© irene waters 2018
I can remember talking to my grandmother (pre Silent Generation) about how much the world had changed in her lifetime. She was born in 1899 in the small town of Tairo in Queensland. She had seen so many changes in her lifetime such as the change from keroscene and candle lighting to electric, stoking a fire to boil the copper to having an automatic washing machine but the change she found, without any doubt at all, to be the biggest was modes of transportation. She’d grown up with horse and cart being the only means of transport. She saw trains before she saw her first car but the reason for her that transportation was her choice – she saw man land on the moon. I try to imagine what it would feel like to go from Shank’s pony or real pony to jet travel and space travel in the course of a lifetime. The moon landing had an impact on me and the entire world at the time but I’d never known a time without planes, and without cars.
I had a similar conversation with my own mother, from the Silent Generation, a few years back. I asked what was the biggest change that she’d seen in her lifetime. Her answer floored me. I was expecting something similar to what my Grandmother had said but instead she simply said “people don’t have afternoon tea or morning tea anymore.” I thought about it and realised that in her youth cars still weren’t common, the depression and the war happened and life in Australia was still very much as it was in Victorian England. People would be invited for morning tea or afternoon tea. The intricately embroidered tablecloth would be placed on the table and the Royal Doulton floral cups, saucers and plates would be placed on it so that the hostess could pour from the silver teapot a fine cup of tea. Little sandwiches, cakes and slices would be offered around. Men were seldom present. Conversation would flow and then people would leave to either avoid overstaying their welcome by staying into the lunch time or in time to get home before dark. When I had this conversation dinner parties had replaced morning tea and afternoon tea. The change that has happened since is that dinner parties rarely happen and friends tend to meet at a restaurant for dinner. Yesterday I took Mum to a new cafe. She’d liked the sound of the banana pancakes Roger had eaten there for breakfast that morning. She asked me “do people go out to eat breakfast now?” I doubt that she has ever eaten breakfast out apart from when she has been travelling.
Her biggest change was a social change whereas my Grandmother’s was a technological change. It made me wonder what would I say if I was asked the same question. So for this weeks prompt I am asking you to tell me what you think is the biggest change that has happened in your lifetime. Please join in giving your location at the time of your memory and your generation. An explanation of the generations and the purpose of the prompts along with conditions for joining in can be seen at the Times Past Page. Join in either in the comments or by creating your own post and linking. Looking forward to your memories.
Baby Boomer – Australia Rural
The social change that is most apparent to me is children’s loss of freedom. In my childhood we could walk home from school, we could disappear and play in the park just as long as we were back by 5pm. It was not that there weren’t kidnappers or other horrible people around – there were and I can remember some quite clearly – but the risks seemed less. The community seemed to be more cohesive and I would have felt safe going anywhere. Nowadays, children are dropped at school and picked up in the afternoon, children cannot be put off a bus for bad behaviour for fear of what might happen to them and parents have become nicknamed helicopter parents for hovering close to their children. I think I would have been so repressed had I had to live in this kind of environment and I wonder what it does to creativity and perhaps to independence.
The technological change that has happened in my lifetime is of course the advent of computers, specifically the internet. This has made the world so much smaller as you can learn about other countries and people with a few taps on the keyboard. It has made encyclopaedias redundant as any information is available quickly and easily. I can remember the mainframe at the university. Few people were allowed into the computer room which had its own special air supply. Computer students didn’t get to visit the room let alone those of us doing statistics. You would submit your work to those allowed in and a ream of paper would in due course be given to you. Roger and I had a home computer early in the piece. We took it to Vanuatu with us and to our surprise it had no trouble running off the inverter where we’d never been able to watch television because of it.
© irene waters 2018
From these huge computers to smaller and smaller ones with the amount of memory much increased we are now seeing watches, fridges, televisions, telephones all with the capacity to go online. Roger is looking forward to soon having a robot do his bidding. He thinks it will probably answer back less than I do.
Baby Boomer Hong Kong —> USA
https://theshowerofblessings.wordpress.com/2018/06/07/the-biggest-change-times-past/
I’m looking forward to reading what you consider the biggest changes in your lifetime……. and don’t forget that if you are interested in memoir check out the series on the second Friday of the month over at Carrot Ranch. Join in the conversation.
Baby Boomer Suburban USA
Baby Boomer UK town
https://geofflepard.com/2018/06/13/a-whole-lot-of-time-timespast/
Baby Boomer North Germany City
Baby Boomer USA City
http://lostinthebozone.blogspot.com/2018/06/summer-1963.html
Baby Boomer UK town
http://annegoodwin.weebly.com/1/post/2018/06/im-not-telling-you.html
Reflections and Nightmares- Irene A Waters (writer and memoirist) 
Lovely! I like your energy!
