Time was that conversing with someone in another country, meant having to board a ship, or send a handwritten letter (via ship) and it would take months to cross the major oceans to reach another continent. At least from Australia - that big island in the Southern Hemisphere that is so far from the other continents. Then later, there was the telegraph. This could still take days for messages, depending on how far from a telegraph office you resided. Then there was the overseas phone call (at exorbitant prices) and finally, what is now termed, snail mail. I miss letter writing days, pen friends and collecting the stamps.
What I think is really awesome, is that I can sit in my lounge room, in Australia and type some words. Push a button and these words will then get seen by people in all the major continents of the world, including Russia, South America, Asia and Africa - let alone Western Europe and Northern America. These days a message on FB or a blog can be posted and it has been seen, read or replied to within seconds! This is actually mind blowing!
There was a time when the only resources, for research, was the local library - the State Library if you needed something more in depth. I usually ended up at the University Library or ordering in books on interlibrary loans - some of which could take over a month to turn up. These days we just go 'google it'... One problem is that things published on the internet don't have fact checkers to make sure that we are not reading total fabrications. Internet is also essentially ephemeral; here one day, gone the next. It is all smoke and mirrors.
I was born pre-video recorders, pre-DVD, pre-moblile phones. My friend would audio tape- yes a cassette tape! Our favourite television show (back then we had only one TV and my show clashed with the parent's show) and when we replayed it, she would narrate the visuals for me! I remember having to wait months (and sometimes years) for a television show to be aired here, in Australia. We would wait months for Doctor Who. All this is lost on the current generation who have had mobile phones, instant messaging and internet downloads at the finger tips.
Just the other day, I saw someone bitching (yes, they were quite spiteful and indignant) that 'how dare they have to wait til the next day to see Doctor Who? They should be able to download it straight away.' They did not care to wait for the official download but wanted a pirate copy NOW, as 'why should they have to pay (less than $2) for a copy when they can get it illegally... oh .. don't get me back onto copyright issues!! For now, let me just say that people seemed to have lost their patience and expect everything for nothing! It won't kill you to wait less than 12 hours! We had to wait 6-9 months or more!!
This also translates into other areas of life and becoming a cultural norm, unfortunately. (Sadly, it is not just the internet generation either; baby boomers and X-gens can be just as impatient.)
Dear Impatient generations,
Deal with it! Stop and smell the roses. Good things come to those who wait. Enjoy life, slow down, enjoy art and movies.. but remember someone had to make them, for you to enjoy.
Learnt the Value of Waiting.
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