Having been born in 1971, I am a card carrying member of an elite group of people affectionately called “Generation-X”. I would like to believe that I’m too young to be considered “old” and too old to be considered “young”, but let’s cut the shit here… I’m fucking old. But I do feel us old Generation-X’ers do have a slight technological advantage over other generations in that, our grasp of life before the internet is just as strong as our obsession with it. In broad terms, my children can’t conceive of a corded rotary phone with no voicemail or call waiting any more so than my parents would want to talk to their girlfriends and drinking buddies using only 140 characters. I on the other hand have fond memories of having to dial 0 for the operator to get directions to a restaurant, digging for change in my pocket to use a payphone, using our UHF/VHF television as monitor for my old Radio Shack TRS-80 computer, being in complete awe when we first got AOL and hearing those distinctly technical guttural noises and thinking, “Oh my God! That’s the future squeaking at me!” I also remember when I wanted to talk to someone I had to do it the old fashion way… awkwardly, uncomfortably and unknowingly; I knew nothing about them but the basic information I could ascertain from my immediate five senses… they looked good, they smelled decent enough, the pitch of their could be lower, but fuck it… proceed and say hello or whatever best line happened to be. There was no profile to look at beforehand, no simple visual assessment of how many mutual friends you have or how many friends they have accumulated, there were no graphic shots of their genitalia on display, there was just you and the other person and you just pressed your luck. 
Saturday, July 28, 2012
The Tao of Social Networking
Having been born in 1971, I am a card carrying member of an elite group of people affectionately called “Generation-X”. I would like to believe that I’m too young to be considered “old” and too old to be considered “young”, but let’s cut the shit here… I’m fucking old. But I do feel us old Generation-X’ers do have a slight technological advantage over other generations in that, our grasp of life before the internet is just as strong as our obsession with it. In broad terms, my children can’t conceive of a corded rotary phone with no voicemail or call waiting any more so than my parents would want to talk to their girlfriends and drinking buddies using only 140 characters. I on the other hand have fond memories of having to dial 0 for the operator to get directions to a restaurant, digging for change in my pocket to use a payphone, using our UHF/VHF television as monitor for my old Radio Shack TRS-80 computer, being in complete awe when we first got AOL and hearing those distinctly technical guttural noises and thinking, “Oh my God! That’s the future squeaking at me!” I also remember when I wanted to talk to someone I had to do it the old fashion way… awkwardly, uncomfortably and unknowingly; I knew nothing about them but the basic information I could ascertain from my immediate five senses… they looked good, they smelled decent enough, the pitch of their could be lower, but fuck it… proceed and say hello or whatever best line happened to be. There was no profile to look at beforehand, no simple visual assessment of how many mutual friends you have or how many friends they have accumulated, there were no graphic shots of their genitalia on display, there was just you and the other person and you just pressed your luck. 
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