
I have seen things - ingve
https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2020/03/i-have-seen-things.html
======
mark_l_watson
I liked that. I am am 68 and although I 'retired' last year (from managing a
deep learning team at Capital One), I stay active. Currently I am writing a
combined iOS and macOS app (so I needed to spin up on Swift and SwiftUI, and
how to use built in support for building deep learning models, instead
TensorFlow which is what I am used to). I recently published a book on the
very cool Hy Lisp programming language (you can read it free at
[https://leanpub.com/hy-lisp-python](https://leanpub.com/hy-lisp-python)).

I get inspiration from my father. He is 98 and has taught himself 3D animation
and video editing, and keeps himself very busy creating videos for the
international right to die organization. (He was a physicist and is still a
member of the National Academy of Sciences.)

So, for all you young 50 year olds, I say to you: it is not over until it is
over :-)

~~~
moksly
I’m 37 and as such doesn’t qualify as old, but I recently got into the Blood
Bowl hobby. I haven’t done miniatures since I was a little kid, but some of my
real world friends picked it up and I was quick to jump on the wagon as I had
been looking for a non-digital hobby.

Anyway, being 37 my purchasing power is obviously a lot greater than it was
the last time I was into miniatures, and that has lead me down a rabbit hole
of hobbyists who enjoy miniature war/board games (not really sure what to call
them yet). A lot of these people are well into their 60ies, yet they attend
weekly brawls at local libraries. They hold weekend tournaments. Have lively
Facebook groups to organise their different leagues and everyone is welcome.

It’s really been inspiring to see that old age can be a lot different than
what it’s been for my own family members.

~~~
dpeck
Blood Bowl is a great game, I wish there was a mobile game version of it, it’d
be nice to have a long term turn based game to play with friends during random
downtime’s during the day.

~~~
andrewzah
Correspondence chess. With lichess it's never been easier to play online.

~~~
dpeck
Yeah, I want that, but not chess :)

I prefer games that have a randomness element.

------
pjc50
Popular culture is always both smaller and larger than you expect. Especially
in music, where particular events loom huge in the canonical history but then
you realise that there can only have been a tiny number of people actually
there (e.g. the famous Manchester Free Trade Hall Sex Pistols gig). But
conversely it's possible to stumble across a vibrant, long-lasting, close
scene of people that you've never heard of, with its own memes and legends.

But the big era of a single, national popular culture was very much a product
of the TV age. The easy identification of a decade with a single music genre
and clothing style is over. We're fragmented now; Game of Thrones feels big
but has a narrower reach than the big pop culture movements of the mid-20th
century.

Find your niche. It's OK. But don't mock the niches of others.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
When the internet took off in the late 90's, the information bandwidth allowed
everyone to access "the long tail" of available culture and interests, and
find their precise niche. This lasted about a minute, in generational terms.
Now we're all living in the long tail. Now, the long tail is all there is.
THIS is why music companies have suffered; not piracy. And news; not because
of ads. Business based on scarcity and promotion are dead or dying. This is
why popular culture peaked in the 80's. There will NEVER be a time where the
majority of the population is caught up in the same thing, where one fashion
trend or one genre of music dominates.

~~~
PaulDavisThe1st
Except that more or less nobody in the 1990s thought that "popular culture
peaked in the 80s". Most people were glad that that cursed decade was over and
we could move on from its absurdities and cultural lows.

Are you sure your assessment is not just some sort of cylical 40 retrospective
nostalgia?

~~~
karatestomp
Things everyone considered terrible in the 90s, almost universally: disco, and
by association much of the 70s; 80s fashion across the board. The music and
movies and such of the 80s were still regarded as OK.

~~~
PaulDavisThe1st
Sorry, but this just seems utterly wrong, certainly for music. The 1970's gave
us band after band, performer after performer who are still revered today. Who
is the 1980's example of, say, Led Zeppelin? Or the Mahavishnu Orchestra?

Now, I will concede that _in the 90s_ people did not see the 70s in this way
(at least not in general) - not long enough had passed, I think. That's why I
suspect that any notion of the 80s being a culturally rich decade comes from
the fact that it is now 30-40 years ago, rather than just 10 as it was at the
start of the 90s.

This sort of view doesn't have much to do with anyone's experience of the
decade as it happened, and I think it doesn't have a lot to do with what
actually happened, because in any given decade, there will always be a rich
and diverse set of amazing cultural creativity. It comes mostly from time
passing, and a new assessment blending with nostalgia for the culture that
surrounded as we reach certain ages.

~~~
renaudg
> The 1970's gave us band after band, performer after performer who are still
> revered today. Who is the 1980's example of, say, Led Zeppelin? Or the
> Mahavishnu Orchestra?

I think the hint is in the examples you're giving : the 1970s were the heyday
of progressive and what is now called "classic" rock, and that particular
genre seems to be your frame of reference.

Whereas for us Euro synth folks, the 70s was the age of early pioneers like
Kraftwerk, Vangelis, Jean-Michel Jarre (I suppose that's where rock music was
in the 50s)

And the 80s are THE golden age of synthpop explosion that put us on the map,
with legends like : New Order, Yazoo, Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, Bronski Beats,
Eurythmics, Jean-Michel Jarre, a-ha, Tears for Fears. Our 80s are rock music's
60s (think Beatles & Rolling Stones).

The 80s are so revered that for the past 5-10 years there's been a whole music
genre ("Synthwave") dedicated to reproducing its aesthetics with a
contemporary twist. It's even been preempted by mainstream pop recently with
The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights" single.

Our own Led Zeppelins are 90s kids Daft Punk, Chemical Brothers, the Prodigy,
Fatboy Slim.

In the 2000s, we took over for good and mostly killed any remnants of rock
music's mindshare in Europe, and the US followed in the 2010s with the "EDM"
mainstream pop flavor of our stuff.

