[onlooker]

Pops just forgot one. Boomers getting increasingly sick.

[Rod_Cloutier]

I thought the post was about kids on phones and internet access, lol

Conversations progress like that however.

Clearly the millennial's will have their own agenda for life which could be radically different from those of the baby boomers. You can't really speak about millennials without mentioning cell phones in the same breath. Cell phones are to the millennials, what classic cars were to the boomer generation.

The millennial's coming of age is the next big thing after the baby boomer retirement wave starts to break and wash away on the shores of time.

[Ibon]

The millennial's coming of age is the next big thing after the baby boomer retirement wave starts to break and wash away on the shores of time.

The liberation of obsolescence.

[Newfie]

I thought the post was about kids on phones and internet access, lol

Boomers quitting work, quitting buying, taking their money out of investments, selling the big house, expecting Soc Sec and medicare, etc, is a big deal.

Phones not so much I think.

Come on Pops, when you close your eyes and think about what you want to do, your dreams and ambitions, is it a 57 year old talking or a 16ish???

I know the answer for me. You have to grow old, you don't have to grow up!

We are all alike under the skin, wrinkled or not, we want to be part of the tribe, the collective, the hive. Remember Marsahall McLuhan? (global village, the medium is the message) Or Neil Postman?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing ... s_to_Death

McLuhan thought we would all become connected. I don't think he foresaw how the new technologies would allow us to retreat into our small groups of infinite self referential feed back.

I agree things are developing and morphing rapidly. It's a crazy mix of connectedness and idelogical isolation. Fascinating stuff to watch.

[KaiserJeep]

Gary,

Thanks for that summary. I sorta "know" all that you said, but could not have described it so concisely. Well done.

For all that these devices are incredibly useful. I've been using my iPad for navigation, I can buy a tablet with the nav software and charts (US) for well under $1,000. A dedicated chart plotter will cost me several thousand. There are other differences so it's not a direct comparison. But now my iPhone, which I'm honing to buy anyway, becomes a backup chart plotter, for under $100 additional investment. Backups are good.

Newfie, beginning a couple of decades ago, I interfaced a portable GPS to a Pentium/Windows 95 computer via an old-style serial port, and loaded an offline database disk into a CD-ROM drive. It worked, but it was just too slow to use for driving on the roads - it prompted you for the turn you just passed. It was however, great when you were off-road.

Nowadays I have had the entire USGS database, plus Mexico and Canada, online on hard drive in a modern laptop, and a USB-attached and USB-powered GPS receiver mounted between the rollbar and fiberglass hardtop on the Jeep. DeLorme's software has allowed me to have a continuously scrolling 3D display on my 14" display. It is great when there are no signs because there are no roads.

Never satisfied, I am today looking for ways to integrate the full-featured off-road navigation into a double-DIN sized touchscreen in the Jeep's dash. But so far, Android navigation apps are simply not the equal of the PC. However the PC requires a special laptop desk that intrudes uncomfortably into the passenger space.

[Newfie]

My holy grail is waterproof while recharging!

See that black line below, that was my actual track. These charts were made with an old datum that doesn't match the GPS datum, uh, and they don't what datum it was. Real fun in pea soup fog.

[AgentR11]

I just bought my daughter a new cell phone today. As a Millennial, she was born near the turn of the Millennium (1998) and she has an unholy obsession with her cell phone.

I just do the hand-me-down thing, mine hasn't objected so far. When I got my Note4, she got my previous Note2, and its worked well. I've always kept mine in very thick cases, and she's continued with the practice, thus even after several years, the Note2 inside the case is flawless and works perfectly. Despite having had at least one impact with pavement at 20mph+... lol.

She does use it to text and play games, but not as much as others seem to. Not exactly sure why, but she's also not very moved by the idea of being accepted by a girl peer group, so maybe the habit is a peer reinforcing behavior where activity equals status... As she doesn't value status with that group, the hook never set.

Her computer system is an i5 with a single 27"; she gets pretty good use out of it for a kid; composes some music, writes a bit, as well as the obligatory homework, skype, and games. Opensource sheet music composition programs have really come of age; I remember paying about $400 for one several years ago; and the opensource one now is better in every way in comparison. The computer time may substitute for what other kids get out of their phones, so that might also factor in.

In my mid forties now, I feel fairly confident that they'll have some type of internet access for the balance of my life span, given the Millennial's position for this sort of thing. I'd feel sorry for the people who will be decorating lampposts if they try to pull the plug and censor or shut down the internet/ social media.

I think from the PTB pov, the internet is a very good thing; it takes kids that might otherwise protest on the street and break stuff we can't afford to have broken, and lets them protest virtually till they're exhausted or bored or feel like playing some fps with friends.

I'd say we shouldn't fear this day at all; its the next step in evolution as we craft tools that do brain functions that our own brains are poorly lain out to handle. Let them indulge and explore and see where this might have gone.. had we not broken the world.

[AgentR11]

My holy grail is waterproof while recharging!

You could charge some 12v7ah batteries, and the seal the phone and one of them inside a pelican drybox.... Would only be vulnerable while you're opening the port.

[Ibon]

Try to step back a minute and look from a fresh perspective like you were time travelling from the past and observing 21st century millennials. A crowded urban landscape where 98% of the young generation are tethered to these personal digital devices where their cyber social interactions eclipse physical and organic space. We are now all habituated to seeing this every day and it is normal.

