The pace of life

bobcat

bobcat

Well-known Member
Location
Northern Calif
In years past, before the advent of television, the internet, and cell phones, people seemed to have more time to ruminate and reflect on matters. Today that seems far less common. For the last 100 years technology has come up with a dizzying number of labor saving devices which should have freed up all kinds of time for us, and yet life is now busier than ever before. Years ago I even heard it referred to as the "Ironic Epidemic". It seems that every time we find more time, we just fill it up with something else. Life and technology seem to get more complex every year, and understanding and keeping up with things is overwhelming. What effect do you think this has on society as a whole? If you don't know how to operate things, how can you function in a world that is becoming rocket science?
 

bobcat48 said:
In years past, before the advent of television, the internet, and cell phones, people seemed to have more time to ruminate and reflect on matters. Today that seems far less common. For the last 100 years technology has come up with a dizzying number of labor saving devices which should have freed up all kinds of time for us, and yet life is now busier than ever before. Years ago I even heard it referred to as the "Ironic Epidemic". It seems that every time we find more time, we just fill it up with something else. Life and technology seem to get more complex every year, and understanding and keeping up with things is overwhelming. What effect do you think this has on society as a whole? If you don't know how to operate things, how can you function in a world that is becoming rocket science?
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It doesn't appear to be overwhelming for all the generations after me. I'm a boomer. I can go to almost anyone who is not a boomer to ask them how to do something on my android tablet that I can't figure out.
I'm not having much difficulty with 'keeping up' because being retired affords me so much time to read and learn. I spend 2-3 hours a day with news that is only a small part politics and a lot of keeping up with environmental issues and solutions, learning all the scams, new tech coming out, travel around the world, and dozens of topics.
But, this forum is all I do as far as social media. I don't touch anything else such as Facebook. I don't text --- only email. Youtube is great for finding out how to do things, fix things, get explanations of how things work.
 

oldaunt said:
Since I still remember how to do almost anything the old way, I still do quite well. I do know people who would not be able to function at all if everything electronic suddenly shut down. I might miss my laptop for a bit, but the rest are non essentials. Even my watch is an early 70's Timex windup.
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Yeah, my sister is more that way. She doesn't even own a computer. I can't just do one click and send her a picture. It would have to be printed out and mailed to her. She does have a cell phone, but has limited understanding of it. When the mailbox gets full, she doesn't know how to clear it, so she has to hunt someone down to do it for her. She wouldn't know how to do GPS, so she would have to get out maps to find her way to something unfamiliar. So it does limit a person somewhat in today's world.
 
Modern technology has both advanced us and ruined us. Weā€™ve become an overly spoiled society. Luckily I never watch the news and itā€™s never on our tv. We no longer get commercials either so miss out on many disasters. Thereā€™s far too much chaos for my mind to handle. Some might call it sticking my head in the sand to avoid it and Iā€™m ok with that.
 
bobcat48 said:
In years past, before the advent of television, the internet, and cell phones, people seemed to have more time to ruminate and reflect on matters. Today that seems far less common. For the last 100 years technology has come up with a dizzying number of labor saving devices which should have freed up all kinds of time for us, and yet life is now busier than ever before. Years ago I even heard it referred to as the "Ironic Epidemic". It seems that every time we find more time, we just fill it up with something else. Life and technology seem to get more complex every year, and understanding and keeping up with things is overwhelming. What effect do you think this has on society as a whole? If you don't know how to operate things, how can you function in a world that is becoming rocket science?
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Its referred to as "Parkinson's Law".
 
bobcat48 said:
In years past, before the advent of television, the internet, and cell phones, people seemed to have more time to ruminate and reflect on matters. Today that seems far less common. For the last 100 years technology has come up with a dizzying number of labor saving devices which should have freed up all kinds of time for us, and yet life is now busier than ever before. Years ago I even heard it referred to as the "Ironic Epidemic". It seems that every time we find more time, we just fill it up with something else. Life and technology seem to get more complex every year, and understanding and keeping up with things is overwhelming. What effect do you think this has on society as a whole? If you don't know how to operate things, how can you function in a world that is becoming rocket science?
Click to expand...
I am tech minded in my 70s, but I refuse to be on my phone while driving, and I refuse to log into the portal for the labs at the doctor's office. I just tell them I don't and can't do that. However, I do get on my pc to be on this forum with my fellow seniors, and I check my email since they insist I must have an email (I just have one email). You are so right on point about all of this madness.
 
There's an old saying: "Nature abhors a vacuum."

Give me a minute these days and I'll manage to stretch it into an hour.

I can remember when I worked long hours and had only an hour at lunch and the weekends to get things done. I was a whirlwind!

Now I'm more like a "stationary front", weakly churning around with very little chance of turning into a hurricane.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you......this is what I looked forward to when I *was* a whirlwind.
 