In other words, it's all a matter of which bubble you're living in !

~~~
PaulDavisThe1st
I was a Euro-synth person. I never liked classic rock (which to my chagrin I
am (re)discovering in my 50s and thinking that the best of it is really pretty
amazing).

It's true that the 80's "gave us" synthpop, and although I'm aware of the new
level of reverence for some of it, I don't detect the more critical younger
minds regarding it with the same level of awe that is now accorded to what
happened to rock in the 1970s. My sense is that people like the sound, find it
sort of fun-nostalgic, and are recreating it. Nobody views any of the bands
you mentioned (I have the first singles by all of them, by the way, on vinyl)
as truly ground breaking.

I could be wrong.

Personally, I went from Euro-synth stuff into ECM, improvised music, indian
classical, progressive house and downtempo :)

------
DanielBMarkham
_When you miss a lot of things in popular culture, you may start to become
irrelevant. But I think missing a couple things is OK._

I always thought there should be some form of yearly bootcamp for nerds. Drop
out of larger society for most of the year, doing your thing, then for a week
each year you get indoctrinated in all of the crap everybody else is doing and
thinking. That way you can stay mostly culturally-relevant without spending
huge hunks of your time becoming the master of the intricate details of things
like Game of Thrones. Just know the general themes, be able to tell some jokes
and create metaphors and illusions.

I don't know who would run this bootcamp. I assume teenagers. Your teenage
years are a time where it is very important to stay with the group, establish
social ranking, be the master of conversation about various widespread
cultural events. Those feelings never go away, but for many of us they die off
as we get older, have families, and absorb ourselves in work we find
important.

There are some very weird things about getting older. First off, you only are
old on the outside. While people, especially some younger folks, may look at
you as if you were an alien that just arrived from Mars, inside you're the
same old kid you always was. Just the outside has changed. When presented with
a new situation, you may appear to decide more slowly, but you're also
thinking about a lot of different things and options you wouldn't have thought
of in your youth, and you realize that unless you're driving a racecar, most
times it's better to take a minute and decide and get it right than it is
deciding in two seconds and getting it wrong.

You see a lot of stuff. Hopefully you learn from it!

~~~
taneq
> Just know the general themes, be able to tell some jokes and create
> metaphors and illusions.

Did you see that ludicrous display last night?

~~~
peterclary
Thing about Arsenal is they always try and walk it in.

~~~
MrsPeaches
This is at least 5 years out of date.

~~~
wffurr
It's an older meme, sir, but it checks out.

~~~
MrsPeaches
Ah. Memes. I should have googled IT.

------
xorand
Oh sweet memories. I was born in 1967, so I'm older than the author, but the
memories are somehow the same. I started with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum clone,
called HC85, and with Basic as first language. I discovered the Mosaic browser
in 1994 at Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, and understood that the future of
research, publication, collaboration will be very different than the past. I'm
a mathematician. I installed my first Linux in 1995. All in all in my life I
bought exactly 0 bits of proprietary programs.

I had for a very short time a FB account, which I deleted. I deleted my
Twitter account about two years ago. I was hooked by Google+ and I had a
popular collection about artificial life (now is public again). But I deleted
my g+account before they closed it.

All my family has smartphones, but I can't stand the limitations. When the
smartphones will be liberated I'll have one.

My overall impression is that, some details excepted, now that everybody has a
computer in the pocket, people pass through the same learning process as we
nerds did some years ago. Today is harder, because less freedom. On the other
side, the new thing is that today everybody is online.

~~~
LeonenTheDK
I'd love to hear more about what a "liberated" smartphone looks like to you.

Do you mean more like normal computers where you're free to do just about
whatever (only in the smartphone form factor)?

~~~
xorand
Yes, like linux liberated the pc from windows. Now is much more complicated,
because a liberated harware is needed as well. Sigh, this is too much, but at
least as you say: a normal computer in the smartphone form factor, where I can
install the anti-android OS, including the game where you replace the android
logo with the ...? Of course the anti-android would allow me to access
anything from the android world, but easier.

~~~
LeonenTheDK
Thanks for the thoughts. I'd like to see something like that too.

------
sixQuarks
Same age as author.

Through procrastinating with digg, reddit, and HN over the years, and just
being a tech enthusiast before that (reading Industry Standard, Business 2.0
magazines, Web Magazine etc) -

I've been on the leading edge of seeing all the new services come and go.

\- started using Google in early 1999 (few months after they launched)

\- first 30K users on LinkedIn

\- first day user of YouTube

\- first 100K users of Twitter

\- first 100K users of Instagram

\- first 30K subscriber of Casey Niestat Vlog

\- knew about bitcoin at 10 cents (didn't buy thanks to HN saying it was a
scam/bubble)

The most confusing and frustrating thing for me has been SnapChat by far.
That's when I realized I'm getting old.

~~~
joezydeco
I feel the same way about Musical.ly/TikTok, but I look at it more as a
time/value proposition.

I think the hallmark of being “old” on the internet is embracing the
technologies that actually enhance the use of your time and talent and forego
or ignore the ones that do not.

I’m sure my 11 year-old daughter disagrees that TikTok is a waste of time and
I respect that. But it doesn’t mean I have to understand it. My parents
probably felt the same way about BBSes.

I just have to make sure she’s safe and that’s all. She’ll figure out the
rest.

~~~
blondin
same! i was thinking about tiktok the whole time.

i suppose i should, but i... just don't get it. too fast, too furious. you
only get a second or two for a breather between videos that are too short. you
are constantly bombarded with new ones.

it's like playing a rhythm video game. it's build for fast reaction. no deep
analysis or thinking. but it obviously seems to work for many people.

i have to say, i still don't have an account. maybe things are different and
you get more choices when you actually sign up.

~~~
joezydeco
I’ve talked to other parents that tell me their kids use TikTok as a messaging
platform.

