Those who saw changes

Transitions allow you to better understand how the world changes and how things happen. We live in comfort times where people struggle way less than the generation before. But what does that mean? There was a time where people did not have the luxury that surround us today: cellphones, emails, social websites, etc.

There was a time where people actually interacted face to face to know you, to understand you, to debate you and to oppose you. Now it seems it's all gone. Yes, all gone...

I remember when I took my bike and visited my friend's house so we would gather and pedal around our neighbor blocks. We would stop to buy sodas to drink, chips or chocolate bars for our rogue snacks away from out parent's watch. Then we grew up to ride cars and start exploring the night life meeting at 9 pm and coming home at one in the morning.

We took those weekend nights riding our cars or stopping at our meeting place to talk about anything we felt without taboos. That was ten years ago, that was the year 2000 and not some post World War 2 scenario.

Some of us had cellphones that would only place calls and nothing else. That was an advantage to look cool among us and not hide behind anything else. If we had to meet t our usual spot we were there without any lame text-message excuse not to show up.

My generation who grew up i the 80s saw the transition into an age of comfort and laziness at the same time. We understood that the technological achievements were something short of a miracle and never took it from granted, unlike too many people do today. 

There is a huge gap between us and the kids of today who couldn't see life change, especially in a post 9/11 world. Lots of things did change and if you missed them you also missed history in the making. If you did not pay serious attention what happened from 2001 and on you missed an page-turning in life.

When you base the majority of your social activity through a website that might be Facebook or Myspace you just decided to avoid reality and what's really going around you.

I've witnessed the birth of MMOs, the dawn of chats and virtual social spaces, the way Google shaped the web and how it shaped your life. I saw changes that many other didn't. I was there to see when the web went from 1.0 to 2.0 and the advent of how Youtube changed things.

Once you saw those things you start appreciating every single application on your phone because back then you had to take the Yellow Pages to find anything that wasn't yet on the internet.

My parents saw eve more things changing than I did: TV, VHS, CD, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the political turmoils in '68, the birth of the PC, and the list goes on and on.

What will the generation after me witness? Not so many changes as they will grow up and live in an environment where socializing will be more difficult and where interacting will only happen only through the HTTP and their dreams will be prepackaged by PR agencies in their next campaign ad..