I’m getting old.
This is absolutely something that everybody says throughout their lives, and is a statement that’s always looked down upon by those older than them. It’s a relative statement. Relative to my own life, I’m getting old.
I spent some time talking to a new intern at work who is six years younger than I am. Six years younger than I am, and still considered an adult. I find the older I get the more I realize that generational gaps are real and they’re scary. Horrifying, actually. It’s not like I can’t get along with younger people, it’s just that I realize just how different the culture of younger people is having grown up in a world where internet social interaction is their norm, and they’ve never known life without it. I guess the same can be said for me to some degree, but at least I feel I was born right at the cusp of that becoming the social norm. My childhood was both affected and unaffected by the internet in different ways. It wasn’t really a social thing. It was more like the internet was this sort of vast sea that nobody really knew how to handle, and so we all just laughed about it. Log on and laugh at the funny YouTube video and log off.
I find it irritating when people don’t divide the social aspects of technology from the beneficial ones. They blame the technology, and not how it’s being used. I’ve always said that when I have children, I will be giving them access to a computer, but offline. I’d love to raise my kids with experiences like I had, point and clicks, drawing in MS paint (if it’s even still around), learning that they shouldn’t unlock the taskbar (a mistake I made when I was young) (that also, probably won’t be possible anymore). I don’t find ‘technology’ is detrimental to the condition of young people, it’s the unhealthy trends brought about by social platforms, that are engineered to ultimately make money. It’s like the Times Square of the digital world. I won’t be subjecting my children to that, to the best of my ability.
But, maybe I’m grumpy, and my children deserve to experience these beautiful mistakes our society has engineered. Doesn’t that sound like abuse? Imagine you’re eight years old and stuck alone in Times Square. That’s pretty much my feelings towards the internet as it stands.
Doesn’t really help that this nostalgia cycle thing is coming back, either. We don’t have a lot of new art these days. TV, movies, videogames. It’s all trying to mimic a better time. The video game industry is crashing. Companies want to pump out reboots of things that once had creativity and life driving it, ambition. Companies don’t want to take risks and instead opt to play it safe. It’s not just video games at all. It’s all media. I find the music industry is one where reboots are not really possible the same way, or are not seen in the same light. When an artist releases a remaster of an old album it’s almost always a positive thing, but not seen as a substitute for pushing new content or ideas. Music seems to follow trends, but even when it does you have a handful of artists who break the mold and do something a little different. It helps a lot that music is a very consumable media that does not require any specific technology to utilize. Movies should be like that, too. I can’t talk much for those because my opinion comes straight from what I am seeing being released and not experiencing.
Anyway, I’m able to retire my job in 35 years.
