Yeah. AI progress is insanely fast if you compare it to anything else. Where else is a one year old technology already hopelessly outdated? 10 years ago is basically stone age.

▲ madamelic 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I am continually tripped out by the fact when I was 16, I didn't have a 'smartphone' beyond a Windows Mobile 6 phone that had no internet on it.

Now, I have this high-resolution shiny object that can near instantaneously get any information I want along with _streaming HD video to it_ *anywhere*.

15 years even feels like a stone age. I can't fathom what it has to feel like people in their 60s and 70s.

▲ nonameiguess 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not quite 60, but it's always interesting to me that I feel quite the opposite of this. When I was 16, I didn't have a computer, didn't have a phone, had never used the Internet, but when I think of how life has changed, it's frankly not much. I woke up this morning, scooped my cats' litter boxes, took out some trash, made myself breakfast, ate that, read some news while eating, then lifted weights in my garage, had some work meetings, wrote up some instructions per a customer request from Friday, and am about to go drive to the lake to go do a 9 mile longboard loop.

That's very close to a normal day in 1996. The biggest difference is I read the news on my phone instead of a physical newspaper. The news was not any more interesting or informative because of that. I guess I can also still do the loop reasonably well, but I'm a lot slower than I was in 1996 when I was a cross-country state champion.

My parents are closing in on 70 and I guess I can't speak for them, but I'm at least aware of the daily routines of their lives, too. Walk the dog, do housework, DIY building projects, visit kids and grankids. Seems much the same, too, with the biggest difference being they're now teaching my sister's sons to play baseball rather than me, but shit, one of her sons even looks like exactly the same way I looked when I was 7! The more things change, the more they stay the same.

▲ madamelic an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Thank you for this insight!

I always wonder the views of older people. My parents are very technology forward and have been my entire life so it is difficult to gauge how different life is compared to when they were growing up.

It's easy to hear "Oh well I only had 640kb of memory and typed programs out of a magazine I got in the mail!" and see as distinct from having 'unlimited' resources and the internet.

Your insight is good ("The biggest difference is I read the news on my phone instead of a physical newspaper") that life sort of stays the same but the modality changes. People still go to the store like they did in the mid-1800s but now it is by car.

I wonder what our "industrial revolution" will be where the previous generation lived (ie: out in the country on a farm) totally different lives to the current (ie: in the city in a factory). Maybe when space travel and multi-planetary living is normalized?

	▲	bobthepanda 31 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		To some degree this already happened with the move from the industrial city to suburbanization and then re-urbanization. In particular one of the most notable recent developments is that urban waterways are now pretty desirable places to be with parks and recreation; in most industrializing cities the waterfront was actively avoided because the industrial use made it polluted, smelly etc.
	▲	saulpw an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> It's easy to hear "Oh well I only had 640kb of memory and typed programs out of a magazine I got in the mail!" Since I was there (young, but there), I want to point out that this crosses three eras which all felt quite different: `1978: typed programs in from a magazine or loaded from a cassette (16kB, TRS-80) 1983: loaded programs from a floppy (64kB, Apple ][ and C64 etc) 1988: loaded programs from a hard disk (640kB, IBM PC and Mac).` Exact years vary but these eras were only about 5 years each. Nobody had a floppy in 1978 but almost computer user did by 1983; nobody had a hard drive in 1983 but almost everyone did by 1988.

▲ zdragnar 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Depends on where you live. My dad is almost 80, grew up in a very rural area, and when he was 16 they'd just gotten indoor plumbing. Up until he was 14, his school was a one-room school house with no heating other than a wood stove. If you were the first kid to arrive for the day, it was your job to get the fire going in winter months.

Housework meant no laundry machine, no dishwasher, and possibly no vacuum cleaner. That means hand washing everything, and beating rugs with sticks and brushes to get the dust off of them.

▲ rootusrootus 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If your parents are closing in on 70, I would have expected you to be closer to not quite 50 than not quite 60.

I am just over 50 myself and I agree with your points. Technology has changed but life is largely very similar to wear it was in the 90s. At least day to day. Attitudes are way worse now.