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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."
I had no idea that CL/DM was selling for so much. I just checked my shelf, I bought a copy for $18.95 in 1992 at the local university bookstore - the sticker's still on it.
I wonder why it's so expensive? The book is terrible, virtually unreadable. Ted Nelson is a nutcase by all reports. Look at the repeated failures of his Xanadu idea.
I guess I should probably sell it; it has no value to me and $150-200 would be pretty nice.
Did baby boomers use scrolls, too?
The shareholder is always right.
I can't wait until they all go on medicare/social security so I can pick up a second job to pay for it.
I had the same thought while reading that article.
Where does Steven Levy think transistors came from? Or electricity, or math?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Apparently the Boomers were responsible for everything, including all technology! Nevermind that your parents don't know the first thing about computers.
...and it works spectacularly well.
The modern version works like this: you need a photocopier, your source material, a pair of scissors, and a stick of solid glue. Photocopy all your source materials. Cut them up. Stick them onto a blank piece of paper in the order you want. Photocopy. All the seams miraculously vanish, and you end up with an extremely professional-looking end result.
It's a great deal easier than scanning and using a DTP package, it's faster, and it can also produce better results depending on your photocopier and scanner. I wouldn't use it for anything that needed to be stored for long periods of time --- your template is fragile and will fall apart if stored --- but for quickly putting together posters, exam questions (I inherited the technique from my father, who was a teacher), simple fliers, news clipping collections etc, it's first rate.
Don't get glue on the photocopier plate. It'll never come off.
Amen to that. To me it has always been simple. It's about games.
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.
I don't know, after the cyborg revolution the computers will need something to feed on, and what better than old people, the same people who invented computers to begin with?
Monstar L
Many 19th century inventions invented by 19th century inventors. Film at 11.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
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.
Steven Levy deserves a lot of credit for his book Hackers, which was the first place to publicly discuss "the hacker ethic." He really "got" a lot of the things that journalists today still don't get. You can disagree with a lot of what he says, and his "ethic" list is a little goofy, but as a "third" generation hacker (someone who grew up hacking on an Apple ][e), I found his interpretation of what was going on in the golden age deeply insightful. IMO, "computer journalism" has never really produced someone like him again -- today it's all David Pogue type "gadget reviewers" who really don't get what was, and still is, revolutionary about computing and the people involved in it.
Protect your liberties. Donate to the ACLU
And hop in the DeLorean... we're going back to 1975 to make sure Popular Electronics never prints that issue...
you had me at #!
The WW2 generation created the basis for modern computing. The first computer was built in 1946 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC(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.
And Bill Gates has contributed far more to computing than any dozen gamerzzz have.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Someone has recently been playing around with the generation age-frames, because almost ten years ago, baby boomers were between 50 and 60 already. Now, baby boomers include anyone who is 42 to 64. That's right. 42 is a baby boomer, apparently (shouldn't that be generation X?). I'm also now defined as a "generation Xer" even though five years ago, I was considered several years too young.
If only there was a way to harness the boomers' power of nostalgia and put it to good use. Like banks of boomers chasing after 12" GI Joes, or copies of "The Big Chill" on treadmills running generators.
That's cause Baby Boomers lie about their age, and us Gen-X'ers are starting to too. ;) I'm the same age I was ten years ago, honest. :)
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
I'm a 24 year-old they called part of generation Y. The funny part about the older generation is they somehow assume that the younger is clueless about something because they've never done it themselves. Cut and Paste is pretty simple, and I have done it, my whole generation did it in school.
And the internet and computers have not changed my simple life all that much from my fathers. Yes, I post on an internet discussion, but: I get up in the morning, get in my EFI ran car, but for the end user its not that much different than a carburetor, and drive to work. At work I'm the desk guy at a shop, Yes I use the computer to do invoices, but I could just as well do it on paper, and then I drive home. My house doesn't greet me, and I still eat regular meals. You could take someone from thirty years ago and dump them right into today and they would have no problem. Go back a hundred years and they might have a problem, considering that my grandfather rode a mule to school (He's 83), but even he can run his DVD player.
