Talking ‘Bout My G-G-Generation 11/06/2005 When it comes to the latest thing, that's exactly what I always seem to be - late. Digital watches came out in the early seventies; I held doggedly to my old analog for years, swearing that it was better than any newfangled nonsense. Then, sometime in the eighties, the darn thing broke and I had no option but to get one of these cheapo digital things. It was a revelation to me; no winding required, information instantly viewable, accurate to within a few seconds a year - I loved it. Of course, in the meantime, everyone was changing to the new watches with analog faces.I can remember a friend of mine way back in the sixties trying to explain to me what a brilliant invention stereo record players were. I was unconvinced and maintained it was a just a passing fad. A few years later I bought a huge, thumping stereo system with speakers as big as bedside tables. Wonderful, it was. In my defense, I must mention that it was also one of the last to be made with valves rather than transistors...A curious result of this resistance to the immediate adoption of new technology has been that I become an ardent fan when I do give in and buy one of the things. I still marvel at the beauty of CDs, the way they catch the light and contain so much information. It was less than ten years ago that I bought my first CD, you see, and they remain a thing of wonder to me. Nostalgia for vinyl? You must be joking!I got into computers in 1995. That makes me a ten year veteran. But it also ignores the fact that I first met the computer in the sixties. Another friend of mine was exceptional for those days in that he went straight into the computing industry, a fledgling, unknown and freaky thing at the time. He tried very hard to interest me in those weird monsters, even taking me to his workplace to have a look at their resident specimen. It filled a large room, lining the walls from floor to ceiling, huge metal cabinets with whirring tape decks and incomprehensible dials covering their faces. I was terrified by it and never stopped to consider what it was for.I was not to think about computers for fifteen years after that. Then the era of the home computer dawned and teenagers disappeared into darkened bedrooms to stare into tiny screens and tap out some oddly-truncated version of English on their rubbery keyboards. I stared over their shoulders, wondered what was the point and wandered off again.But, in the end, I had to face the fact that the modern world expected everyone to know about computers. I bit the bullet and learned. That was when I found out what they're for and it was a revelation to me. They are tools! Tools to do just about anything you want to, from writing to painting to drawing to accounting to gaming to communication, anything. I was hooked from the first and remain a complete convert.Even so, I am still a child of the sixties. Though I exist quite happily in the 21st Century virtual reality with new gadgets appearing every day, the language metamorphosing around me and the possibilities exploding from new technologies like a plague from the future, I'm still cool in a way that the young of today cannot understand. I have not forgotten the dreams we dreamed in those far off days.There is a book that I have planned for twenty years. It nears the point where I can begin it and, on days like these, the urge to write it becomes so strong that I can think of nothing else. I look around me and see how the dream of the sixties has been so influential in creating the world we know today, how our ideals have been taken and twisted and marketed and mistaken and I want desperately to shout out that the point has been missed.It's a brave new world, certainly. But it's not the new technology, so often resisted and then embraced by me, that has made it so. It's what goes on in our heads that makes the world as it is, that puts on those colored spectacles that affect everything we see. And there were things we learned in the sixties that have been lost in the rising cacophony that followed. There are moments when I see in the eyes of other old fogies like me that they too have not forgotten those barely-grasped moments of inspiration that seemed to infect my generation like a worldwide disease. But we're getting old and soon will start to die out. It needs to be said, what we glimpsed and then let fall from our fingertips as the fog of war and power and money closed in about us.That's what I want to write about...