Why TikTok and not the other 1,000 choices? Who knows. Maybe the fact that the
olds won’t use it / don’t know about it is hugely appealing. Grown ups wreck
everything, right?

~~~
christocracy
But the “olds” _are_ using it.

~~~
joezydeco
sssh they don’t know that yet

------
hanoz
_> I Have Seen Things_

It can be a funny experience coming late to pivotal work of popular culture, I
somehow managed to miss out on Blade Runner until quite recently, and watching
it felt like a putting a missing jigsaw piece into place.

Another one I came late to was Anchorman. Suddenly a lifetime's worth of
people's odd remarks and affected mannerisms fell into their proper place.

~~~
mhd
This is getting a bit worse, I think, but it's always been that way.

Go further back than your ancient 2004 Anchorman references and you'll get
Blade Runner, Star Wars, Princess Bride, etc.

One step further and you'll get 2001 (Thus Spoke Zarathustra / Blue Danube /
Hal quotes), Citizen Kane ("Rosebud"), Gone with The Wind ("Frankly My
Dear...") etc.

Sometime after that you'll get people quoting from Shakespeare without seeing
the plays (still happens, of course), and soon we'll end at Bible quotes
(naturally, as practically no one could even read it), or Roman authors. And I
bet someone can point me at writings by those exact Romans where they complain
about the youths not being up to par with Plato.

I rarely feel odd about a lack of knowledge, as there's just too much to know.
Also, you've got the two issues where this is a) just used for meaningless
gatekeeping anyway or b) a "cargo cult" meme already.

The latter will get more and more common: Quotes and references, where the
_reference_ binds you together, not the shared knowledge of the original
source.

~~~
jaclaz
>And I bet someone can point me at writings by those exact Romans where they
complain about the youths not being up to par with Plato.

Well, you asked for it.

 _O tempora, o mores_ has become a common use Latin phrase (Cicero, 63 or
maybe 70 BC)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_tempora_o_mores](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_tempora_o_mores)!

~~~
mhd
That's not specifically about the young not knowing their cultural references
anymore, though. People complaining about their offspring in general is as old
as time. Although, ironically, a surprising amount of quotes about that aren't
sourced properly or dubious in general.

~~~
jaclaz
See if this fits:

[http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2007.01.0060%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D15%3Asection%3D24)

~~~
mhd
That is just awesome.

------
ak39
"A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making
them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new
generation grows up that is familiar with it."

Max Planck.

The great Max Planck was indeed right. But there's a flip side to this
aphorism that is just as relevant (if not more) to our computer systems
society. Our problem is that the new generation seems to want to re-invent
what our forebears had taken great pain to describe and find theoretical and
practical answers to (relational databases, data formats, UI theory etc). Our
problem is that the modern computer system society suffers from a generational
memory gap. Amnesia of solved problems.

~~~
staticvoidmaine
One of the things I find interesting is this:

In computer programming, a “solution” to a problem is in essence, a structured
framework of thought.

As an example, why are there many different programming languages? Well in
addition to various other reasons, for the sake of solving problems in a new
or different way of thinking.

Is youth constantly reinventing solutions to already solved problems due to
amnesia, or are they perhaps creating new ways to reason about already
identified problems?

Just because you saw the problem first doesn’t buy you the right to providing
the only solution.

Computer science is unique in that it is art as much as science. Allowing for
multiple frameworks of thought on a solution allows for the best solution to
rise to the top.

If we are still seeing an influx of new and interesting solutions to existing
problems, perhaps our field isn’t as mature as we’d like to think it is.

~~~
ip26
_Is youth constantly reinventing solutions to already solved problems due to
amnesia, or are they perhaps creating new ways to reason about already
identified problems?_

I believe the commonly accepted viewpoint is simply that the established
generations have too many accumulated biases or baggage, too much at stake, or
dug themselves in too deep of a hole to consider new facts or new approaches
to old problems. E.g. the famous quote:

 _" It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary
depends upon his not understanding it." \- Upton Sinclair_

~~~
panzagl
The commonly accepted viewpoint of the young, maybe.

But after you've seen the same things re-invented several times only for each
effort to run into the same brick wall, at some point you want off the merry-
go-round.

------
wcoenen
It's ironic to me that the post starts with a twitter poll, because I don't
get twitter either, and I've tried. And I'm even a bit younger than the
poster.

~~~
Ygg2
Twitter is emotional contangion machine. It's supposed to be used to spread
marketing hype, but now it mostly spreads hate. And cat pictures.

It's billed as a way to be able to contact famous people.

~~~
pas
Just unfollow those accounts. There are a lot of great people spreading
interesting stuff, constructive critique and so on.

~~~
Ygg2
Jokes on you, I just follow shit posters and NSFW artits.

~~~
pas
I classify those as interesting and constructive ;>

Especially compared to the hyperpartisan uberpolarized shit-tier level insults
that people try to hurl at "them".

~~~
Ygg2
Although to be fair, I also follow Mark Blyth. He has interesting comments now
and then.

------
blowski
The “I am old” trope is just so uninteresting. To me, it’s a sort of
humblebrag - because I’m older than you, my opinions are more valuable.

There are infinite things I don’t understand, some because I’m too young, some
too old, but mostly just because I haven’t yet gone down that path in life.
For what it’s worth, I was born in 1982.