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Thank you. Hope you’ll join in.
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Hi, Irene. I guess I’m a “Baby Buster”, just made Gen X.
When I was a kid we lived rural and the TV only got one, depending on the weather, sometimes two channels. But I spent time at my cousin’s house in town and they had more TV. There was where I watched the original Star Trek shows, the ones with Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner. Now those shows seem so hokey, then they were improbable in the science fiction gadgetry. Such fantasy, a device that let’s you see and hear someone that is far away. Without a doubt the computer/phone/digital stuff is the biggest change. I do not have the emotional energy at the end of this week to expound on the impact those devices and technology are having on today’s kids. I pity them that they are so distracted by these devices and are deceived into thinking they have information and knowledge but are so very ignorant of the natural world and Its wisdom. You prompting me here makes me remember and appreciate that the sixties and seventies were a great time to be a kid.
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The one I think of is the Jetsons. We are now so close to that it is hard to believe. I’m with you – I worry about the impact devices are having on kids. It must be so hard being a teacher and controlling what the children are doing or viewing. I think our ability to persevere at tasks is going to diminish as the devices make you much needier of short term gratification. Although I feared that one of my nephews would never read a long book he has surprised me by reading some books that I would never have attempted. Time will tell I guess on the effect it has. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and I agree the sixties were a great time to be a kid.
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I’d agree with your choices Irene. My childhood like yours was a time when we could go off and play and did not have everything arranged for us by adults. I walked to school, others rode bikes or caught the bus. Being dropped off at school happened if you were really late, or perhaps if mum thought you might not go otherwise.
Computers too have gone from being a mainframe in a sealed off room that you could barely interact with to more computing power than Apollo 11 had in your smartphone. Amazing changes in less than 50 years.
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I agree – things have moved ahead at a massive pace but I feel that many of the changes happening now are extensions of an existing idea. None have quite the same wow factor as it must have been seeing the first motor vehicle or the first plane to fly or even for me seeing my first televison. I wonder what the world will be like in another 50 years.
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I love the 3 generation perspective! Like you, for me it was computers, and especially the internet. But TV was quite astounding when I first saw it. The idea of having ‘the movies’ in my house was fascinating! I’m a Silent Generation type, so certainly have seen more changes than Boomers and Baby Busters!
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Yes you would have seen a lot of changes Diane. Television arrived in Australia later, particularly in country areas and I share your feeling about when you first saw it. I don’t remember this but was told the story many times by my grandparents who lived in Sydeny and did have a television of my reaction to seeing my mother on it. I was not used to television as it hadn’t arrived in the country town we lived in and I ran around the back of the box to get my mother out. It was beyond my comprehension.
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This is a wonderful retrospective on changes over just a bit more than 100 years. I really enjoyed reading about your grandmother’s and mother’s points of view, and then reading how you and Roger adapted your modern needs in a primitive society. (I still long to know why you made such a dramatic move and what you hoped to achieve.)
I recognize very similar changes in my lifetime here in the States – how interesting that Australia’s changes parallel ours, even thousands of mile distant. One other change I note is that people are so less willing to be open to the view of others. Or maybe I’m naive enough to think so. I’ve always known that going back to the “Good Old Days” is a horribly miserable idea for so many, but I detect an attitude shift from listening to slamming doors.
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I think we parallel each other but in the past that parallel occurred with a disconnect – we were probably 10 years behind you. Now with the internet we have probably caught up. I still find myself surprised though by some unexpected differences.
Soon I hope you will be able to read although with the changes to Amazon allowing Australians to use it I might have to post it to you myself.
I agree that people are less open to the views of others – an effect of the me generation. Also I think that many people are so concerned with self that they no longer listen to what is being said. People are always interrupting to put their thoughts forward whereas I think you have to truly listen to what someone is saying, digest it and then respond. It can open up the world to those that listen.
A fellow at dancing when I asked him this question thought that the biggest change in his opinion was the role of women in Western society.
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Along with parents, I went through the time of no television (only radios), having a gramophone, sending a telegram, having a black & white TV, having the first huge computer. Well, I have been in the US longer than in Hong Kong, so I need to do some thinking of what to write. Humm, I’ll do a post and link to your blog.
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A most enjoyable post, Irene. The most significant comment for me was about the loss of freedom for our children. You are quite right about that and it is a very sad thing. It has resulted in a generation of lonely children as they do a lot of their socializing through social media.
