Outdated!!

 

Was there a time in your life, as you were growing up...when you felt your parents outdated, that you've outgrown their generation, their way of thinking, their views didn’t align with yours? 

A moment when a thought must have crossed your mind ... to tell your parents..."Papa....the world isn't like that anymore!"  Not that you meant any disrespect..Not that you had any clue or maturity of navigating yourself through life at that point.  I’m sure, you respected your parents, you’d always follow their directions and trust their guidance.. still, you had this nagging feeling..the feeling that is also known as the  “generation gap”.

Well, there wasn't much competition then, in terms of technology..was there?! The only greatest innovations we were using at home, was the TV and Fridge.  Even those were created by somebody so far away from where we lived...that it took years before we could get to experience the magnificence of those innovations.

It was the times when, India was dealing with the concept of empowering women, emboldening the girl child!  Getting them to go outside their homes, to school, to work. My mom was a perfect example to me. Her dad, my grandpa, had encouraged her, helped her settle far from home…to join the mechanical revolution...very forward thinking for dad's of that generation. To see their daughters progress, to see them not just be content being house wives.

Still I did feel it..I did feel that generation gap. Was it that the movies weren't reflecting what was happening around, or was it actually showing the feelings of majority of the society then?

How many of you'll remember the common drama in the movies of those days. Especially, when a women gets raped and the only way the movie ends is with her committing suicide or, the hero makes the bad guy marry the woman, to atone for his sins....

Was that the only solution that was socially acceptable in those days???!!! Atrocious!

That's when I realized I didn’t belong to that kind of society….that thinking.

Today, I feel I'm getting into the shoes of my parent's generation already!!! 

Sure, the social picture depicted in the movies is very different today. IMHO its getting bolder in the wrong way…and its getting socially acceptable too. I know the society in real life isn’t like that, it doesn’t’ function like that..we all have protested and made our voices heard on that issue.

Today, the kids of this generation are well aware of where they stand…more informed, more connected!

My fear, my reason for getting outdated is totally different.

Its the age of the gadgets. We're talking artificial intelligence people!!, Soon we'd have artificial humans, robots, on this planet, in every phase of our lives...with smart homes and smart maids!!

We’ll soon be wondering who is controlling whom?!  Just like the story of the dog on lease very nicely illustrated by Seinfield :-)

There’d be no thought, no idea left unexplored. For example, A thought had just occurred to me a few weeks ago. How nice, if we could harness power from our walk itself…I was amazed to find, there are already implementations of the idea in practice.

Floor tiles of special material have been manufactured that can convert the energy of the friction of our feet with the ground to electrical power. Such tiles have been planted in masses in places of huge traffic, like train stations and other public places…to harvest the walking power of so many people…

There are works in the making to make the treadmill self powering using the same idea…and who knows where this tiny idea can take us!! We may soon contact another life… my worst fear…which I’m sure I wont have to deal with in my life time.

The smart phones and the smart apps generation with the new lingo, with their logic wired, to fit in, even as they are born, their vocabulary that’s going urban by the day...and spellings are getting shorter and shorter!!! Everything has an abbreviation.  You don't need the websters or the oxfords now...You need the  urban dictionary. You need the slang dictionary...not that I ever knew any that belonged to my generation even...still..there is a new dictionary now.

It’s the age of communicating…in a new way. Keeping in touch with everybody at the same time, it’s the age of multitasking. All Information at your finger tips. Quite overwhelming if you have to keep up with all of that from your home.

Hubby dear on the other hand...seems to be sailing along fine and keeping me in tow so I don't wake up one morning and feel ... Some new language...new world came into existence while I slept.

I'm still able to navigate through the phone and use up all the smart apps available, connect with people I thought were just figments of my imaginations. I’m referring to the people from my long forgotten childhood and school. Without FB maybe, I’d have forgotten them..I’d have forgotten all those childhood memories. But now, those memories seem to get fresh. 

Still..these issues are almost non issues compared to what is to come. With the speed with which the world is developing and ease with which our children are adapting to the new world...I can see that day closing in really fast, when my children are going to stamp my forehead with "OUTDATED" material!

What was the point, in your life, when you realized that you have outgrown your parents generation and your views are different from theirs?  What is your fear of getting outdated??