Technology has come a long way in my lifetime. I was trained on vacuum tubes during my time in the military. We used slide rules in college. A lot of this high tech stuff is just a mindless distraction as far as I'm concerned.
 
Liberty said:
Its referred to as "Parkinson's Law".
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Well, a similar concept, but a different result. The concept I was eluding to is more like the "Eggbeater Effect". Because we can now get more things done with new gadgets, we just cram more into our day. Therefore, labor-saving devices arenā€™t really about saving time but creating the capacity for more work. While the clothes are washing in the automatic washer, we can do something else we wouldn't have had time for before. So the end result is that our expectation of life goes up because more can be accomplished in a day, however, I am a bit concerned that we focus so much on productivity that we sacrifice some of the more cognitive and health benefits from doing things in a more mechanical way, such as pushing a push mower instead of a power one.
 
bobcat48 said:
Yeah, my sister is more that way. She doesn't even own a computer. I can't just do one click and send her a picture. It would have to be printed out and mailed to her. She does have a cell phone, but has limited understanding of it. When the mailbox gets full, she doesn't know how to clear it, so she has to hunt someone down to do it for her. She wouldn't know how to do GPS, so she would have to get out maps to find her way to something unfamiliar. So it does limit a person somewhat in today's wrld
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Not really so much. I can still read how-to books, I can use a landline quite well (no cell signal here anyway), and reading a map is more foolproof than GPS at times. Its been proven GPS often can't find me here, but I AM on the county map.
 
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PeppermintPatty said:
Modern technology has both advanced us and ruined us. Weā€™ve become an overly spoiled society. Luckily I never watch the news and itā€™s never on our tv. We no longer get commercials either so miss out on many disasters. Thereā€™s far too much chaos for my mind to handle. Some might call it sticking my head in the sand to avoid it and Iā€™m ok with that.
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I would have to get Dish or something to have TV...so I don't. Not really interested in most of what is referred to as "entertainment."
 
I do think we get more done in a day than previous generations. After I finish this, I'm going to hop in the shower and go grocery shopping. Well, back in the day, somebody had to lug water from a well, chop wood for the fire to heat it, bathe. then hitch a horse. There was a lot of tedious work you had to do to live. And tonight, I'm going to watch a YouTube video on Egypt for a richer life.
 
My daughter, age 38, stands in the lake holding her iphone. She sleeps holding her iphone. She has told me she can't live without her iphone.

I say people have lived for thousands of years before iphones were invented.

Who is right? Me or The Woke?
 
Packerjohn said:
My daughter, age 38, stands in the lake holding her iphone. She sleeps holding her iphone. She has told me she can't live without her iphone.

I say people have lived for thousands of years before iphones were invented.

Who is right? Me or The Woke?
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Well said. Excellent point.
 
bobcat48 said:
Yeah, my sister is more that way. She doesn't even own a computer. I can't just do one click and send her a picture. It would have to be printed out and mailed to her. She does have a cell phone, but has limited understanding of it. When the mailbox gets full, she doesn't know how to clear it, so she has to hunt someone down to do it for her. She wouldn't know how to do GPS, so she would have to get out maps to find her way to something unfamiliar. So it does limit a person somewhat in today's world.
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I don't know how to GPS on my phone and still look up my Street Directory to find out how to get to somewhere., the only problem is the Directory is now 10 years old and most of the streets have either become one-way or no longer exist. The saddest thing to see is parents going shopping and meeting up with friends and the little ones in prams are handed an iPad with cartoons to keep the child interested, the parent doesn't even talk to the little one, only the friends.
 
bobcat48 said:
Yeah, my sister is more that way. She doesn't even own a computer. I can't just do one click and send her a picture. It would have to be printed out and mailed to her. She does have a cell phone, but has limited understanding of it. When the mailbox gets full, she doesn't know how to clear it, so she has to hunt someone down to do it for her. She wouldn't know how to do GPS, so she would have to get out maps to find her way to something unfamiliar. So it does limit a person somewhat in today's world.
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Your sister is someone that I can empathise with. My smart phone is so smart, that despite having it for the last twelve years I still don't know how it connects to the internet, but that bothers me, not one jot! My email went down a week after it was set up, three years on, it's still down. Technology has certainly gone right over my head, but the only annoyance that I have found from that is dealing with retailers that have gone cashless. Actually I simply walk away, with luck their signal will go down and they will learn that cash is king!
 
"The saddest thing to see is parents going shopping and meeting up with friends and the little ones in prams are handed an iPad with cartoons to keep the child interested, the parent doesn't even talk to the little one, only the friends."

This is a great example where the smartphone has made people stupid. Hey, wait! Maybe they were just stupid before they bought a smartphone? We shouldn't blame the smartphone for all the ills of the world. Sometimes, people just have to take the blame for their own actions.
 

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