The Throw-Away Generation

While no kid was immune to the tales of grandparents or mentors who “walked miles through sleet and snow just to catch the bus,” (at least I wasn’t) it seems that the speed of technology has everyone speaking in past tense at a much faster pace.

In the last 20 years, we’ve gone from home-phone voicemail, to car phones, to expensive cell phones, to laptops, to cheap cell phones that are basically laptops… and the technological advancement list rolls on and on.

Pop culture parodies and documents these changes well. Just look at clips of a Seinfeld episode: Whenever Jerry gets his phone, he has to pull out a long cord on what looks more like a box than a receiver.

NBC’s 30 Rock parodies the changes well with Liz Lemon’s deadbeat boyfriend, the “Beeper King.” The last beeper salesman in New York, he is the running punchline, as he tells Liz Lemon, “Technology is cyclical.”

But technology, as we all know, moves in a fast, straight line that is hard to keep up with. Lisa Kao, the Environmental Quality Manger at an e-waste event that I covered a year-and-a-half ago at California State University – Fresno  lamented that something was lost in this “trash the old to get the new” society.

“There is no reason to tear it apart if it still works! That tells us about today’s society,” Kao said. “Something that is five years old is ‘old school.’ Things are getting small and smaller.”