Nostalgia for the Pre-Digital Age

There is getting to be a great deal of nostalgia for a time when technology wasn't as central to our lives now that baby boomers are nearing retirement and generations that grew up surrounded by computer s are coming of age. However, technology has its good and its bad just like anything else. There are online yearbooks. There are computer viruses. There are spam e-mails. There are connections made with loved ones. One of the reasons for this nostalgia is that the baby boomers were born to parents and grandparents who had embraced a collective amnesia in order to deal with the horrors of the first half of the 20th Century. The first world war killed millions across Europe. Quick on its heels came the Great Depression. The second world war, with all its horrors and atrocity, came right behind that. Like a chain of elephants, massive changes shook the world, one right after the other. In the United States, the period after the second world war was a new epoch, defined by prosperity and growth . A new way of life was born with the building of highways, the creation of the suburbs, and the institution of the GI bill, which allowed servicemen to go to school, get an education, and become professionals. Those GIs had seen some of history's most awful events, and perhaps as a result they tended to insulate their children. Even though the Korean War was fought when the baby boomers were still children, they were protected from it. Of course, the conspiracy of events that produced the post-war boom is unique, as was the experience of that generation, growing up in a time of relative security, economic growth, and immense innovation directed at consumer goods. There was money to spend. Highways were being built and cars were being put on them. Whole new worlds of opportunity were opening up, and anything seemed possible. No boom lasts forever, however, and the largesse of the 1950s and 1960s inevitably gave way to the economic challenges and social cynicism of the 1970s. It's no surprise that this change coincided with the time when the baby boomers started hitting 30. After Nixon, the country examined its conscience and re-examined its position in the world. The idyllic post war era was gone, and because it was caused by a unique combination of events it will never be repeated. The development of computers and, more importantly, the rapid proliferation of the Internet, has once again created a unique conspiracy of events that is creating a unique period in world history. But while the post-war period was defined by nations retreating from war into separate pockets of peace in order to regenerate, this time period is defined by frenetic global connectedness. In our technology-driven world, isolation is a thing of the past whether you are a person or a nation. An event takes place, is immediately documented, and is instantly communicated around the globe. The proverbial butterfly of chaos theory does indeed create a hurricane on one side of the world by fluttering its wings on the other. While the Millennials embrace this change and the new world it promises, it can be terrifying for those who don't understand or relate to it. Hence the nostalgia. Luckily, although the world moves at a faster pace now and there is no way to turn the clock back to a different age, there are places to indulge one's nostalgic urges. We have to beware of computer viruses, yes. But we can also peruse online yearbooks and remember what it was like - or what we wish it had been like - way back when.