way you used to do the same thing.
Describing the history of the way we listen to music can take forever. He may have his ipod and MP3 tunes, but I have lived through vinyl records, both 45s and albums, played on a small box record player, then a cool stereo set that included the turntable, a cassette player, a radio tuner AND an 8 track player. Lord, I was cool! Then we moved on, and I had a bone-phone radio player that hung around my neck and transmitted sound through bones, a portable cassette player, an 8 track player boom box, and so on. Portable music got much easier to carry around with the invention of CDs and the walkman, and now, in addition to the MP3 players ( I just love my Zen Creative) we have 40 some channels of music on our television set. And when I tell him this if he appears the least bit skeptical, I can drag him downstairs and show him proof: the cases full of record albums, the racks of cassettes, 8 tracks and cds…There’s even an old reel to reel player, and of course, the wind-up victrola that is a family heirloom.
When I tell him that we used to have to go into the bank to do anything concerning money he is, again, somewhat skeptical. No ATM machines or debit cards, no online banking. “You mean you actually went inside the bank?” Yes, AND we stood in line forever to cash our paychecks, then deposited them to an account, which we would later have to go back to the bank and stand in line again, in order to withdraw cash from. He simply shakes his head in disbelief at that one.
When he said “Wow, were you around before they had laptop computers?” I said, in my ancient quivering voice ( the one I acquired this year when I turned 46) “Why yes,sonny” and proceeded to tell him about my Commodore 64 and stacks of floppy disks, the REAL floppy ones, He just shook his head.
From watching slides of the family vacation instead of digital video, to washing dishes by hand instead of piling them in the dishwasher. to hoping that your parents would take you to the drive in to see the new Disney movie, instead of waiting for it to be released on DVD….Life was different.
We may curse our devices from time to time..when the DVR fails to record our favorite television drama, or when a program won’t load on our laptop. But just think of how very recently these helpful tools didn’t even exist!
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