Clive
Ned I can't imagine a generation could find a more talented writer to be its spokesperson. I say write it. I remember thoughts of resisting the computer age. What a fool I was. Date Added: 11/06/2005
Gone Away I just hope that I prove up to the task. It's not easy to write about things that hovered on the verge of consciousness forty years ago... Date Added: 11/06/2005
Josh I am intrigued. Contextually speaking, I (along with anyone interested in the benefits of history) would profit from a deeper understanding of my forebears. I am curious, though, if you plan to point fingers, as certainly many of that generation have somewhat betrayed the ideals they seemed to espouse, or perhaps only espoused them to get something less noble but perhaps more immediate. Maybe it was just that age old problem of life getting in the way? I mean, when I was 20, I was going to be a rock star. Date Added: 11/06/2005
Mad Oh like groovy man, peace. ;) Date Added: 11/06/2005
Gone Away No pointing fingers are being planned, Josh; all I want to do is try to set down some of the things we dreamed were possible in those days and where and why they went wrong. It will be done in the form of fiction and I hope it will be funny too - but with a deeper message running through the humor. Nobody seems to remember it now but immediately following what I regard as the golden age, some of my generation became intensely political and were known as the yippies. Others joined the establishment with the intention of changing it from the inside (what was known as the long march to power). I maintained then (and still do) that both routes were wrong because they put faith in systems that we had already seen through. And both systems succeeded in subverting and altering the ideals of those who thought they were going to change things. That's what went wrong. Sure, life got in the way. But I survived somehow and haven't changed. What happened to the rest of those faders? Date Added: 11/06/2005
Gone Away LOL Mad, you may mock. Remember Bomber Boys? Date Added: 11/06/2005
Ned Far out. Bombing for peace was very popular. Date Added: 12/06/2005
Gone Away .oO(For once, I'm speechless...) Date Added: 12/06/2005
keeefer Bloody hippy ideals. Ban this, dont eat that. Be nice to them everybody love everybody else, free sex.......Hey you guys were onto somthing! Date Added: 12/06/2005
Gone Away We had more than that, Keef, believe it or not. :D Date Added: 12/06/2005
Josh I suppose those faders are the ones that won't have fingers pointed at them. They know who they are. :P Date Added: 12/06/2005
keeefer Thats one thing i never quite understood. Women, after being repressed and abused for years, finally throw off the shackles of their opression. They celebrate this by burning their bras (woohoooo free the puppies!) and having casual sex with the very men who had for years treated them as homemakers and sex objects.......well that showed em huh. Date Added: 12/06/2005
Ned Puts me in mind of the old Bob Hope joke about the Women's Movement. He said "Woman want to be equal to men. What I don't understand is why they would want to give up all that power". Date Added: 12/06/2005
Way Intriguing idea, Gone. If anyone can do it well, you can. BTW, Alicia just read yesterday's bit on commercials, and said to send you an Email saying how well she liked it -- especially the drug parts. I told her I barely can do this. Date Added: 12/06/2005
Gone Away It is always a pleasure to know that Alicia has enjoyed something I've written. It means I must be doing something right! :) Date Added: 12/06/2005
Way You know, it hasn't been mentioned much lately (or if it has, I was asleep at some wheel somewhere, somehow), but your original series on Coming to America is highly treasured by this old Seppa. Hell, everything that you have ever posted, for that matter, has been so far above the (blog) pale that I almost hate to bring this up for fear of being perceived as trying to steer you (har-har!). My best guess to this pesky problem of mine (and that of not being able to read more of C to A) is that there are too many good ideas struggling against available Oklahoma time, so don't let me keep ya here any longer. :) Date Added: 12/06/2005
Gone Away Thank you for saying so, Way, especially as your own blog is one of the very few bright spots in the dark wilderness of the blogosphere. As you say, time is a major constricting factor in producing enough material to keep the ole blog going but there is also the matter of fuel. Fact is, I don't get out much with having to tend the blog so much but I add to the Journal as and when I get the chance to see a bit more of this wonderful country. The fiction I have to do - it's part of the package that is me unfortunately. And the incidental thoughts and rants, well, they sorta fill space while I'm marking time. ;) Hopefully I'll get a chance soon to see more of what lies west of here... The thing about the sixties. That's a book (called Bomber Boys) and won't be going into the blog except under lock and key. And I'll try to keep up the regular postings while it happens, if only as a break. Date Added: 12/06/2005
