5.27.2010: Were they really the "Good Ole Days?"

By Robert Putnam

I am a baby boomer, although my sons prefer the term "geezer." Today I'm reflecting on just how far technology has advanced during my lifetime and I maintain that the "good ole days" were far from good. My formative years occurred from the early 50s to the late 60s and back in my day communication was slow, difficult, and extremely primitive when compared to today.

During my childhood there were only three methods of communication: land line telephones, Western Union and the US Postal Service. Our telephone was bulky, stationary and it had a rotary dial that took forever to enter a 10 digit number. Residential phones came in only two colors, black or black. In addition, my family could only afford a party line, which meant we shared one line with 5 or 6 families. Oh, the fond memories of having to wait 45 minutes to call my girlfriend while Dorothy and Edna rambled on about the weather and their petunias.

I can only recall three communication advances during those two decades: the introduction of the color TV, the transistor radio and the 8 track player. The latter finally allowed motorists to listen to their favorite music and not be stuck listening to farm reports and obituaries coming from the one local AM station. In my day, if you got lost traveling you were forced to stop and ask directions and hope someone could help you. Man, would we have loved GPS! If we needed information we could pull out the dusty old encyclopedia or trek to the library where we were limited to business hours only. Please don't ever take Google for granted.

Today our news, entertainment, communication and shopping are available within the blink of an eye. During the Korean and Vietnam conflicts families would go months without hearing from their soldiers. Today Skype brings separated families together, which helped me immensely during my son's two deployments. Spell check and the marvelous undo button were a huge help writing this blog and last night I enjoyed a discount on a great meal that conveniently popped up via email. Now, I don't utilize all of today's technology or profess to even understand a fraction of what's available, but my life has become immeasurably better when compared to the "good ole days".