How Computers Transformed Baby Boomers 182
theodp writes "Newsweek's Steven Levy takes a look at how the baby boomer generation formed our tech landscape. Many of the realities boomers grew up with are today's metaphors, including cut-and-paste, the origin of which the 56-year-old Levy had to explain to 20-something Google employees. Levy cites two texts as crucial in pushing the boomers' vision toward power-to-the-people computing — Ted Nelson's Computer Lib/Dream Machines, which inspired Mitch Kapor, and the January 1975 Popular Electronics, which got Bill Gates jazzed. You kids might want to check out Dad's bookshelf — used copies of Computer Lib are going for $130-$225 at Amazon."
Re:As a member of "GenX" let me say ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I had the same thought while reading that article.
Where does Steven Levy think transistors came from? Or electricity, or math?
The title is reversed... Sheesh, editors. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:As a member of "GenX" let me say ... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you grew up loving video games, you're part of the computer generation. If you grew up before the rise of coin operated video arcade games, like my boomer parents, then you're sort of perpetually outside of it.
This is an clear way to see how computing works in society because it's not age based. As it happens, historically this aligns pretty well with the population segment referred to as Gen-X. But it's not exclusive of those boomers who might have been on the forefront. Of course from their peers perspectives, these people would have been seen as nerdish freaks. And this is why they call Gen-X people nerds even though it's actually mainstream to be a computer junky in that age segment.
And there's a really good reason why this divide exists. If you grew up thinking computers meant games and fun and even a hint of danger and taboo then you're naturally attracted to them just like toys. This didn't really happen for most boomers. That's not to say there isn't a significant minority, but not a huge percentage of the population. My parents think it's sick to spend all day on the PC and yet for people in my own generation and younger this is the place to be.
And using Bill Gates as an example of anything in tech is lame. The guy is a shake down artist. Who cares what inspired him to do anything. Why pay attention to such a money grubbing loser.
Ralroads and electricity were much bigger (Score:5, Insightful)
Railroads and electricity made much bigger changes in people's lives. Before railroads, most people spent their lives within 50 miles of their birthplace. Before electricity, it was, well, dark at night almost everywhere. Huge amounts of effort went into activities like basic cooking and cleaning clothes.
The changes between 1850 and 1900 were far, far greater than those between 1950 and 2000. In communications, in 1950 we had radio, television, teletype, and telephones. Even newspaper delivery via broadcast radio fax, although that never really caught on. Most important info was getting to its destination fast. Most of the communication things you can do today, you could do in 1950, but more expensively.
Re:I've got a copy (Score:5, Insightful)
being well ahead of it's time. Heh... Some nutcase-you're using the same stuff he's talking about
in that flip-flop book to make the post calling him a nutball- it's just not the full monty as it
were. Hyper-G was closer, much closer, but they made a mistake in making the reference implementation
proprietary, whereas NCSA made the first HTTP server effectively open source and the child of that
implementation is the #1 web server right at the moment.
levy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As a member of "GenX" let me say ... (Score:3, Insightful)
The WW2 generation created the basis for modern computing. The first computer was built in 1946 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC [wikipedia.org](Eniac), long before the Baby Boomers even existed. While I might concede that a few Baby Boomers may have been in utero at this point, they weren't responsible for computer design. Even the Eniac project was based on much earlier work by Charles Babbage.
Boomers may share part of the credit (or blame, depending) for the Hippy Counterculture, but even then, so much of the pop music was based on older styles like Jazz and R&B that Boomers can really only claim credit for a remix and a slight extension of older styles. The original stuff -- maybe the drugs and free love, but that's about it.
And as far as Vietnam, I suspect the withdrawl had more to do with a broken and demoralized millitary than any protests going on. Maybe I'm cynical, but I really don't think the government was impressed by Woodstock or teach-ins.
I know I'm exagerating a little bit, but for God's sake, can we have one milestone pass without hearing how the whiney little baby boomers are responsible for modern society? Can we have a discussion about Iraq that doesn't go back to Vietnam? I won't call you infantile, but you aren't the lynchpin of Western Society. You turned America into a Consumerist State, but that's about the only lasting impact the Boomers have.
Re:As a member of "GenX" let me say ... (Score:3, Insightful)
And Bill Gates has contributed far more to computing than any dozen gamerzzz have.
as a boomer let me say (Score:2, Insightful)
It was the same with racial civil rights, no matter laws passed, it took the PTB guys to finally realize that they could quite easily lose control of their major cities and cash cows at any time and there wasn't much to stop it, so they finally relented and then we had real efforts towards enforcing civil rights at all levels of government, whereas before it was quite iffy and random. Again, a lot of returned black and brown combat vets made this threat a reality.
In both cases, rhetoric helped a lot, peaceful protest helped a lot, all sorts of normal politicing helped a lot, but violence and the actual perceived threat of violence is what got things moving-same as it has in most other situations similar down through history. People with huge amounts of power never allow that power to be lost without fighting hard to retain it, and only give up when they realize that retention is just more dangerous. Why some civilizations wait longer than others to rebel against tyranny though-can't answer that, but will say they do a pretty good job in the schools and news media now to keep people cowed/pacified in advance, for example, they have most people accepting random roadblocks, whereas a few decades ago that would have never worked. People accept "security cameras" everywhere, and just the word "security" when used by government is now enough to squash any investigations into serious corruption or wrongdoing. And really, forced drugging? A generation raised as children addicted to drugs the swine give them as "medicine" and they believe that???? That's a clue right there some of the ways they control people.
With that said, sure a lot of bad came from my generation, hell ya, but a lot of good as well. I can think of a lot of bad from the preceding generation to mine (blind trust in government-total, blind trust in corporations-total), etc, along with the good, the tech advances and sense of civility and pride, etc.
Boomers have been not much better or worse, we just have a demographic of having large numbers, that's mostly it. Right now in the younger generations I see bad and good, the worst I see now though is the "don't give a fuck about anything at all" mindset and general apathy about things, there's not much in the way of any sort of "spirit" if I can use that term. Little passion for things. There's a lot of pretty smart younger folks, but not seeing passion for the important things in life, just a bland acceptance as if there is a normal birthright-which there isn't. All your life you have to fight for things, to keep from getting ripped off and abused by the powerful people around you. About the closest I can see for passion there is P2P file trading.
It's a start I guess, but you'll have to come to grips with yo9ur generations sense of values as well, we had abbie hoffman and timothy leary and jimi hendrix-you have paris hilton, britney spears and...who's your main political guys? Oh ya, they don't exist yet in x or y, still having to fall back on the older guys! Why is that again?
Consumerism is quite bad and stupid,agreed.. so..why dont ya'all just stop and do something better? We'd sure like to see it, if you can drop your iPods and drag yourselves away from WoW long enough to take a look at the real world crumbing around you right now. If you want to make it better..than do so, nothing stopping you besides apathy.
glass houses
Not your fathers' boomers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As a member of "GenX" let me say ... (Score:3, Insightful)
- ENIAC was not the first (digital) computer. The Atanasoff-Berry Computer [wikipedia.org] (ABC) was, as it was built in 1941.
- Consumerism was not solely a baby boomer trait, but started in the late 1800's with Ivory soap and took hold in the early 20th century.
I don't have enough knowledge of Vietnam to confirm or deny your accusation, so I won't.
As with all generations, the boomer have a lasting impact on the future generations of humanity. At the very least, they conceived and taught the next generation.
Let me get this straight... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I've got a copy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:3, Insightful)