~~~
hamburglar
> The “I am old” trope is just so uninteresting. To me, it’s a sort of
> humblebrag

I assure you, it isn't. I mean, I'm sure it's _uninteresting_ , but it isn't
intended to be a humblebrag. I practically cheered when the OP indicated that
they don't understand "stories" because I legitimately don't, but I also have
this realization that the _reason_ I don't understand stories is that I'm just
kind of inflexible and grumpy about new things at times. That's not admirable.
That's not useful. But it's the truth. I truly don't understand why some
pictures are shown at the very tippy top of my facebook feed, but I only get
to look at them for 10 seconds. Is there a reason for this? Does someone find
it beneficial? Do the kids laugh at me for even stopping to think about it?
(Yes. Yes they do.) This is not a badge of honor.

~~~
cambalache
Meh, I am +/\- 2 years within the author's age, and although I grumble here
and there about young people practices (latinx?? yikes) I think I have an OK
understanding of popular culture, including Internet things. Come on: memes,
dabbing, dubs,tik tok,fortnite dances, Pewdiepie.Most of them are silly and
funny things, not the exact solution of GR for 2 neutron stars colliding.

I will admit that there are things I believe, but I am not 100% sure if they
are true because of my age. For example, although I hate nostalgia, I am
convinced that modern mainstream music, let's say after the 2000s is severely
lacking compared to what happened in the previous 60 or so years. There always
be great musicians, doing great music, but right now the current popular stuff
have been homogenized and sterilized to make it pallatable worlwide.

~~~
cultus
You really are pretty mistaken on the music (I'm 35). I'm guessing you are
just exposed to bad pop acts like Mylie Cyrus. Keep in mind that most popular
music in the 1960's and 1970's sucked too. For every Beatles there was 10
Monkees.

There's been an incredible amount of innovation in music in the last few years
(except rock. It's dead). Creation has been democratized, so there's more
people making music than ever before. You just have to know where to look. I
listen to KEXP Seattle [0] quite a bit, which is a community-supported
station.

[0] [https://www.kexp.org/](https://www.kexp.org/)

~~~
dctoedt
> _For every Beatles there was 10 Monkees._

Hey, wait a minute! The Monkees were pretty good for what they were (mass-
production pop) — at least in the early days when they were doing Boyce & Hart
compositions.

------
klingonopera
> _" I still don't have any idea what Instagram or Facebook stories is."_

Since the author is familiar with Twitter, one can imagine it like a tweet
that self-deletes after 24h, except with Facebook's and Instagram's version of
a "tweet", i.e. post.

Core concept is to get people to return to the platform (daily) because of
FOMO.

Calling it "stories" is quite misleading actually, one (or at least I) would
expect a story to be rather something permanent compared to a post, but it's
exactly the other way around.

~~~
morgengold
From a user perspective: why do you want to participate in this kind of thing?

I get why this is good for the platform. For me (1985) it seems to have zero
value. I feel old more and more.

~~~
Dumbdo
For me to understand Instagram stories, it's important to kinda understand the
Instagram culture. Normal posts (not stories) are pretty "high-effort" (in
terms of shooting and editing) and are posted not so often, maybe every two
days at max for your average teen. This left a gap for short-lived stuff (I'm
currently eating in this 5* restaurant, I'm currently hiking, I'm on this
"cool" party etc.) you wanted to share to a large group of your "friends" (so
DM like whatsapp is not a real option because it feels attention-whoring to
write it to everyone).

This was mostly filled by Snapchat stories, where you could share exactly that
without having to fear to spam people because it's time-limited, everyone does
it and it's a very casual format. This feature was basically copied by
instagram and is a success for the same reasons, expect nobody uses snapchat
stories anymore.

Source: I have young siblings and I kinda use that stuff as well, although not
that much.

~~~
morgengold
I get this. My problem seems to be one level deeper. I do not want to share my
current plate or the hiking track I'm on. Neither am I interested in this kind
of news of my friends. I'm ok with the youngsters doing that for fun.

But where is the serious conversation gone? Did we share our latest meal in
the forums back then? No. Where do the young people get their information when
they are serious about sth?

~~~
nl
What is this "the young people" thing you are talking about? I've got a bunch
of friends around my age (40+) who use stories heavily.

Serious conversation happens on FB or here or Reddit.

If you _seriously_ think this is bad or something, then think of it as roughly
analogous to the old _finger_ command, where we'd all put random status things
and ASCII art in our .plan files.

Stories is pretty much this feature, just done much better.

------
daxfohl
Pretty happy I've detached a bit. I completely quit news a year ago. Actively
change the radio station when any mention of politics comes up. To the point
that I didn't know there was an impeachment trial until a couple months in. I
don't know or even want to know at this point whether that is over or what the
outcome was. Same for brexit, the muller investigation, etc. And I feel much
better about life now.

Finally unblocked some news sites to follow the covid story, and a year away
really worked. It's so nice to see all the political headlines and not be
interested any more than if they were Hollywood or whatever else I'm not into.

~~~
tylerritchie
It sounds like you're making good choices for your mental health. It also
seems like taking that approach to the extreme by checking out of politics
entirely (e.g. not voting, or uninformed voting) is a great way to delegate
really important decisions about your life and things you find important to
people who you may not trust to make those decisions.

For instance, I don't believe the people who vote the most often in the US
(wealthier, older individuals) are best suited to choosing legislators,
executives, and laws. Those individuals tend to prefer:

\- fewer environmental protections (I like swimming and fishing in clean
rivers and oceans)

-lower education funding (I wish everyone who wanted to learn about fisheries, welding, nursing, biology, etc. could afford to do so)

\- subsidies for themselves at the expense of younger generations (second
mortgage interest deductions, elimination of estate taxes, country club tax
exemptions, California's 1978 Proposition 13)

\- legislation based on bad science or religious faith (no guaranteed paid
sick leave, backdoor encryption bills, violent video game bans, book bans,
corporal punishment support, for-profit prisons, abstinence-only sex
education)

Calling your legislators and telling them to support or oppose legislation or
impeachment isn't for everyone, similarly reading story after story about
incurious individuals legislating emerging technology might be unhealthy in
general. That said, voting for and against candidates and issues at election
time is really a very, very inexpensive way to attempt to make your life more
into what you want it to be (for either the betterment or detriment to
humanity).

~~~
daxfohl
But I'm an older, wealthier individual, so....

Sarcasm aside though, seriously most of us know which party we identify with
and can go to the polls with a reasonable idea who best represents our
interests without reading a single news article. And if there's an exception
or an event that is that overwhelmingly glaring and/or actionable, presumably
we'll hear about it through other means. So to me (and I'd argue that to most
people) it's not worth the mental health to even follow.

One could go farther and say a passive following of the issues is actually
worse because most (all?) news sites are just trying to get eyeballs rather
than inform you.

