The decline of the human generation.

Ok, lets get down to the nitty gritty here. Lets discuss the decline of so called technology and also the decline it has had on the human generation. Ok, where to start?

Lets start with analog vs digital.
Since I was born in 1964, I grew up with analog. Lp's, analog video broadcasts, etc. I really got into this in the early 90's when digital started to become the norm. Let me start with audio. LP's compared to cd's. With LP's, the highs and lows were so much more pronounced. With cd's, everything was so compressed that the highs and lows were not as distinguishable as compared to the Lp's. On cd's, sound became more manufactured than the real sound of analog, and due to the compression, true sound could not be replicated. And dont fool yourself, it is still the same way today, its just that there is nothing to compare it to now, so those who were born in the late 80's or later have no clue. I mean, why do you think that a cd contains 80 minutes worth of music on only one side while an LP of triple size and 2 sided contains only half the music? The word? COMPRESSION. And that is where much is lost.

Next.
Video. In 1990, I bought myself a BUD(big ugly dish). This is the 10 foot diameter satellite dish. I watched as stations converted from analog to digital. Until a few years ago, I could compare an analog backhaul(the video sent from the source to the tv station), to a digital backhaul. The analog picture was so much cleaner and crisper. Why? Again, digital compresses everything. And I never had a problem with analog freezing up like digital does with it's silly little squares. That is what compression causes. A substandard picture and the possibilty of freezing.


Next.
Let's talk about cell phones. Since when did everyone feel the need to have a phone with them? Hell, I am 44, and I still dont feel the need. Back in the 70's or 80's, if I needed to make a call, I would drop a dime in a pay phone and make the call. Didnt do that very often either as most if not all the times, the conversation could wait until I got home, or wherever it was that I was going. Nowadays, people are paying such an ungodly amount, upwards of 50 dollars a month to have a phone at their side. How stupid is this? And how necesary or unnecesary is this? Now, some will say that a cell phone is good in case of emergencies, such as if you break down on the road. Well, back in the 70's and 80's, we had cb's, and they worked just fine, and guess what? THEY WERE FREE. So as for cell phones, I find this as one of the stupidist inventions that snagged the human population.


Next.

Cell phones continued. Texting. This has contributed to the decline of the IQ of the human population. People have gotten so lazy that if you ask them to spell a word, they are lost. A high majority of teenagers have lost the know how of the basics of spelling, and these are the people we look forward to to run our country? God help us all.


Next.

The internet. Hey, now here is something that is very good that has come about, when used in the right context. Any info you want is there, if you can decipher from the true and the false. A dictionary at your fingertips, an encylopedia at your fingertips, a way to contact anyone anywhere for free, all the info you ever needed. BUT, it is clouded with pornography, and other stuff such as time consuming games that kids get lost in. All in all, a 70-30 to the good.


Ok, that is enough for now. I could go on about how the technological age has brought us down, but I am interested to hear your points on these subjects. I know the younger age will argue with me as they dont have a clue, so I am more interested in hearing from the over 40 crowd on what they think, but yet and still, all replies are welcome.

 

I've seen this list before but it was Atari and Dungeons and Dragons. We also didn't have texting to blame for our poor spelling, it was television that killed our attention spans and rotted our minds. Now my gen (first generation video gamers) are running the show and it's not much different than the generation before us.

As someone caught between the old curmudgeon and youth, I can see your points but beyond observation, there's nothing you can do about it. It's change. It's always happening and all ways will.

"Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things." ~Douglas Adams

 

Not exactly the whole truth
The lasers used to cut a CD are a lot finer than the gargantuan needles used to dig out a Vinyl LP. If you could cut a vinyl record with a laser you would get abot 3000 hours of music on there but then you would need a laser to play it and the disks would be impractical

Yeah but then you didnt have a lot of choice did you so the argumentr that somehow cell phones are rubbish is a weak argument. If you had no choice but to use a payphone - look around, when exactly was the last time (except for you) that you seen anyone in a payphone box? hell even the vandals have stopped wrecking them coz theres no money in them

language changes - if people like you had their way we would all be speaking Latin still. You seem to forget that English as spoken by the English progresses at a much faster pace than say American English, that particular avenue still uses words the Brits gave up on about 300 years ago. In Britain a schoolgirl won herself top marks in an English exam for completing the entire paper in textspeak - we progress ! Dont ever forget that English is actually a lot of germanic and latin languages mixed with a bit of Anglo saxon
English was invented by the English and yet they want it to progress - the English language changes to express what it needs to. That is what makes English speaking nations at the forefront of invention

 

Even tho I make computer games,
I prefer Dungeons and Dragons.
But all my freinds grew up instead.

 

Some of your points are valid, but mostly you're just an old guy shaking his fist at the teenage rascals to get off your lawn. Just like your parents did and their parents did.

 

My digital cable gives me a pretty crisp picture. I don't really see what the problem is. I've watched my great grandmother's analog television, too. Not exactly what I'd call a good image. Do you even know how digital compression works? Rather than save the entire image of each frame in a movie, it only saves the parts that change in each consecutive frame. Nothing is really lost. The repetitive parts have just been disposed of. Also, I've never heard an LP that sounds better than a CD. Neither has my dad, who grew up on LP's. CD's have always given me a much crisper, clearer sound, and they don't scratch as easy and dust that gets on them is easier to clean off.

Your cell phone argument makes little sense. Once, people saw the telephone itself as a silly and pointless invention. TV's too. Back in the 19th century doctors thought washing their hands before surgery was unnecessary and stupid. Besides, just because something isn't absolute necessary doesn't make it stupid. Chairs aren't absolutely necessary, but we still use them. Before their invention, the human race got along fine without them. You may think this is a silly comparison, but my point is that your argument is flawed.