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Yes I think the loss of freedom is sad. It means that children can no longer experiment and push boundaries and I think that this has to have an effect on their ability to be independent and creative. I had not given much thought to them socialising through social media but of course you are right and this too, must have a massive impact on them and their relationships now and into the future.
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What an interesting concept for a prompt! I remember being amazed that Laura Ingalls Wilder of pioneer fame had grown old enough to see a television. It will be fun to reflect and read the answers to your prompt.
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Yes I’m looking forward to seeing what people come up with. One of my dancing friends had a response that i hadn’t thought of but he was right when he said how the role of women in western society had changed. There are probably oodles of other things that we need to reflect on before choosing something.
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Oh, yes, changing roles. For men, too.
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Irene, your post reminds me of so many things happened growing up. I walked half a mile to school by myself, and then with my younger sister when she started school. I roamed on the street every day. It was safe and I knew the neighbors and businesses. My husband also talked about playing in the woods in Australia when he was a kid. He used to hide in bushes to scare his sister!
I made a post on my blog and link it to your post here.
https://theshowerofblessings.wordpress.com/2018/06/07/the-biggest-change-times-past/
I write about the biggest change in my life within a few months in 1977. The changes in cultures, environments, languages, and ways of life happened to me all at once.
I worked several years after graduated from college. Going to work, I took the double-deckers bus to work. It went from Kowloon, under the Crossed Harbour tunnel, to Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. At that time, there were no cell phones, I did my reading on the bus.
Being busy was an understatement. I worked forty hours a week in my paying job plus twenty hours a week in my volunteer work at a church. I did most of the planning on the bus. It was an advantage of taking public transportation. On some of the weeknights, I went window shopping to take my mind off the working mode. I did a thirty-minute walk from Pioneer Centre Shopping Arcade to Kowloon Central Post Office on Nathan Road, then took a bus home.
It was eleven thirty o’clock at night when I went to bed. The more I tried to relax the more anxious I got in my head. Getting six hours of sleep was fortunate before I shook my head to wake up the next morning.
On March 21, 1977, I arrived Portland, Oregon to attend school for my graduate studies. The campus was surrounded by pine trees reaching into the sky. The school owned some housings and rented them to students. Many of the nearby residents rented out their homes to the students also. I shared a cottage with two female students. It was common that the basement and the attic were living area if they met the legal requirement. I lived in the attic, my housemates lived downstairs. I didn’t mind living in the attic because I was shy to carry on a conversation with my British English. My housemates were very friendly. We ate dinner together three times a week and took turns to do the cooking. Cooking was not something I did often in Hong Kong, so I tried to remember what my mom did and did accordingly.
“I’m living in a forest,” I told my family in a letter.
I had never experienced such quietness. It was so quiet that I started noticing the intermittent tinnitus in my left ear. This was an extremely different environment to the one I just left two days ago. My life was from running sixty miles an hour to almost a complete stop. In one minute, I was hustling and bustling of catching the bus, in another minute, I had nothing to do except going to classes and doing term papers.
Doing a typewritten paper was a challenge to me. I did all my writing in handwriting previously. When working on the first assignment, I learned to type with a manual typewriter and typed my paper at the same time. I didn’t want to type with two index fingers. How could I learn to type by doing that? By using ten fingers to type, it was inevitable to have many typos. There was no correction tape built into the typewriter, I used correction fluid. Experience taught me to apply a thin layer on the paper, not only for it to try faster, but avoid having a white hump on the paper. Even when I typed when the fluid was dry, the dent would look like sticking the candles on the icing of the cake. It took me almost an hour to type my first page. 🙂
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Miriam it was a pleasure to have a peek into your life as you transitioned from the business of Hong Kong to a quiet student’s life in the USA. Typewriters are most definitely a thing of the past and thus a massive change in your (and my) lifetimes. Thanks for joining in. I am looking forward to reading your memoir when it is published.
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Thank you, Irene. I’m trying hard to squeeze some time in every day, even writing a few hundred words. Someone in our retiree classes volunteers to help people publish using Create Space from Amazon. I need to have the manuscript exactly the way I want to see in a book and save it in PDF file. He could order a proof reading copy from Amazon, then do the final editing. I also found a reasonable price online service Fiveer to do book covers and all kinds of illustration. Now I have a little bit more motivation to work on it.
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Glad to hear you are making headway with your memoir and having someone to help you will make a big difference. I am a little worried that I will no longer be able to purchase books published only in America as Amazon is now not selling to Australians from the 1st July. I have so many books on kindle and to keep them I can’t change to Amazon Australia (which will not sell self-published books from the States). Ugh. Life used to be so easy…….