"Where have all the good people gone?" - Jack Johnson
Well, I can't speak to 20-something google employees, but when I acquired a 1930's Underwood typewriter a couple of years ago, the 12 year old son of a friend looked at it and asked what it was. I asked him what it looked like, and he replied that it looked something like a keyboard. He didn't know what a typewriter was.
Admittedly the kid is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I suspect that he's reasonably representative of his peer group.
Now that I think about it, the second graders might do better than a 12 year old. They're not heading into that teen recalcitrant thing and their imagination hasn't been spiked yet.
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
My pet peeve is UNIX programmers who don't understand the origin of the fork() system call. You can't properly understand a system unless you understand why it was designed the way it was.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The war (Nam) ended when sufficiently large numbers of returning, blooded combat veterans came back and joined the ranks of the protesters, because they realized they had been scammed and had been taken advantage of so a few fatcats could get rich off the stupid war. The powers that be realized they were a year or two max away from serious revolt from guys who would have enjoyed wasting them. And it got to be pretty hard for the clueless pro war people to argue with "protesters" when the entire front ranks were all returned combat vets at a lot of the latter demonstrations. The stupid pigs really couldn't argue with that, and the pigs bosses knew they had pushed their luck and made their billions, so they decided to end it, that and the vietnamese were just damn tough dudes. Build a bigger bomb, they would dig deeper, etc.
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
I feel it should be pointed out that there are Boomers and then there are Boomers. Many of the most influential Baby Boomers for personal computers were born more or less in the mid fifties. They were barely teenagers when Woodstock happened and they became eligible for the draft just around the time America left Vietnam. To call them Baby Boomers isn't exactly wrong, (some demographers call them Generation Jones, but it's all bullshit anyway) but to lump them in with those "damned self-important idealists" as some of the other posters are doing is unfair, since by the time these guys came of age, the idealism had already begun to go the other way.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
I'm 51, a boomer and would have to disagree with you totally. Been there, done that. I've been using computers since I was 13 (big iron). Try to take the credit "Gen-X" but that's a joke. I started with an IMSAI, Kim-1, and my first pre built PCs were an Apple-II, TRS-80 and Pet. I've been online since the using ARPNET, Compuserve, email and bbs's since the 70's. Heck, my Dad was using a TRS-80 at home and later a Color Computer by 1982. He was 36 years older than me. Plenty of Apple-II's, TRS-80's, Pets, Atari 400/800's etc. were bought by common folk for a cost SIGNIFICANTLY less than a car before the IBM-5150 came out (the so called "PC"). There was pretty decent market for commodity home computers by then. I've owned ALL of them (and MANY more) since and I am/was not a rich person. Gen X/Y'ers may be reaping the rewards, claming credit but our bucks and acceptance of using technology / science paved the way for your toys...
Umm, please check your facts.
- ENIAC was not the first (digital) computer. The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (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.
Or maybe they just stared dumbfounded at him for even suggesting someone might not understand what the words meant, and he just assumed that meant he was smarter than them, instead of the reverse.
Or maybe they were sick of his examples and decided to let him explain everything, all the time, just to see how stupid it got.
Or maybe it just doesn't matter?
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
The 'Facebook' generation is calling the 'Boomer' generation self-absorbed? Honestly, is there anything more self-centered than MySpace and Facebook?
Just for the record, kids - you try pulling this shit and Dad will spank your arse, no matter whether you're bigger than him now or not.
..and I'll form the head!!
Facebook is something used occasionally for that specific purpose. Boomers are like that 24/7/365.
Because you can't properly appreciate how easy you have it unless old people know that you understand it used to be harder. It's the stage before you chase kids off your lawn.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Well, before there was fork(), Unix (well, Multics) had to make do with chopsticks(), which worked fine, but didn't check if there was enough memory to actually create the new process, so a lot of brand new processes would get dropped almost instantly, especially if the user wasn't adept at using chopsticks() and didn't realize what was going on. Another drawback was that you had to start a new version of chopsticks() every time you rebooted and type in all of the required command line arguments.
Fortunately, fork() came along and fixed all of this, so there are now very few dropped processes and fork() boots automatically with the system.
Apparently, Irix used an advanced version of fork() called spork(), which was even more stable and performed the functions of fork() AND bind() at the same time.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.