The Bridging Generation

There are two things that I find are good - and possibly essential - for my mental health. One is exercising and the other is keeping busy. (And I honestly can only enjoy doing nothing if I know there’s something I could or should be doing; it’s necessarily a guilty pleasure.)

This morning, I had breakfast at the Bakery (would recommend), tidied up the house, drove to Chorley, had a swim, recorded the radio show, met Dom for a drink, and then went out for dinner with the Minx, her mum, and the miniMinx. 

I hugely enjoyed my drink with Dom, which was a lot more mathematically intense than I expected as we discussed the book he’s currently writing - about building a rocket and going to the moon - and pondered escape velocities and the rocket equation. 

And it was on the way back that I saw this old notice board. I guess it’s no surprise that these aren’t in use, anymore; anyone can have a rudimentary Wordpress page at least. But what interests me is that increasingly is that I see that I’m part of a ‘bridging’ generation. 

I grew up in a world that had changed only incrementally for centuries, excepting, of course, the Industrial Revolution. There would be occasional spurts in technological development - regrettably during wars for the most part - but generally our evolution was gentle and, to a large extent, predictable. (I’d exclude theoretical physics from this statement.)

Even looking at my own children, I can chart the change: I recall buying our first CD-ROM - remember those? - which was a game called ‘PB Bear’. Hannah sat on my knee, learning to use a mouse. And twenty years later, as we drove through Manchester, she looked ups song she wanted to play me and streamed it from Spotify over 4G. 

And then look at Dan and Abi… a few years ago I bought all of the kids Kindle Fires for Christmas. Ate lunch, one of the girls asked me whether they could put their music onto the Fire. I was just pondering this when Dan, who can’t have been no more than eight or nine, piped up and said “Yes, I’ve already done mine”. 

Now it’s hard to think what I could tell them in terms of a technological development that they wouldn’t believe. But I still remember phones that were attached to the wall, cars that had a choke - “don’t flood the engine” - and when ATMs were an exciting new idea. Now I just pay for things using my watch. 

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‘A History Of Seven Killings’ by Marlon James