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Can you get Amazon Kindle or book from Amazon,uk? I’m a member of a memoir Facebook, they don’t let people do self promotion, but they let people contact the administrator, they then will post their Amazon links, both US and UK links and any other links that have their books. Members can also contact the admin and ask to have their memoirs to be featured once. On the day of being featured, members could ask questions to the author live within that 24-hour period. My friend’s book was featured and she had to take two breaks from answering question. She listed Amazon US and UK links. On the days of featured, authors could offer a lower price or free for their books.
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No I think Amazon is only allowing Australians to purchase from Amazon Australia. I’m hoping when it comes in there will be such a hullabaloo about it that either Amazon will change its policy or the Australian government will make an exception. It seems to me that it will return reading in Australia a very expensive thing to do and will limit the range of books we are able to purchase. The memoir site sounds very good and a way of gaining a lot more exposure to readers.
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Can you get Kindle version from Amazon UK or US? It doesn’t involve in shipping.
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That is what I have now but from the 1st July they will no longer sell books from either of those sites to Australians.
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What a shame!
I don’t know what the issue is. What online service do you use to list your book? What sites can you buy books?
I noticed that on that Memoir FB, some people list their books on Amazon,
Barnes and Noble, and links in other countries. When a blogger friend first published her book, only people in India could by it. Eventually her publisher made it available to Amazon and seller in other countries and I got it from Amazon.us.
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No this is a new issue starting on the 1st July and has to do with new tax laws in Australia which Amazon refuses to comply with so they have just dropped us totally except from Amazon australia which I have never used because of its limited selection of books. Australian authors are also going to have issues placing books with Amazon apart from Amazon australia and they won’t be available anywhere but Australia. I’m hoping the whole thing will create such an uproar that someone gives and allows it to return to the way it was.
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I hope enough people are voicing their concern so it returns to the way it was. You still have 12 days before they implement. Someone has to lead a movement. Even Australian government should be aware of the conflict because it would involve so many authors, publications, journalists, and all the writing business. I hope something will happen to stop it.
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This is a fascinating post, Irene. It was a toss-up for me. The freedom of my childhood sounds similar to what you describe. My best memories are my “adventures” while unsupervised!
However, I went with another change that rose to the top of the list:
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Loved the take you did on this prompt and I totally agree that they are big changes in our life time. I loved your post.
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I love your mother’s identification of the big change. I guess it speaks of a more hectic pace of life as well as a lost openness to visitors and a certain etiquette. Not something I’d miss, however, although it does remind me of my first placement during my training at a child and adolescent mental health unit where the staff gathered both morning and afternoon for coffee and tea. I’m sure that kind of informal coming together would have fed back into the work but, as it was in a manner that couldn’t be measured, it quickly disappeared.
I certainly identified with your observations of changes in computers – those old punchcards were so time-consuming but the excitement of finding the outcome in your pigeonhole hours or perhaps days later.
You might be amused, given my aversion to memoir, that I misinterpreted the prompt initially, thinking you were asking about personal change. But mine does tie in with the social change that’s been remarkable since my childhood years in the 60s and 70s with vastly improved emotional literacy and openness to mental health issues. More in my post here:
I’m not telling you http://annegoodwin.weebly.com/1/post/2018/06/im-not-telling-you.html
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Thank you for sharing such a personal post Anne and the change that you isolated from your experiences is a good change.
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Loved reading about your grandmother’s and mother’s differing experiences with change Irene. Also your memoir about loss of freedom since our generation. It is something I worry greatly about for the younger generation, and how it will affect them in future life. I read your memoir post over at the Ranch and have left a few comments there, chiming in on the conversation. I would love to talk to you about Miriam’s memoir notes from her writing conference at some point. You have picked an excellent and thought-provoking challenge, and I look forward to posting about it. Lovely to walk and talk as always my friend ❤
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Wonderful to see you Sherri and will write soon. Always good to walk and talk and if you have time to reflect on your biggest change would love to read it. When Miriam shares her learnings with me I will let you know. Hopefully she will write about it in the ranch so we can all share.
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Thanks so much Irene for sharing Miriam’s learnings with me, and yes, it would be great if she would write a post at the Ranch too. Wonderful to walk and talk again my dear friend, I have missed you. I think my changes are very similar to yours, coming from the same generation and time in history. But it is still fascinating reading about those differences between countries and continents. I shall return, and yes, we’ll catch up as we can, wherever we can! Have a great rest of the week 🙂 ❤
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Not sure where to post my Times Past post, so I will post the link here and over to CR also.
Thank you for the great prompt and even better hints and suggestions about writing memoirs.
