New Technology, Old Issues

07:44 Unknown 0 Comments

I keep seeing memes on Facebook about generations with technology. Basically pictures that constantly suggest that my generation and the one just below me are obsessed with technology, don't know how to interact anymore and that we somehow have less in our lives because of it. 

I appreciate the humour in them but I also think that the generation above me and one above that look back at the past with rose-tinted glasses. 

To be honest, history repeats itself. Every new technology throughout history has been greeted with distaste and suspicion on the harm it's doing to humanity and people's ability to be social:

1. Paperbacks were considered trash when they first came out. Bookstores refused to stock them. 

2. Television was considered the devil by a lot of people when it came out - "So, please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookcase on the wall."  ~Roald Dahl - but people had issues about books before that so....

3. There is an entire generation who grew up on tinned food and thought that was ok! 

4. Kids who were just not able to function in the education/social system created for them, which is generally a extrovert-friendly system and found the ability to express themselves on places like youtube and the internet now have a solid income through those mediums i.e Youtube star Zoella is aged 24 and owns her own house. I will never own my own house. 

5. Families are kept closer together because they can Skype and Facebook while miles away from each other. Before if you lived abroad you had to wait for a letter. A letter! 

6. If you actually watch the communities on places like Youtube, Facebook etc., you will start to notice that the younger generation (early to mid 20a) are now starting to meet up with each other in person and create a group of friends in real life having met on social networks. It is not as isolated as perceived. 

I think we get bashed unfairly. Do you agree?