~~~
whytaka
Media misinformations issues aside and I mean no disrespect but this kind of
reliance on intuition, uninformed biases, and your own (perhaps siloed) social
circles is exactly what's wrong with politics - the non-diligent electorate.

~~~
daxfohl
To play devil's advocate:

Is there a time when detailed research caused you to vote in a way that is
counter to what you would have voted given your own innate instincts? If not,
then?

I'm going to guess that most people investigate issues to _validate_ their
pre-existing opinions, not to _form_ them.

------
poisonborz
For a type of feature/product/concept like what Stories is, merely googling is
a bad way to understand it. You have to use it to get its value. Being a data
nerd at first I hated the idea of posting short ephemeral content and I
thought this is a cold, isolated direction for social networks. But I do have
to admit I post more, knowing this doesn't add up to the "vanity" nature of my
profile. And the historical stories are still available through data takeout.

Also be prepared to get into it nevertheless, Twitter will introduce a similar
feat called "fleets" soon.

~~~
mxfh
The ephemeral siloed web contradicts everything people who grew up with the
internet thought it stands for, and for people who still do phone calls, there
is no real need for sharing pseudo-fleeting messages, that what whatsapp is
for.

And from what I understand, the period where you need to be in constant
contact or broadcast to more than 10 people is pretty limited to school and
early higher ed for most people in my experience.

So unless stories become a way to keep in touch with your offsprings, I don't
see a need or near normalness of these communication methods among people born
before '85.

~~~
saagarjha
> for people who still do phone calls, there is no real need for sharing
> pseudo-fleeting messages, that what whatsapp is for

WhatsApp is for chats; they're not fleeting. Phone calls are fairly
inconvenient to take and incomparable with "true" fleeting messages.

~~~
mxfh
Sorry was unclear about this. But that's what I meant, I rather have
searchable conversations with the option to delete things, non-ephemeral by
default. And whatsapp is the app older people adapted to and get along with.
It's what they now.

------
lubujackson
I am around the same age as this guy and so much of it is mindset. My dad
worked in a university computer lab for 30 years but at some point gave up
learning new technologies. He doesn't own a smartphone. Barely uses email. I
set up his Roku but he won't use it, just watching whatever is on TV.

Meanwhile, my neighbor is 90+ and recently asked me deep historical questions
about the internet, like about ARPA, protocols, DNS... stuff many software
engineers never bother learning about. He pushed until I couldn't go any
deeper, then he was disappointed.

It really just comes down to being more curious than lazy. And also changing
how you learn what is worth learning - asking people who invest energy into
what is good is a great way to save yourself time.

Getting older means you recognize patterns in things, so you stop digging past
the surface in a way you used to. Any time I watch an old music video on
YouTube inevitably someone says "musicians today are garbage compared to this"
without ever looking past (or even at) the most vanilla Top 40 music . But
music is awesome right now, collaborative and unchained, whole careers
spanning and unfolding on YouTube.

Those same people who are posting about how great Bob Dylan is weren't
listening to The Archies on Top 40 radio, they dug past it when they were
young but no longer put in the effort. You need to find new ways to find the
good stuff - spend energy when you are young learning how to be more efficient
with your curiosity!

------
kieckerjan
Our generation is the last one who knew the world without internet. Now that
was something to behold!

~~~
falcolas
It’s not inconceivable though that there will be another generation/location
combination who will experience this (see for example how entire countries
have the internet turned off for longer and longer periods).

------
visarga
Same story, am 1 year older than OP. I started with ZX Spectrum though.

My father was a programmer. Back then he was using punch cards (when I was a
few years old), then tapes, then he got a 60MB hard drive the size of a
washing machine which took one minute to spin up. A full drawer in the rack
contained 256K ram. A 2400 baud modem was the size of a PC grey box.

~~~
JeanMarcS
ZX-81 here ! I burned all my birthday savings in one shot for it.

And learned Z80 assembler (only way to have some (relative) speed with it)

~~~
jeffreygoesto
Fun times! Space invaders in 1k Z80 assembly, stored in a BASIC REM statement,
using the display memory as "internal state"... Later I added 16k RAM,
eventually the "HighRes" Graphics card and last but not least the thermo
printer.

~~~
JeanMarcS
Never had the printer, but that big tall black box graphic card yes!

------
msh317
Like the author I'm also 68 years old I'm a contributor to the open source of
TensorFlow and dozens of other code projects that the youngsters today often
take for granted

I'm still very active I build cities for a living and I'm about to publish a
new paper that bills a form of mathematics that more closely models the
structure of our universe

I'm a co-author on a paper recently published on a practical form of quantum
communications

In my youth I solved dozens of mathematical problems that others considered
unsolvable

The world and the universe is an amazing place and age is really just part of
our imagination

I also stay active everyday and contribute to my community

This is a great story and a reminder of how valuable our ancestors are to our
everyday lives

Consider for a moment the reverence the typical first Nation communities have
for the experience and wisdom of their elders

------
Gormisdomai
"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think
what everyone else is thinking."

I really like this balanced sentiment at the end of the article. It's easier
to feel different or weird or out of touch when you affirm for yourself that
you're being weird by your own choice - to the extent that you _want_ to be
different to everyone else.

It's a nice mean between the two extremes of going full conformist or going
full hipster.

------
DantesKite
I once attended a small lecture about an experiment where researchers trained
elderly participants new skills; namely Spanish, painting, and using iPads.

It was a somewhat challenging course. It required a lot of work and a few
dropped out because of it. But the participants that stayed developed their
skills and after a few weeks, surprised themselves and much of their friends
and family with their progress.