Here it is
http://lostinthebozone.blogspot.com/2018/06/summer-1963.html
I decided to not worry about who I was writing for this time. I did try to just tell my story without too much emotion, though it was indeed a very troubling period for me.
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What an interesting challenge! It made me think of how I grew up and I found it hard to find, what I really consider the biggest change. IT has changed our lives. The way we work, how we communicate and the amount of information available. However, I feel the way we interact and how our children grow up has maybe changed the most. Children are hardly ever on their own without a grown – up watching and interfering, protecting and teaching them. Then there is the pressure to “improve” ourselves. To eat healthier, exercise more, reduce stress, work on our spiritual development etc. Instead of social control through neighbours and the community there seems to be a pressure from the medias.
But there are many changes to the better and hope. What is change for us the younger generation considers normal. Here is the link to my post: https://wordpress.com/post/northgermanyblog.com/1847
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Trina thanks for joining in and giving us a response that gives hope for the future. A bit of a way to go but with such potential.
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Hi again Irene, I had every intention of getting my Times Past post out before the end of the month, but I didn’t figure on how long it would take me to prepare for my family arriving today for a family wedding tomorrow, and getting ready for mine and hubby’s holiday the day after, a week in Italy. So much to do before going away, I feel like we should have a holiday before and after just to enjoy the actual holiday, it’s ridiculous. I thought I had plenty of time, but alas, it was not to be. I will await your next prompt and will definitely be able to post in July, and am very much looking forward to doing so. But meanwhile, I’ll comment here with my thoughts, if that’s okay, as I wanted to get it in for you in time.
As a baby-boomer growing up first in Surrey and then Suffolk (both small villages a few miles away from the nearest town) in 1960’s & 1970’s Britain, the biggest technological change for me (apart from computers, the most obvious one) would be the telephone and the cost of calls. I was one of few of my school friends who even had our own telephone, one of those old fashioned black ones that you dial. If I wanted to speak to a friend, she would have to arrange a time when she could call me from a phone box. Then, to split the cost, I would call her back when she ran out of coins. But I was limited as to how long I could talk for, with my mother hovering, reminding me not to run up the bill.
When I first moved to America, there was no such thing as cheap international calls. I would call my mother once every two weeks, then she would call me two weeks later, so we spoke twice a month and each had a call once a month to pay for. It cost me $30 to speak for one hour, which I budgeted for. The advent of cheap telephone packages at home and abroad was a godsend.
Also, I was astounded to learn that in California, all local calls (not sure how far in terms of distance local went, but a good enough area) were free! Imagine that? No more mother in the background telling me I had had long enough and to hang up…ahhh!!!!
I remember watching Tomorrow’s World (every Thursday night, after Top of the Pops, my favourite show) the time when they talked about a telephone that you could carry with you, even use in the car, and had a screen on which you could see the face of the person you were talking to, live. It seemed fantastical, something so way off in the future, that I could only imagine in amazement that such a thing would really happen. But here we are. And the rest, as they say, is history.
I would love to write more about this subject, and of course discuss it with you my friend, I love our walks and talks! Thanks to modern technology, we are here communicating when otherwise we would have never met. For that, I am so happy!
I’ll be signing off WP after today, and will return when back from our holiday. I don’t plan on using the internet while abroad…but I will take lots of pics. Take care Irene, and see you soon! Lots of love, Sherri 🙂 ❤ xxx
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Hope you have (had by the time you see this) a wonderful holiday. I think you are so sensible to have a holiday free of the internet. That makes it a real holiday. We do that when we cruise and it is amazing how rested you feel after a couple of weeks.
You are so right with the cost of calls being a huge change. I still worry about the cost when I make a call before remembering that the cost is nothing. For some reason Switzerland isn’t on Australia’s cheap phone list for some reason but we skype and it costs nothing. What’s app I have just found and it has really aided communication with my deaf sister in law in Germany. For those with families in other countries it has made the distance shorter and relatives able to feel as though they are a part of each others lives. A great change. See you on your return Sherri. ❤️xxx
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Hi Irene, just to say I’m back from holiday and a quick catch up while I catch my breath. A lovely break, despite coming down with a cold. Still, lemons the size of grapefruits and siestas helpd with that. So nice to break away from the every day pressures of life. Ha, yes, I find what’s app is great, I keep in touch with the kids that way in various groups and can share photos for free too. What a wonderful way to communicate with your sister in law. When I lived in America, we had none of that, but it felt revolutionary when my mother and I could use email! I’m like you too, thinking I have to watch the cost of a phone call before remembering it’s free. Must be engrained in us! I’ll be back soon…looking forward to walking and talking my friend 🙂 ❤
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