Living History

Most Millennials are too young to really understand the boom of the computer age, and most refer to PAC-man and Pong as vintage gaming. Sometimes I feel that age has become my greatest barrier in this millennial match-up, but in reality I actually lived the history that Gen Y is reading about in books.  I was there and can prove it by the greys that outstretch the brown hair on my head.  I struggled through the many software mishaps that lefts all of us that weren't so techno savvy wondering if this computer boom is ever going to make it any easier on our daily lives. To get a better understanding of our technological boom, we should better understand the roots of our hunger to communicate with one another. Instead of leading you on a journey through boring facts about Egyptians, the development of ancient communication through hieroglyphs, and Moses' commandments inscribed on tablets of stone housed in the Ark of the Covenant, let me fast forward to a time more relevant to us.

1987

I was 11 years old and loved going to the library.  I knew to a point what computers were, but didn't understand their true potential.  I can remember seeing a bunch of older teens or young adults playing computer games that were stored on five inch flimsy floppy disks.  I grew up in a poverty stricken area of Southern California, so at this time computers were only a dream in the public school system.  The internet was available at this time, but was limited in it's use and access.  My computer knowledge at this age was limited to my Atari 2600, another ancient machine that my Millenial would hold a laugh or two in comparison with today's gaming technology.

1990

So now we fast forward a little bit to journalism class at Cal Farley's Boys Ranch.  I wasn't involved much in the design layout, but I do remember our editors hard at work on big bulky desktop PCs. This would have resembled an Andrea Zuckerman scene from the show 90210.  I digress. Our layouts were printed, pasted, and driven to a large printing service in the big town of Hereford, Texas.  Such a tedious job, but we weren't blessed with the almighty modem until the following year.  My sophomore year we were at the peak of high school newspaper technology by sending all of our layouts to print through a telephonic modem.  No oohs and ahhs yet?

1996

My first actual immersion into the connected world of the world wide web was during my time in the military. Our ability to communicate to other units and military entities was and integral part of our mission success. Our military computers introduced me to a whole new world of possibilities through AOL chatrooms, Yahoo messanger, and GeoCities.  That last part had no relevance to military success although, my introduction to the internet showed me endless possibilities of connection and social interaction through a fairly new technology. As I fast forward to 2013, our technologic advances have far surpassed what any of us could have envisioned, and social networking has now become a massive open global market.

The Evolution of Social Media

2015

So now that we have all survived the Mayan Apocalypse of 2013, I think it is safe to say that our future is what we make it.  As we consider our evolution of connectivity, according to Todd Wasserman in a Mashable blog, "Apple, the biggest company in the world is also the world's biggest social media holdout."  Apple has refused to build a Facebook or Twitter site, yet produces so much media buzz that a new release of iPhones will cause consumer demand all the way up to the next newest release.  Is this sustainable long term?  Social media blogger Alex Goldfayn tends to agree with Apple's take on social media marketing by stating "quantity of followers often matters more than quality of followers. "Likes" start to matter as much as (and sometimes more than) buys. Marketers focus less on creating emotional language and more on comments and interactions."  Have we become lazy?  I don't think becoming lazy is the answer.  I truly believe that with any other emergence of technology or ideas, people have to evolve to keep up. American capitalist society has changed to meet a new demand of consumers and retailers.  At this point, if you're not on the bandwagon, you just might be left behind in history.

Image from http://soshable.com/was-social-media-inevitable-to-our-homo-empathicus-evolution-video/