You can imagine how stunning it would be to know someone all your life and
then at the ripe age of 82, watch them do something you've never seen before.
Grandma went from not knowing about iPads to using them better than some 20
year olds. And Grandpa now draws and sketches figures like an artist. Who knew
they had such potential?

The reaction of people who didn't know them was quite interesting too. "You
have such talent" (as if what they had learned was something they were blessed
with). The researchers made a point to emphasize how people would phrase their
compliments; it was surprisingly common (as if they had been given God-given
talents, instead of raw skill through focus and training).

And the participants were just as surprised about their growth. They didn't
believe they could still learn something new (it wasn't a real possibility in
their mind). Over the years, they had built an image of who they were, what
they could and couldn't do, staying within the confines of their self-imposed
limits, unconscious as they were.

Listening to those researchers left me with some reflections about my own
life, the trajectory of it, the things I'd choose to become.

Part of me suspects there's some truth to wisdom and old age—the younger
generation doesn't always step forward in the right direction. Cynicism of the
youth is rightly justified. Choosing not to participate in the popular culture
leaves some room for your own personal interests. What people call
"weirdness".

So be it. True expression sometimes leads you down unfamiliar roads.

But some days, my pride and lack of knowledge feels like an excuse to stay
inside hidden doors, lamenting about the change of the world, because I
couldn't keep up with it.

I try not to become that person. I try not to cut off too many branches. I
don't know where they'll lead, what I can become.

It would be a shame to grow old, to abandon all paths, because they seemed too
distant.

------
imgabe
> I was born in 1976. I understand that in the eyes of millennials 1976 is
> around the same time period as 1796

Just to nitpick a little, the millennial generation starts with 1980-1982
depending on who you ask, so 1976 isn't that old.

~~~
crocodiletears
I always have trouble seeing millenials born in the 80s as such. I feel that
as a cultural block, you need to bisect the definition between 80s millenials,
and 90s millenials.

80s millenials (personally I call them Gen Y or Michael Moore Millenials) came
of age in the 90s, could remember the Soviet Union (if only hazily),
experienced its unique cultural excesses on a more conscious level, and
directly shaped the technology that would later form the digital substrate of
new millenium.

They participated in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from their onset, and
were also old enough to viscerally experience 9/11.

Their generation helped develop activist-consumerism when it was still
counter-culture, tend to embrace the idea of a more global society, and came
of college age just as the internet began to gain ubiquity. Even though they
had to directly weather the financial crisis, they seem to have a more
optimistic view of the future, and human potential in general, even if they
often see progress as being stymied by bad people.

The second group, (90s millenials or just millenials) have no collective
memory of the Soviet Union, and entered the world as consumers of the digital
transition, even if they were too old to truly be considered digital natives
as their successors in Gen Z are. By the tine they were of age to join the
military, the US had been at war for nearly a decade, and no one was quite
sure why it still continued. The economy took a dive, and they were too young
to experience it the same way as Gen Y did.

Their early experiences of the internet were when it was still heavily
decentralized, but had also become accessible to the technically illiterate.
They were culture producers more than they were developers in the oughties,
and they grew up alongside surveillance capitalism. Their view of the world is
a bit more mixed, and they're also who the author is referring to, I think.

I count myself among the latter group, if that offers some context to my
perception.

~~~
1996
This is apparently an unpopular view, but after thinking a bit about it, I
agree with your premise.

Splitting older millenials with gen X, and younger millenials with gen Z makes
sense, because instead of an arbitrary characteristics like "being 20 in the
new century", this splits seem to better match some cultural changes that are
not perfectly aligned with round dates.

------
S_A_P
Same age as the author and his timeline is a lot like mine, albeit with
advanced degrees I don’t have. I used to have all of those social media
accounts and found that in my case I’m happier not having them. By all means
try it out and see if it works for you, but you may prefer actually seeing
things.

------
lazyjones
4 years older than the author, learned to program on a Philips P2000. Was
impressed when my dad told me how they punched cards and he could read punched
tape quickly.

Now I'm finally getting old apparently because I don't use VR stuff,
Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok (don't use Twitter because it's such a waste of
precious time).

By the way, computer UIs are still too slow. Fix your web pages / networks.

~~~
fuzzfactor
Punched a number of cards in pursuit of natural science, never did get to
Fortran77 since it wasn't 1977 yet.

On a new W98 PC after reverting to a more optimized W95 install without
including Windows Networking, using a top hardware modem on a clean POTS line
having full 56K performance, the snappy user response sometimes seen today
with broadband at sites like Ebay, Amazon & Yahoo, was usually outmatched by
almost all sites at the time, and that was with only a 100MHz Pentium, 32MB
memory, and less than 1GB HDD.

You could generally browse faster on dial-up (once logged in) than you can on
broadband today.

Downloads OTOH were dramatically slower with such a limited data rate.

Nice MIDI was also standard on all consumer PC's, without USB latency.

------
appleshore
I don’t get the idea of acclaimed non-understanding.

Posting live (or recent) random photos that I don’t want permanently on my
wall, isn’t a difficult phenomenon to grasp. Trying to maintain social
connections by updating and reminding friends and family what you’re doing
seems pretty normal.

Wanting to chat dangerously or explicitly or just not wanting to torture
yourself by seeing all your old Facebook Messenger chats explains the need for
Snapchat rather well (and Signal).

Making goofy hyper-kinetic short videos makes sense. (What doesn’t make sense
to me is using TikTok over Thriller considering the social-implications of an
authoritarian-owned app for free expression.)

I don’t believe people when they say they don’t understand kids today or only
young founders can build the tools for the next generation.

What I don’t get is playing video games for 12-hours a day and immersing
yourself in a digital word, with all synthetic friends so to speak. But I
understand why people do it.

It’s as unhealthy as any other digital obsession or anything that isolates us
from the most innovation and rejuvenating social app and video game: reality.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
I'm 57. I was a manager for many years, but kept my tech chops up by doing
side projects in the open-source world for a long time. Some of those projects
have become pretty intense and big.

Nowadays, I'm working on becoming one of the best Swift programmers around.
It's progressing. I'm fairly good at picking up on things, and I've been
programming Swift with release-level code since the day it was announced (not
100-line Stack Overflow answer code. Full-fat App Store release code).

My latest learning gig is Bluetooth. I've already written a pretty powerful
OBD driver (still has more to go, but it already beats a lot of what's out
there. Did I mention that I'm not bad at this stuff?). I've taken a break from
that in order to write up an open series on implementing Core Bluetooth as a
cross-platform (Apple Platforms) SDK.

But, according to a lot of folks, I just need to walk out into the desert to
die.