Way I am stymied. I mean, here you asked me once for input on ideas for C to A, and all I did was squat there on that dumb-looking fire hydrant and shrug my shoulders and go, "Man, I dunno, Gone. African Bees, mebbe?" So what you and K planning on doing July 4? :D Date Added: 12/06/2005
Gone Away July 4th? We don't plan ahead that far, Way... ;) But, talking of African bees, when Mad was 5 years old... Hmm, perhaps I better keep that for the blog. :D Date Added: 12/06/2005
Way Ouchy! Oh, do blog. Do blog, I say. Date Added: 12/06/2005
John (SYNTAGMA) The interesting thing about the 1960s is "if you remember it, you weren't there". It was also about justification for avoiding the draft and a very silly student revolt in France (where else?) in which the cry was, "We have no policies, only demands", the method of babies everywhere.The 80s are what I remember and, "Ah, what it was to be alive!" Of course, I was very young in those days. With a friend I set up one of the first small-scale computer companies, Earlgate Computers, and wrote programs for the new rash of micros (as they were called). The Tandy, Atari, BBC Micro, and the Sinclair Spectrum. The programs were coded in Basic and recorded on audio tape decks. Amazingly primitive. The first time I bought a micro with 8K of RAM I was ecstatic. "It can run a nuclear power station", shouted Clive Sinclair, though I'm not sure if I wanted to. Anyway, Boots ordered 9000 of our Fitness Software tapes and then waited six months to pay us. We got out when IBM took over the micro scene with the first PCs, and so avoided the dotcom crash. Phew, what lucky escape.Good luck with your book, clive, it sounds like a great project. Date Added: 12/06/2005
Gone Away Thanks, John. And the thought of Clive Sinclair running a nuclear power station fills me with dread for some reason... Date Added: 12/06/2005
Designer Ella I'm from the BC tagboard. You do have very good writing and a clean, well-executed design, to boot. I see that you are successful, congratulations, you deserve it. It's hard for personal blogs. :-) Date Added: 12/06/2005
Gone Away Thank you, Ella, kind of you to say so. I see that you have a fashion design blog - not really my specialty, I must admit! But I do hope you achieve success with it. That's the great thing about the blogosphere - there is room for all tastes. :) Date Added: 12/06/2005
prying1 I know exactly what you mean about watching and waiting for technology to step back and say, "That was a mistake." - I waited for years to see cassette tapes fail and 8-tracks to make a comeback... I'm still waiting. Want to see pics of my collection? Date Added: 13/06/2005
Ned The thing about 8 tracks is that you had to be clever to record them. You had to time each track to see exactly how long it was, add up all the times on the songs you wanted to record and place them in groups that would fit the time allotted without running too short or too long. That was fun. Of course now, I don't think those 8 track tapes I picked up for 35 cents were as much of a bargain as I thought they were at the time. I even seem to have lost track (no pun intended) of my tape deck. Ah, things are always changing... Date Added: 13/06/2005
Gone Away Well, neither of you are going to believe this but tape technology, 8-track or cassette, was one that I missed. I went straight from vinyl to CD... Date Added: 13/06/2005
Josh When I bout my Westy (VW vanagon), it came with an player, and after picking up a couple CCR 8-tracks at a fleamarket, I was surprised to discover that it still worked. For awhile. It was decent idea, really, but the march of technology was just far too real. Gone, the funny thing is that if you didn't buy any 8-tracks or cassettes, there is a good chance you didn't miss much. Sometimes there's something to be said for being a late adopter. :) Date Added: 13/06/2005
Gone Away Well, it's certainly true that, if the technology doesn't last a decent time, I never get to try it, Josh. Can this be a case of me being proved right? :O Date Added: 13/06/2005
Ken "... angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night ..." Howl: Allen Ginsburg Dream on, G. A., dream on! It's the only way. I shall expect a signed copy at no extra cost. Date Added: 13/06/2005
Gone Away And you shall have it, Ken! Date Added: 13/06/2005
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