How Computers Transformed Baby Boomers

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."

Comments

Baby Boomers/Bummers - a Useless Generation

[attributor]

This article is totally bogus -- I don't believe there has been a more useless generation (per capita), than the extremely egotistical Baby Boomers. There are notable exceptions of course, but on average they were egotistical, lazy and left the world a fucked up place. It is the GenX and later that created the hi-tech boom!! Any self-serving claims that they are responsible for the hi-tech or any other scientific boom are ludicrous. It was their parents that won the world war against the Nazis, split the atom, and put the man on the Moon!!! Baby boomers "golden years" (when they were 25-50), were mired in crisis (1960-1985). They considered themselves as progressive, but in fact avoided fighting at any cost no matter how worthy the cause was (either militarily or by simply by applying themselves to achieve a seemingly unobtainable goal -- like space exploration). If the trend they parents achieved was continued, we would be colonizing Mars right now. One might say that the scientific development after their parents retired in the 70s almost totally stopped for 20 years and only started booming when GenXers and later got into the game. Due to their egotism, social system in the West is going to collapse. They will do anything to prolong their lives at the expense of their (very few) children. They were raised in multiple sibling families, and their parents worked very very hard to provide everything for them. As opposed to their parents, Baby boomers, on average, had very few children and were more interested in being stoned throughout their 30s, accumulating wealth and wasting resources only on themselves. I do not believe there was ever a more egotistical and uninspiring generation then the Baby Boomer generation, aka the spoiled brats. Pissed of Gen-Xer

Re:I've got a copy

[somersault]

Sounds like he invented online porn too, so a lot of slashdotters will have fond memories thanks to his book . sorry to bring down the tone