Moore's Law Complaint

When I got up this morning, I received a funny email from my mom about some fictitious(?) thirty-something complaining about how the youth (i.e. under-thirties) have it made for them. Let me share that "letter" with you and insert my own comments. It goes like this:


When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what with walking Twenty-five miles to school every morning.... Uphill... barefoot... BOTH waysYadda, yadda, yadda


And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But now that... I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today.

You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia!

And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don't know how good you've got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalogue!! (yeah I had to experience the same thing, learning the Dewey Decimal System and how to read/browse through a card catalogue. Most, if not all, libraries nowadays have an Online Public Access Catalgue, sort of like Google for the library -- Z)

There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter - with a pen! (I had two penpals: One was from North Carolina and the other was from France. It's just not the same nowadays, where you expect to receive email, seconds after sending, and it doesn't come in fancy paper or envelopes. But the speed is good for business, though --Z)

Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take, like, a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents!


Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our ass! Nowhere was safe!(I still think this is the most effective way to straighten up the youth. Of course, there is an acceptable amount of buttwhipping a child can take. Parents should know that whipping is not mean to beat children to death, but to discipline them [see Psychology: Operant Conditioning(?)] So when you see a bruise on the child's skin, you've done too much---Z)

There were no MP3's or Napsters! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself!

Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We'd play our favorite tape and "eject" it when finished and the tape would come undone. Cause - that's how we rolled, dig? (Mix tapes rocked! except you couldn't control the tracks ---Z)

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it!

And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either!
When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister! (I guess this is one of the reasons why I'm not really a phone person today, but when the cellphone with all those features came out, I embraced its wonderful technology --- Z)

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'. Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen... forever!
And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE! (I am one of the few that didn't even have a video game console of my own until PS1. Before that, everything was borrowed or played at a friend's or a cousin's house which in turn led to many many sleepovers. But what's sad is that people don't play board games anymore. And playing cards are now only used for gambling. --- Z)


You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel! NO REMOTES!!!(I think the 80s TVs had remotes already, so...yeah --- Z)

There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-bastards!(We had a rule which Mom strictly implemented : NO TV DURING SCHOOLDAYS/NIGHTS. So we could only really watch on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and on Holidays --- Z)

And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove! Imagine that!

That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or before!

Regards,
The Over 30 Crowd

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So yeah, if you think about it (not too hard), today's youth enjoy the benefits of technology under Moore's Law (Technology is to double every two years, and by 2010, every 72 hours).