Millennials Part 2

Millennials Part 2

The Millennial generation is a product of extreme technology

The “Internet” is, perhaps, man´s greatest achievement

One slippery slope of technology is its robbery of our generalized humanity

AT and T phone brought technology to the masses, years ago

Cell phones came later and to the masses, much later  

You needed excellent credit at first to get a cell phone                                                                                          

Before technology

There were live persons, operators who searched for you, numbers and addresses

If it was not one of the, at least 100 phone numbers, you had memorized!

Of all your family and friends and other numbers,as well!

Making that ole brain work (another slippery slope of technology)

She especially assisted you with out of state numbers (long distance calling)

At first, there were just women operators; men came much later as opserator

It was strictly a woman's job

Civil Rights had not yet come. Martin would come later

Long distance was calling from out of your state

And there was a costly fee

The area code had to be within your state

And she assisted with any information problem that you had

Sometimes, you even had fun talking with the operator!

Human interaction, absolutely necessary "for life"

Back then, if you got no response after three or four times, no problem

"Call missed" was not available

But three of four days and no response from family or friends

ALERT!

It was necessary to send out SOS messages

Have you heard from or seen such and such person?

Concern for others well-being

Verbal communication, absolutely ,necessary for the best possible communication

To hear someone’s voice

To hear touch emotions and feelings

So humane

There was a genuine need to talk with your family and friends

A blessing

This is when technology started to take away some of our humanity

A computerized voice assisted you with yourquestions

But if you wanted to talk to a person

It was only after listening to an obscene number of directions by pushing buttons

That you may get a "live person"

Most of us complained about  it in one fashion or another

But we loved the idea of "call is waiting or missed"

We avoided bill collectors

We could look and see if we wanted to respond to a particular number or  person

There was a fee for this service and we grumbled

True, these services were beneficial,. but AT A COST to our humanity

And slowly, after cell phones became common

The corner phone booth disappeared 

No more Clark Kent transformations into Superman

To be continued……..