“Our attitude towards change is defined by the fact that we are the only generation, in the entire history of mankind, who will have ever met the punch card!” – Futurist Jim Carroll
We were weaned on BASIC and COBOL; the nerds of our era were immersed in FORTRAN. We had slide rulers and calculators; Swiss watches and mainframe computers. The Exorcist terrified us in theatres, and American Graffiti reminded us of a simpler time. We lost our minds to Dark Side of the Moon. We knew how to change spark plugs and oil, and how to fix a wonky carburetor.
Computer games? Lunar Lander, written in BASIC, was about as friendly as it got.
Unlike the technology-immersed kids of today, baby boomers are a very unique generation when it comes to technology and connectivity, because they grew up with the unfriendly and complex technology of the times. They never knew a computer mouse in their youth – a stack of punch cards was the interface of the times!
The result was they became distrustful of change, suspicious of speed, and confused by all the new devices that suddenly entered their lives. Ogden Nash captured their mindset perfectly: “Progress is great, but it has gone on way too long.”
Somehow I avoided this era of distrust – I first signed onto a microcomputer, and using a modem, visited the online world for the first time in 1982. But I watched my baby boomer counterparts carefully as technology began to appear everywhere – and realized that they were carrying those those generational attitudes into the workplace.
I ended up writing an entire book about their experience: “Surviving the Information Age.” To this day, it remains my proudest work. I re-released it in Amazon and iBooks in 2010:
And it’s available in print on Amazon:
It’s a fun read! Whether it’s HAL the murderous computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey or billing systems demanding payment for $0.00, baby boomers have grown up with a simple message — computers are not to be trusted! The book tells you why!
And if you want to understand change resistance issues today – understand boomers!
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