The times are so absurd that If you lose your personal digital device and are standing there on the street in the crowds you feel naked and disconnected, lost and alone. As the minutes and hours pass you begin to wonder what am I missing. You start to panic and feel like a digital refugee, in exile from the world. You will do everything to replace your device as soon as possible to feel once again reconnected to your tribe so that you can get back to innane activities that are much ado about nothing. Interactions that are superficial and devoid of depth.

The irony is that when you were disconnected you thought you were missing out on something. You couldn't see the obvious truth right in front of your eyes that having lost your digital device was the first opportunity you had in a long time to free yourself.

Remember that what you were sold on was a device that would enhance your organic social network. You didn't really fully grasp that these devices didn't succeed on the promise but actually eclipsed your organic social interactions.

Words from an obsolete old baby boomer, born before the digital age, who in the eyes of the millennials obviously just doesn't get it.

[onlooker]

i wonder though how superficial these digital relations really are. I tend to think that any connections between humans is better than no connections. Look at Desumaiden a poster who was quite active for awhile here and sought to be heard in his/her disjointed and disoriented ramblings. The fact that he/she was allowed to be heard, the fact that even though some of us may have criticized Desu does not negate that we were a audience for him/her acknowledging Desu's postings. We all wish to be heard and acknowledged, the modern age allows all just that. To be heard is to be acknowledged. Not only that when people communicate particularly negative thoughts they are signaled out for doing just that. The Internet, mobile phones etc. are ways that the mass of humanity are weighing emotions and ideas and arriving at opinions. The hope is that these interactions will shed light that we all are grappling even us older persons with this world we live in and all can have mistaken,myopic or biased views. Occasionally, though we all agree on some key aspects of the world we live in and our mutual interactions. That to me is a good thing.

[Cog]

Thinking back on the days before cell phones. I've made cross country trips, drove up into the mountains, across deserts, all without a phone to contact anyone if I broke down. With the disappearance of the pay phone and people's reluctance to get involved with other's drama, the thought of doing that nowadays without a cell phone, would fill me with a certain amount of dread.

But up until about six months ago, I didn't have a smart phone and had never texted anyone. I didn't feel I missed out on anything. Yeah the texting is convenient at times but its not an essential. Important things can wait for a phone call.

My millennial daughter had to buy her own smart phone with money she had saved and she pays her own bills. I bought her a dumb phone when she started driving at 16 for emergencies. Had 250 minutes/month on it. When she started working, she upgraded on her own dime. She lives on the thing now.

For me, I don't have to be in contact 24/7 with anyone. Lot of people in my universe, family types, that I care not in the least about how things are going for them and don't want to know their facebook or twitter page. If they have a problem, they can call me. I have my life, they have theirs. I don't mix the two. I have worked hard on me becoming a curmudgeon and don't intend to abandon it now.

[Newfie]

LOL, the reason I have a sat phone is because I went missing for about a week. The Wife go nervous and called the Coast Guard. I was so far up a fjord that I could not hear the Pan Pan messages of them looking for me. I finally went into a small town where they had the postmaster on the lookout for me. I was a wanted man!

[Ibon]

One of my big mentors was a college professor who I became great friends with. We traveled together in his dodge van from central Ohio all the way down to Guatemala in 1981.

In his home he never had a phone. He said the only folks he really wanted to talk to where those that felt comfortable coming to his home uninvited.

Looking back I think he was really ahead of his time in recognizing the empty noise of phone conversation and to what dysfunctional extreme it would eventually head to.

[Newfie]

I can see that. I not leave phone message, I don't want to talk to the damn machine. Mane I don't encourage people to leave me messages, my greeting is, well, not a greeting. I hate it when people leave me long and tedious and ill thought out messages. I don't listen to them, I just call back and say "I see you called." "did you liter to my message?" "No."

We had a real problem with our daughter texting until the weeeeeee hours of the morning. I could not get my Wife to agree to take the damn thing away. Sigh. But it is in her nature, she wants to rescue people, so she ends up talking to a bunch of losers all night long. Hopefully someday she will tire of it. I see. The glimmering of a hard ass in her, at times. There may be hope yet.

[Rod_Cloutier]

Ibon your best post ever- I was enthralled:

Try to step back a minute and look from a fresh perspective like you were time travelling from the past and observing 21st century millennials. A crowded urban landscape where 98% of the young generation are tethered to these personal digital devices where their cyber social interactions eclipse physical and organic space. We are now all habituated to seeing this every day and it is normal.

The Millennials really are different. I started this thread in part as a trial balloon to see if we have any millennial's here reading at this site; so far none have chimed in. A thread about cell phone's is as good of a lure to comment here as I can think of? Cell phones are their lives.

https://youtu.be/yojQSoCPIlw?t=4m21s

[fleance]

Technology caters people particularly youth. I have nothing against cell phones. I believe it still depend on the person. I couldn't understand why people mostly teens can't live without cell phone. Maybe, I'm old fashion.

[Keith_McClary]

... Privacy is an illusion today.

KJ seems to actually know what he's talking about on this particular topic.

[onlooker]

Yep all these connected communication devises allow for eavesdropping.

[SeaGypsy]

Of course, KJ built the internet & is a very practical man

[onlooker]

Of course, KJ built the internet & is a very practical man