~~~
nojvek
Wow. Incredibly cool. Would love to see your projects. Got a GitHub link ?

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
Check my HN handle. I have links to everything there.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ChrisMarshallNY](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ChrisMarshallNY)

The Core Bluetooth thing is still very much a WIP. If you want to peek at it
before it's ready, drop me an email.

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
I will also say that writing a teaching series on this is quite humbling. If I
were to implement this SDK on my own, I'd probably get it done in a day or
two; but stopping to make sure that I do things in digestible chunks, and
explaining what I'm doing at each step, is dragging it out _a lot_. It may
take a couple of weeks for me to write this up.

------
james_s_tayler
Boulderdash on C64. Hell yeah. This guy knows what's up.

------
zanderz
I, too, am old enough to remember Before the Internet
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/26/before-the-
int...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/26/before-the-internet)

------
rodolphoarruda
It's interesting to see how much history and evolution of things can be seen
in such a short period of time. We can assume that this will trend will get
stronger to newer generations, meaning that in 20 years' time the person
writing this type of essay could be making it twice or 3 times bigger due to
the amount of things to be said. Looking at consumer electronic goods alone,
this is a mind blogging perspective. 12 years ago I used to watch movies with
my fiancee on a tube TV and DVDs. Now I watch Netflix with my kids on a 4K UHD
screen connected to the Internet via a fiber optic cable. Who knows the
stories my kids will be telling when they reach my age.

------
oytis
Everyone is getting old. Stay strong, Murat!

Also to me a distinctive marker of being young is using Snapchat and TikTok.
People of my generation (30+) are actively using stories, but haven't heard of
any Snapchat experience from everyone.

~~~
trustfundbaby
exactly, for my generation (right in between gen x and millennials) that's the
marker. If someone uses snapchat, they're probably younger than we all are, by
a fair amount. Nobody I know uses it, I signed up for it when I bought the
stock, just to make sure I understood the appeal, ditched it and the stock
about a year or two later.

------
pier25
I expected this to be about Blade Runner.

~~~
k__
Same here.

~~~
ak39
There is irony here.

------
dpcan
He knows that millions and millions of other people are old too doesn't he?
And he thinks he's different because he doesn't consume the same pop-culture
stuff that he thinks MOST people do.

Only 17.4 Million people watched Game of Thrones. There are 209 Million adults
in the United States.

That means 8% of adults watched this program in the United States.

How is that "most" by any standard anywhere?

EDIT: Correction, he doesn't even say "most" he says "everyone".

~~~
Spearchucker
Pretty certain he described his generalized perception - I doubt he'd stand by
it as an absolute.

------
jansan
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the
shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser
Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to
die."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tears_in_rain_monologue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tears_in_rain_monologue)

------
mcv
I just turned 46 and finally learned to solve Rubik's Cube. Turns out kids
don't care about Rubik's Cube anymore. Still, I learned a new skill, so I'm
not dead yet.

(I do have a Facebook account, but I never use it. I also have a Twitter
account, but only because I had to write Twitter integration at some point. I
use it even less. I'm active on Diaspora and MeWe, though.)

~~~
saagarjha
> Turns out kids don't care about Rubik's Cube anymore.

Speedcubing clubs aren't really that rare in most schools.

------
ilaksh
In case anyone is interested in old computer stuff, I made
vintagesimulator.com

But on the topic, I'm 42 and fully expect to see even more dramatic changes in
my lifetime. Including a Martian manned base, high bandwidth brain computer
interfaces (Neuralink), widely deployed self-driving cars, AGI and the
beginning of the post-human era.

------
nessunodoro
> "If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only
> think what everyone else is thinking." \-- Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

There's value to this sentiment, but I disagree. I'm the same age as the
author of this post, and I remember when I was in high school, my parents were
transfixed by the O.J. Simpson trial - the car chase, the analysis of Marcia
Clark's outfits, the whole spectacle.

In college a few years later a media studies professor asked us for a show of
hands as to who followed the Simpson trial. Groans, eye rolls, not many raised
hands. He was blunt: ignoring media phenomena, especially repulsive ones, is a
mistake, he said, if you want to understand how media affect our culture.
Study them like a physician studies a virus.

------
subpixel
> When you miss a lot of things in popular culture, you may start to become
> irrelevant

Compared to what?*

I had lunch with an adult in their 30s who didn't know who Johnny Cash was.

*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCDMQqDUtv4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCDMQqDUtv4)

------
avip
I'm from same age group and region as this guy but started computers some 15
years after him.

When I've started Uni I had no idea what a mouse is and no concept of files or
folders. Today I have no idea what Instagram is and use no social media
outside HN.

Am super happy and proud about how things are!

------
k__
I'm 34 and try to be open about younger peoples stuff.

Got a few friends who are under 25 and work with social media everyday helps.

But yeah, some stuff I just don't like or get and I don't care. I mean, there
are also young people out there who don't like tiktok or mumble rap.

~~~
H8crilA
Do you know what's their generation equivalent of shashdot / hacker news? This
forum clearly seems to be getting "old".

~~~
k__
Reddit, I think.

