Getting on a bit.

[oldjerry]

Too much reflection is bad for your health,it was OK for Socrates he was different. [ complete aside but I cant think of him without remembering Bill and Ted calling him So crates!].
Anyhow you just can't help it sometimes, it occurs to me how as you get older the pace of change around you is really isolating and however much you might try to keep up,you end up living in in a different universe.
I'm sure this is the natural way of things,but I got to looking back a bit,and maybe things HAVE changed :
My Grandfather (1887-1968) saw in his lifetime the invention of the motor car,the Telephone,and the television,he never owned any of them,and when he was in old age,I guess his life wasn't that much different from his father's.
My dad (1915-1991), even though his generation was blighted by the war, saw the development of Television,jet travel,motorways et al,but he seemed to deal with it .
Me ( Ages ago - ?) things have changed so much even in the last 10 years,and I haven't got a clue about 90% of it.I won't go on ,hope you can see what I'm getting at.

Does the ever increasing pace of change mean that progressively younger people are going to feel alienated from just about everything going on around them.?

[safronsue]

you take what you want surely from new technology. you get a wiff of something interesting and if you have the means, which usually means internet access, you find out about it. there's so much out there you don't need to know about. we're lucky in that it's in our language, i meet young greeks who are clue less as they don't have the language skills to keep up with news, tech stuff, anything really. i mean they are living by the world according to greek tv. jeez! tragic.

[merlin]

Never mind OJ, it will all become clear after watching thishttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAG39jKi0lI

[safronsue]

o wow, that's a classic paul, must play that for my students later.

[Green Aura]

I know exactly what you mean OJ, especially living in the middle of nowhere where the pace of life is slow. Every time I hit "civilisation" I feel totally out of my depth. Visiting friends and relatives who are discussing their latest acquisitions or projects, I have no idea what they're talking about half the time, whether it's fashion, technology or whatever. I dash home, back to sanity, with my head reeling and feeling, as you say, quite isolated by it. Maybe I should just stay at home.

Love the clip Merlin - I'd forgotten that one.

[oldfella]

Just to cheer you up Old man, but i think you are to young to have seen this in a live show

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... 562rqZ7sKI

[Green Aura]

Blimey, I remember watching Victor Borge with my uncle, when I was little - he thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen.

[oldjerry]

Thanks SO much for that,My dad loved him,and I remember that one .Quite simply,a genius.......apart from anything else,his timing is unbelievable.

[MKG]

Good Grief! Too young? I've got a Victor Borge record somewhere - "Phonetic Punctuation" and "A Mozart Opera by Borge" which I got for my fourteenth birthday (I remember that because I had chicken pox for the second time). It apparently doesn't exist according to his Wikipedia discography. I'll have to dig it out and play it again.

Mike

[yvette]

Maybe we don't remember enough the things that don't change - like having a really good laugh, whether its at a live show, on a record or on You Tube. One of my great joys has been sharing some really great comedy with my teenage son - Bob Newhardt's driving instructor sketch, for example, has us both in fits. And I also have a lovely memory of me as a child watching The Muppets for the first time with my grandma - and we both cried with laughter!

[KeithBC]

Does the ever increasing pace of change mean that progressively younger people are going to feel alienated from just about everything going on around them.?

Too late. They already are. About the only thing they relate to any more are their iPhones.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Does the ever increasing pace of change mean that progressively younger people are going to feel alienated from just about everything going on around them.?

Too late. They already are. About the only thing they relate to any more are their iPhones.

Seconded.

Technology is wonderful, but what isn't quite so wonderful is the increasing tendency - not just amongst the young - to believe that they are dependent on it.

I suspect many of us know people who are incapable of functioning without their smartphones, entertain the touching belief that Wikipedia is the definitive source of all knowledge (despite its woeful reliance on easily-to-fabricate online citations - the number of links to references that prove to be broken or go to decidedly dodgy sources like the Mail is staggering ) and find navigating anywhere without using GPS an impossibility.

Technology should be enhancing capabilities; instead it increasingly seems to usurp them.

[safronsue]

i simply not live here without technology to access the internet so i AM dependent on it i guess.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

i simply not live here without technology to access the internet so i AM dependent on it i guess.

I'd put that into the "enhanced capabilities" bit. Dependent is when you can't find your backside without a GPS navicomthingy.

[MKG]

... and, even then, you're likely to be redirected via your second cousin twice removed's left leg.

Mike