The 1960's and the Cool, or Talking About My Generation

By Daniel Stankus on August 1, 2014
I don’t remember the exact context, but this was essentially a picture of a groovy looking, 1960′s couple and an explanation of why they’re cooler than me and my generation. To quickly summarize the joke, it was basically, “Wanna know why kids in the 60′s and 70′s looked way cooler than you? Because they were.”
They didn’t have cell phones so they had to call people’s houses and maybe even talk to their parents, they had to ring doorbells, and they had to have prearranged meeting places, which forced people to keep schedules.
They had to go to libraries to do research and read books. There were no Kindles, no Wikipedia and no overabundance of easy-to-read list articles online.
They had to buy their music, usually at a record shop. The shops were meeting places, it kept the concept of album art alive, and pirated music meant a bootleg vinyl, which is still a physical copy.

http://www.cuirmale.nl/history/pop-music.htm

They had no internet. There was no social media to construct a second identity used to compare yourself to the second identity of others. They had to talk on house phones and meet up in person.
While my entire teenage and young adult years have been dominated by computers and phones, I cannot pass a judgement on which generation is, in fact, “cooler.” Idealizing the times before technological takeover is extremely easy, I do it myself, personally believing that the internet put the last pile of dirt on rock n’ roll’s grave.
But Google Maps has prevented me from sleeping in a bush on more than a few occasions. I have 44 GB of music available at the click of a button – I can only imagine having that record collection – I have access to virtually unlimited sources of information and I’ve watched many shows and movies that I never would’ve paid to see otherwise.
I like the idea of a simpler time, but denying the technology available to us would just be backwards. Accepting it is hard, and it sucks, especially when you see fifth graders with the latest iPhone model, but it’s now a simple fact of our time. It’s really just how you use it: listen to as much music as possible, read educational and inspiring articles and explore the new realms of experience for your next adventure.

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