it seems to me that one of the biggest differences is the computer revolution
yeah
and i can very clearly remember ten years ago i was just beginning to explore computerizing my office
and and exploring trying to find out what kinds of computers might be useful and we did end up with uh IBM PCs which i now would not have chosen but that was before the Macintosh
really
yeah
and twenty years ago i was uh in graduate school pecking out a dissertation on on a manual typewriter
oh i know it
so i would say that's one of the largest changes in at least in my life
yeah i've i've seen that just in the last um even five years how much they've increased uh increased in use or probably eight years when i was a freshman in college
uh-huh
uh my degree was in computer
uh technology originally and it seemed like it would they were just getting out with the you know the disks and all that getting away with the cards
um-hum
you know doing away with the the programming cards and uh
right
yeah thirty years ago i i had a college job uh working as a programmer
and we had to write code in binary and uh have it punched in on those little cardboard cards which i don't think exist anymore you never see one of those punch cards anymore
i know
no
um i think TV has a lot to do with the changes too don't you in like people's attitudes
well very possibly uh i'm not sure in the last ten years it's been very different from before uh
certainly in the last thirty i would say there have been significant changes even even the change from black and white to color television thirty years ago i guess there were color TVs but i sure didn't have access to one
yeah
oh
and uh by twenty years ago practically everybody had a color TV and now i think they're as almost as many well there are more TVs than households so
yeah
it's close to getting uh one TV per person they say
and now everybody uh has VCRs and two or three VCRs
um-hum
and that kind of thing
yeah certainly ten years ago uh VCRs were just coming on the market so that's made a significant difference in the way i watch television for instance because uh now
i almost never watch a TV program when it's on
yeah i know
i tape it and then watch it when it's convenient and that way i don't have to worry about being interrupted i can just put it on pause
yeah and you can you can flip through the commercials so you don't have to watch the commercials
right yeah
that's always hassle convenient
um-hum
yes you can watch a program in forty five minutes instead of an hour
you skip the commercials
uh-huh
so what was their question about decline in sociological
wasn't the decline so much i think they just said the changes in uh social social changes in the United States
yeah
how was life different ten twenty or thirty years ago
so
well
it
i can't really remember back that far but ten years ago
um
i don't know
i'd say like in the nineteen seventies you remember how
kids would walk around with AM
what do you call those little AM radios and now people have jam box with CD players in them you know
yes
yes that's certainly a difference
and
hand held TVs and car phones
yeah that's another one yeah car phones is a good point and uh cellular phones of all types and beepers uh ten years ago i was working in a job at a medical center and i had to carry a beeper around and they were
yeah
kind of bulky and all they did was just uh make a beep noise and then you had to go find a telephone and call in to find out what they wanted you for and who you were supposed to call
uh-huh
these days they have these tiny little things that are only about the size of two or three pencils
and they fit in your shirt pocket and they have a little display screen that shows you a message and either tells you a person or a a phone number to respond to and
those are cool
yeah those are pretty neat and they have the kind that just vibrates so you can shut them off in a theatre or something and you can still get your messages
yeah
yeah
but let's see social changes uh
where do you think it's where do you think it's going to go in twenty years
i haven't the slightest idea i was just thinking though about a a a huge social change in the last ten years is AIDS
yeah
it was just beginning to be recognized and noticed ten years ago i i know that because i was writing a a paper about it
um-hum
i was writing a a journal article
uh and they still didn't even know what caused it or anything uh there was a suspicion that it was a virus but nobody had identified it and they were really just going on epidemiological uh
wow
um-hum
uh guesswork uh because the way it was transmitted made it look an awful lot like uh hepatitis and then
yeah
from from the spread pattern of hepatitis they could work backwards to the transmission by uh blood and semen and then i
i'm curious what was your uh graduate study in
well i was i was in English as a matter of fact and medieval studies
oh wow
uh-huh
uh but i went to work as an editor and writer
so uh uh uh uh ten years ago i was working in the medical center uh publishing a journal
and writing about medical topics
yeah
and let's see twenty years ago i guess we're were just beginning to get into what they were calling the uh
the sex revolution where uh after the pill and uh uh
yeah
freed people up from worries about uh illegitimate pregnancy and
i guess in the seventies is the the time when that was supposed to have exploded thirty years ago there was no pill
um-hum
do you think that's caused a lot of pressure on like younger kids today to make choices that they probably shouldn't have to make
yep
i do i really do i have uh
yeah
four kids in college right now children and stepchildren
and i know that the expectation for them was uh to have sex and uh much earlier than the expectation when i was in college
um-hum
in my day we talked quietly behind our hands about people that we suspected might be sleeping with their boyfriends
yeah
yeah
yeah
but they certainly didn't expect everybody to and it was really only uh acceptable if you were engaged and planning to get married in in the relatively near future
um-hum
and i certainly know from talking to my stepdaughter that girls in high school were under a whole lot more pressure
nowadays
oh yeah
it's kind of scary when i think of what will happen in twenty years you know when i have kids and they're grown and
um just kind of some of the changes that will happen even more so seems like it can't get much worse
and i guess the answer is is stay flexible because nobody can predict what's going to happen in twenty years
i certainly wouldn't have been able to twenty years ago tell you what uh my kids were likely to be like course one of them was just a a an
yeah
a brand new baby twenty years ago so i sure wouldn't have been able to predict
um-hum
for him
hm
and some of the other ones weren't born
yeah
so
sounds like America's going to become even more communication society with faxes and cellular phones and
yeah
worldwide communication and
electronic mail
i just got on that this past about a year ago and that's made a difference in the way i do my job because it's so much easier to get hold of people and get quick answers to things
yeah
even when they're another on another continent
yeah
it's pretty wild
yeah and even you know that reminds me Federal Express was around ten years ago but it was used as kind of an extreme emergency
uh-huh
and nowadays people use Fed Ex all the time
yeah
sure do
huh
people do seem to travel more it's much more common for people even teenagers to be going to Europe and South America and Asia uh
yeah
i was
almost thirty before i got off this continent
and uh both my kids had been abroad when they were still in high school
yeah
yeah
i know that's what uh what my family was talking when i picked up and moved to Texas from Indiana and they were like well you know twenty thirty years ago we wouldn't have done that you know
um-hum
and uh especially come home every couple months
yeah
you know
and
