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One thing about being an older father is how wide the generation gap gets. For example, not long ago my 16-year-old daughter asked me, "Dad, what's a floppy disc?"
There followed an explanation of how when personal computers were new they had memories measured in kilobytes and needed external storage for almost any task. And how my greatest desire was to have a TRS-80 with a whole 64K of memory!
And as I was explaining I mentioned in passing that the "Save" icon is a floppy disc.
She found that mind blowing.
"That's what it is? Wow!"
More recently my daughter told me she's been watching Lost. Which I've heard of but never watched, and which concluded 13 years ago.
This prompted me to explain how way back in the Stone Age of television if you were following a series you had to be home on a certain night, at a certain time, or you missed it -- forever. Unless you caught that specific episode in summer reruns.
Reruns?
That Younger Readers, means roughly 13 episodes out of the 30- plus per season that were shown again during the summer months while they were filming the next season of the series, provided it got renewed.
And movies?
If you didn't catch one at the cinema you could be out of luck. That is until they showed it in 10 years or so on Saturday Night at the Movies.
Nowadays of course if your favorite series is released once per week, no prob. You can watch it on streaming video any time after that. And many series are released a season at a time, a very short season of eight to 10 episodes which you can either binge watch, or with heroic self-discipline ration yourself to one a night. And after that you can rewatch any time you like.
And there were series you might have liked but for one reason or another missed a season, lost the continuity of the story line and gave up on.
Now, no problem. Just back up and start watching where you left off. I have a list of series I'm going to get back to, starting with Stargate SG1.
Heck I've gone back and watched series I remember as a youth and missed. The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Bat Masterson, Peter Gunn, Boston Blackie...
And just yesterday my daughter wanted to get a Fleetwood Mac CD after discovering their music. I mentioned to her that I'd seen them and Richie Havens in concert at my old university. Wow!
After we got home she started digging and found an image of the poster for that concert. Double wow!
All of this makes me wonder what my children are going to have to explain to their children. What changes in media are going to seem new and strange to them?
I have the feeling this generation gap is greater than anything before it. The leap from three channels max on a black-and-white TV to streaming video on a big screen color TV seems greater than say, watching a Shakespeare play at the Globe theater when they were new and watching Edwin Boothe perform the plays 300 years later.
Are we going to see new and hitherto unimagined changes in our media consumption, or have we plateaued?
One thing I rather like about this new media environment is that when I'm gone perhaps my children will occasionally look up old series and movies I've mentioned to briefly immerse themselves in the world Dad grew up in.
-- Steve Browne is a longtime reporter and contributor to the Marshall Independent