~~~
inerg
I'm right in that age category and use both Reddit and HN. I would say your
guess is right that most people my age use Reddit as their Slashdot. Both
provide good insights but I feel the discussion is usually more useful in HN,
although this depends on the subreddit.

Generally I go on reddit when I'm looking for a quick distraction and HN is
for when I'm looking to read things a bit more deeply.

~~~
war1025
I feel like HN is something you age into.

I don't think it necessarily has an aging demographic.

When I was in college, the information on Reddit related to programming and
computers was relevant. As I've gained experience, the information on Reddit
has gradually become less and less useful. To the point that I don't even
bother following tech-related subreddits anymore.

------
rdiddly
_" I still don't have any idea what Instagram or Facebook stories is."_

Good news: They're both shit and you don't need to worry about it. Just get
back to being productive, mature, calm and focused/disciplined like an old
person, and let spazzy young people keep obsessing over signaling & getting
laid. They're not a good source of advice for how to live YOUR life, because
they've spent most of THEIR short-ass lives cooped up in schools with people
almost identical to themselves, obsessing over tiny differences & declaring
certain ones in or out. Be who you are or you've lost everything.

------
lcall
With everything going on, it is more important than ever to have purpose and
direction in life. For one thing, it lets one freely & more peacefully ignore
many things in popular culture, because they are irrelevant or unhelpful, and
focus more on things that matter, intentionally chosen. My detailed thoughts
on that, whether religious or not (no sales or JS) are at:
[http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854588981.html](http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854588981.html)

------
Causality1
I think most people have a cultural experience they're a little proud of
avoiding. For example, I've never seen a single episode of the Simpsons. I do
think, however, that we should remind ourselves that while being different is
not a bad thing, it also isn't an inherently good thing. Is your life about
you or is it about other people? If it's about you, then maybe it's worth
checking to see if you like something that a whole lot of other people like
too.

------
cmarschner
I‘m about the same age as the author, and I realized (again) yesterday how
little music written since about 2000 means to me. I never listen to radio
music because I detest it. I don‘t understand how people get to know other
kinds of music without wading through tons of really bad music. I do have a
fairly good understanding of the music from the 50s to 90s though, and partly
to classical music. But the music from the 00s and 10s make me feel old.

------
Steffi128
Since the author is using Twitter, I guess he'll get the purpose of stories
once Twitter launches its new “Fleets“ feature.

[https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/04/twitter-starts-testing-
its...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/04/twitter-starts-testing-its-own-
version-of-stories-called-fleets-which-disappear-after-24-hours/)

------
gwd
Heck, I love Facebook, but I still don't understand the point of "Facebook
stories". It seems to be a series of pictures that you can't control when it
moves forward? Why don't you just give me a photo album, so I can look through
them at my own pace?

~~~
aflag
You can stop it from moving by clicking and holding (both on the phone and
laptop). The point is that it's a fast snippet of someone's time. Things you
don't want someone referencing in the future.

For instance, you may want to show your friends you are in a resort and that
you are in some other friends house. But you don't want people to be able to
trace down your every move by looking at your profile.

------
0x8BADF00D
I have the opposite problem that the author does. I don’t like it when people
share the same interests or hobbies that I do. It just feels like a cheapened
experience when the masses and normies start to enjoy it too. Invariably they
start to ruin it as well.

------
jhoechtl
Many of your saying resonates with what I experience(d). Never watched GoT
either ;)

Got my first computer later though. But BW TV and smoking on airplanes was a
thing I remember well. The later absolutely incredible these days.

------
csomar
Okay, my comment might make me sound a bit like a douche: fb/ig stories are
the youngsters version of this guy blog post. They are social tools to make
them feel better about themselves.

------
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
> _I have seen peer-to-peer networks become a thing, and then not become a
> thing._

Mesh networks, with the ubiquity of cell phones, have got to be one of the big
lost opportunities of our day and age.

------
eMSF
> I was born in 1976. I understand that in the eyes of millennials 1976 is
> around the same time period as 1796. My son sometimes asks me if TV was
> invented when I was a child.

Assuming these sentences are somehow connected, and you have a millenial son
(which you got by the time you were about 20), and at around 25 or so he is
still uncertain whether TV was invented in the 70s; I'm sorry, but he is a bit
ignorant at best.

Otherwise you are being more than a bit condescending towards a group of
people, some of whom are little more than 5 years your junior...

~~~
rootusrootus
I didn't take the commentary nearly as seriously as you did. It sounded
completely tongue-in-cheek. But, what can I say, I was born in 1974...

------
bilekas
> Entropy is hard to beat, I know. But, not today old age, not today.

Great write up and I share a lot of those fond memories!

~~~
Koshkin
BTW not sure if it's entropy that plays the biggest role in aging, at least
some of the processes responsible for it seem to be programmed (depending on
the species).

------
ddmma
Most probably not on tiktok either

------
batirch
Çok güzeldi. Teşekkürler eskileri hatırlattığınız için!

------
patchtopic
so do people who proudly crow that they didn't watch GoT get rewarded with
little gold stars or something?

------
sgroppino
[Edit: removed personal opinion on the fact]. Curious why you didn't mention
9/11.

------
tapper
One of the things I tell my 5 kids is "Don't be a sheep!"

------
pram
Seems a little defensive for a joke tweet

------
srebalaji
Of course, you have seen things :)

------
noobermin
Tbh I feel like Gen X'ers will make better older people than Boomers ever
could.

------
k-ian
ok boomer

------
jagira
I am quite curious about the demographics of HN. My guess is most of us here
are 30+.

Since this is the top story right now, this will give us a vague idea about
the demographics.

Reply in your age group child comment thread.

~~~
jagira
1990-2000

~~~
saagarjha
+1

------
coleifer
Bro did you quote yourself at the start of your post?

