You want to take a trip down memory lane, and feel really old at the same time? Here’s how you do it. Get on the Web and search out Beloit College’s Mindset List for the Class of 2014.
A small college that dates back to when Wisconsin was still a territory, Beloit puts together a fascinating list every year to give us some insight into “the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall.”
You know, stuff that we older folk used to find commonplace, but today’s incoming freshmen will scratch their heads and say, “What you talkin’ ‘bout, grandpa?”
Because, think about this, most freshman now hitting college campuses like the one I work at were born in 1992. NINETEEN-NINETY-TWO!!! As the list points out, these little dudes and dudettes never had to worry about a Russian nuclear missile hitting the U.S.
A read through it gives you an idea of how much things have changed, and how quickly. What was once standard in our lives are now little more than historical relics or forgotten pieces of the past.
Take the cord-ed phone: “They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.” Remember that? Yes, once upon a time phones were actually tethered to the earth, anchored down by cords that physically connected us to one another.
You couldn’t walk about the house, carefree and cordless. Although some people would have long cords that would hang off the phone like Amazonian vines to give you great reach in times of chat.
My mother had a phone cord that could stretch across the street. That was a good thing, as a member of the opposite sex might — it was possible! — call you to ask about homework or if you really did wear two colored socks to school that day. And if she did, you could then stretch that cord out and take it to the garage. Unfortunately, at some point during the call — usually when you finally got the courage to say something profound like, “Uh, hello?” — the cord would snap that phone free from your hand, like it was launched from a Medieval catapult. Bits of phone and cord would be strewn about the house, and there would be a long skid mark across your cheek.
“Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.” That’s another one from the list. Today’s college students text when they want to communicate, or they post messages to each other on Facebook that read like this, “
Will my daughter grow up texting Santa or posting her Christmas wish list’s to his wall?
“Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine.” Although, the truth with that one is they can watch whatever they want when they want on the computer. I was thinking about that one, how we used to go to stores to rent VHS tapes back in the day. Remember that dinosaur age? That used to be the big thing for me as a kid. My parents were divorced, and every Friday night on the way back to my dad’s we would stop at the rental store and check something out. There was only one copy per movie, and all the recent good stuff had long-since been snagged. So we’d be left with
“The first computer they probably touched was an Apple II; it is now in a museum.” Apple IIs — revolutionary, cutting edge and incredibly cool looking back in their day. Now they look more like toboggans than what we know as computers. In fact, most of these incoming freshman probably have more computing power in their smartphones than an Apple II could muster with all its friends.
They likely know nothing about mainframe computers, those massive, China-cabinet-sized computers that spun huge reels of magnetic tape where they stored what would today no doubt fit in the spare room on a freshman’s iPod.
I remember using a Commodore 64 — one of the first home computers. The Commodore was little more than a keyboard in a color of tan so humdrum and lifeless that people often fell asleep just looking at it. And I think the “64” meant you could type 64 letters before the computer had to take a break before it overheated. The only visual elements were what could be constructed by stacking up lines of text to form crude images of stick figures. That was it.
But this crop never knew that. Never knew computers without CD drives. Never knew a time when second hand smoke wasn’t a carcinogen or that the big three television networks ruled the airwaves. Shoot, for that matter, what’s a television airwave? Barely ever wear a watch. Why would they? Their super-computing, cord-less, video-playing, text-sending, multi-colored phone will tell it for them. Not that they have time for it.