Living Through the Eighties. Look at Me Now
There are moments when I look at what I’m doing now and wonder what the younger version of me would make of it.
I lived through the eighties. Look at me now.
I’m building a website. Writing a blog. Creating digital books and printables. Researching ideas with artificial intelligence. Thinking about SEO, image sizes, online libraries and things called algorithms.
Somewhere inside me, the woman who remembers cassette tapes and record players is quietly impressed.
When Technology Was Something You Watched Arrive
Growing up when I did meant watching technology change rather than simply being born into it.
There was no internet sitting quietly in our pockets. No Google waiting to answer whatever ridiculous question happened to wander through our minds. No mobile phone containing our camera, diary, map, music collection, calculator, newspaper, library and half our lives.
If the phone rang, you answered it without knowing who was calling.
Imagine the horror.
Music came from records and cassette tapes. If you wanted your own collection of favourite songs, you sat beside the radio waiting for one to play and attempted to hit record at precisely the right moment — preferably before the announcer started talking over the ending.
Photographs were taken without knowing whether anyone had their eyes closed until the film came back from being developed.
And when we wanted to know something, we often had to actually go somewhere to find out.
The library.
An encyclopedia (usually from the set your parents purchased from the door-to-door salesman)
A person who might know.
Or we simply remained curious for a while.
Perhaps that wasn't such a terrible thing.
Then the World Started Changing
Computers gradually wandered into ordinary life.
At first they seemed like machines belonging to offices, scientists and people who understood mysterious languages involving commands and blinking cursors.
Then they appeared in homes. The internet arrived. Email appeared. Mobile phones, (some as big as a brick) became normal.
And somewhere along the way, technology stopped being something sitting on a desk and became something woven into almost everything we do.
What fascinates me is that those of us who lived before all of this have experienced both worlds.
We remember what life felt like before the internet, yet here we are using it every day.
I can remember a world where information wasn't instantly available, and now I can have a conversation with artificial intelligence while drinking my morning coffee.
That still feels slightly extraordinary to me.
Perhaps My Ideas Were Waiting for Technology
James Cameron famously conceived Avatar long before he finally made the film. Part of the delay was that the filmmaking technology needed to create the world he imagined simply wasn't ready yet.
Sometimes I wonder whether creativity works a little like that for ordinary people too.
Not on the James-Cameron-budget scale, obviously.
I wasn't sitting in the eighties patiently waiting for someone to invent Wix so I could build Deb Eternal.
I was simply living.
Reading.
Thinking.
Questioning things.
Collecting ideas without knowing I was collecting them.
There were thoughts about philosophy, books, people, family, curiosity, life and all those strange questions that have a habit of appearing when we're supposed to be doing something else.
Perhaps the technology wasn't the only thing that needed time.
Maybe I did too.
The Ideas Came First
That's the part I find most interesting.
Technology gives me the tools to create Deb Eternal, but it didn't create the curiosity behind it.
That has been travelling with me for decades.
The books came first.
The questions came first.
Life came first.
Technology simply arrived later and gave me somewhere to put everything.
And now an idea that once might have been scribbled into a notebook can become a published reflection before I've finished my second coffee.
A thought can become a page.
A page can reach someone I've never met.
A collection of pages can become a website.
And perhaps one day that website becomes a book sitting on a shelf.
There is something rather lovely about that.
From Cassette Tapes to Artificial Intelligence
I sometimes hear people of my generation say they can't keep up with technology.
I understand why.
The speed of change can be exhausting. Just when you've worked out where everything is, somebody updates it and moves the button.
I even bought myself one of those little record players in a suitcase because I still have some of my old records and thought it would be wonderful to play them again.
It was wonderful.
For approximately five minutes.
I'd completely forgotten how much effort was involved. Choose the record, take it carefully from its sleeve, put it on, lower the needle, listen... then get up and turn the thing over.
Apparently nostalgia has a very selective memory.
I still love my old records. I just discovered that I also quite like several decades of technological progress and not having to get out of my chair every twenty minutes.
But I don't particularly want to keep up with everything.
I only want to understand enough to use the things that help me create, learn and remain curious.
That seems much more manageable.
Because perhaps living through enormous technological change has taught us something valuable.
We know the tools will change again.
The cassette disappeared.
The video store disappeared.
The encyclopedia set disappeared from many homes.
The computer shrank.
The phone escaped from the wall.
And now artificial intelligence has arrived and is changing the way people create, research,
work, and communicate.
Who knows what comes next?
I certainly don't.
But I suspect I'll be poking around in it to see what it does.
Living Through The Eighties And Look at Me Now
There is something quite funny about it when I think about the distance travelled.
The girl who lived through the eighties could never have imagined Deb Eternal.
She couldn't have imagined publishing her thoughts instantly for someone on the other side of the world to read.
She certainly couldn't have imagined sitting at home discussing philosophy with an AI chat thought partner who occasionally behaves like a comedian.
Yet here I am.
Still curious.
Still learning.
Still rearranging things.
Still wondering whether the button would look better slightly to the left.
I've changed alongside technology too, although perhaps not at quite the same pace. While technology seemed to race from one extraordinary invention to the next, I took the longer route. I lived, raised a family, worked, read, learned, questioned what I thought I knew and changed my mind about more than a few things along the way.
Perhaps that's why I find myself so comfortable with all this change now. I've been changing too.
Technology just did it with considerably fewer coffee breaks. Some things, apparently, technology cannot fix.
Perhaps that's what I love most about having lived through these decades. I've watched the tools change beyond recognition while discovering that the human reasons for using them haven't changed nearly as much.
We still want to tell stories.
We still want to understand things.
We still want to make something that lasts beyond the moment in which we created it.
And we still wonder what might be possible next.
A Thought to Take With You
Perhaps we don't need to fear being left behind by technology. We only need to remain curious enough to pick up the tools that help us become whatever we're becoming next.
Sometimes an idea simply has to wait until the world — and perhaps the person carrying it — is ready for it.
Namaste
Deb xx
Thoughtful writing across life, mind, and meaning.
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