I wonder what would happen if we narrow this down to Oregon trail, the original version.
My sisters (born in 84/86) played Oregon Trail, but it was different than the version I played. I think it would cut out some of you "on the cusp" kids.
Wiki says the original came out in 1971 and Oregan trail 2 came out in 1978. So I did not play the original.
To clarify, I meant the original green screen game, which would be versions 2 & 3.
Post by BeagleMama on Apr 27, 2015 15:52:44 GMT -5
This is a great article, thanks for sharing! I sent it to my childhood BFF reminiscing about recording our "radio show" on cassette tapes, sure to include Paula and Gloria's latest.
And, I remember thinking I was so cool for having custom sounds on my AOL account so Hugh Grant would say, "You have letters."
According to wiki - these are the release dates of the game: 1971, 1974, 1985, 1992, 1996, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2011
So if you were born in 1984, you probably would have been playing the 1992 version at 8 yo. Even if you didn't because your school sucked, you would still fall into that category. Making you officially a millenial.
muah ha ha!
I think the difference is the cultural shift between people who had the internet at home as young children and those who didn't. 6th grade was the year I remember a lot of my friends getting AOL or Prodigy. Facebook may have been available to me in 2004 when I was fully into shit that I would be embarrassed to have on social media, but I didn't have FB until 2008. I had MySpace, but, as I think is generally true of people my age, we didn't feel the need to take pictures of everything, let alone post those pictures to social media. When I was a teenager, the pictures we took were not digital. We might technically be millennials, but when it comes to how strongly we feel the urge to selfie, we are Oregon Trail. I may have done a chunk of my partying at the very beginning of social media, rather than directly before it, but it was still not in the age of oversharing, like it was for the people a few years younger.
Our experience is far more like those born in '80 than than like those born in '88.
1983 here. I played the green version of Oregon Trail and Number Munchers in school. I kicked ass at Number Munchers. Then we got an Apple at home and I played Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing for hours on end.
I played the black and green version of Oregon Trail. We first got internet at home my senior year of high school. We shared a single email address as a family (mom, dad, and 2 kids). I mean, everyone shared a phone number,* so why not email?
I also distinctly remember a college friend telling me I should check out this amazing new search engine called "Google" during my freshman year.
(*we also still had a "party line" phone # - shared with a few neighbors - when I was 5-6 and learning how to use a phone for the first time. Stupid teenage neighbor who tied up the line all the time to talk to her boyfriend. But I digress...)
My sophomore year of high school our Mac lab got those candy colored iMacs. I wanted my own so bad.
We got a Tandy computer (from Radio Shack) when I was in 4th grade and an IBM aptiva when I was in 9th grade, but no dial-up until my senior year of high school.
These will forever and always transport me back to the computer lab in Cal Poly Science North.
My first internet experience was searching for Tom Cruise. It was probably 8th grade, 1996, and I was at my BFF's dad's condo in Pleasanton. He was rich and techie, so they had the internet. Around the same time I remember one friend had AOL at home, but it was back when you paid by the hour, so they had like two hours a day or something, and she would tell us about it.
And @mx I had Juno too, I think my techie friend set me up maybe Sophomore year, 1997/8. That's what I used to email my manifesto where I told off my former BFF.
Then by graduation in 1999/2000 I had AOL and everyone was IMing. I blew off my mom while I was moving into the dorms because I had to get my computer set up so I could talk to my friends. Carl and I built our relationship on AIM chats since we were long-distance for the first year.
I briefly remember someone talking about MySpace/Friendster, but I didn't set up an account until after I was married in 2006.
Also - someone made this point - DIGITAL CAMERAS. And camera phones. Mardi Gras Freshman year, a friend and I allowed a room full of frat boys to convince us that no one had cameras as we flashed them. El oh el. Later that semester, someone shared the picture with Carl, and he was able to just take the photo out of the album and destroy it. There are so many things about that that would be insane in 2015.
I played the black and green version of Oregon Trail. We first got internet at home my senior year of high school. We shared a single email address as a family (mom, dad, and 2 kids). I mean, everyone shared a phone number,* so why not email?
I also distinctly remember a college friend telling me I should check out this amazing new search engine called "Google" during my freshman year.
(*we also still had a "party line" phone # - shared with a few neighbors - when I was 5-6 and learning how to use a phone for the first time. Stupid teenage neighbor who tied up the line all the time to talk to her boyfriend. But I digress...)
I don't remember when I started using google. I do remember using alta vista as my go to search engine in high school.
According to wiki - these are the release dates of the game: 1971, 1974, 1985, 1992, 1996, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2011
So if you were born in 1984, you probably would have been playing the 1992 version at 8 yo. Even if you didn't because your school sucked, you would still fall into that category. Making you officially a millenial.
muah ha ha!
I think the difference is the cultural shift between people who had the internet at home as young children and those who didn't. 6th grade was the year I remember a lot of my friends getting AOL or Prodigy. Facebook may have been available to me in 2004 when I was fully into shit that I would be embarrassed to have on social media, but I didn't have FB until 2008. I had MySpace, but, as I think is generally true of people my age, we didn't feel the need to take pictures of everything, let alone post those pictures to social media. When I was a teenager, the pictures we took were not digital. We might technically be millennials, but when it comes to how strongly we feel the urge to selfie, we are Oregon Trail. I may have done a chunk of my partying at the very beginning of social media, rather than directly before it, but it was still not in the age of oversharing, like it was for the people a few years younger.
Our experience is far more like those born in '80 than than like those born in '88.
But for many of us, we didn't have internet at home as minors. Period.
To be fair, though, I was 17 years and 8 months when we got it, so technically still a minor.
I do think the rapid evolution of the internet and computational technology means that 20-year spans are too long to define a generation these days.
I think the difference is the cultural shift between people who had the internet at home as young children and those who didn't. 6th grade was the year I remember a lot of my friends getting AOL or Prodigy. Facebook may have been available to me in 2004 when I was fully into shit that I would be embarrassed to have on social media, but I didn't have FB until 2008. I had MySpace, but, as I think is generally true of people my age, we didn't feel the need to take pictures of everything, let alone post those pictures to social media. When I was a teenager, the pictures we took were not digital. We might technically be millennials, but when it comes to how strongly we feel the urge to selfie, we are Oregon Trail. I may have done a chunk of my partying at the very beginning of social media, rather than directly before it, but it was still not in the age of oversharing, like it was for the people a few years younger.
Our experience is far more like those born in '80 than than like those born in '88.
But for many of us, we didn't have internet at home as minors. Period.
To be fair, though, I was 17 years and 8 months when we got it, so technically still a minor.
I do think the rapid evolution of the internet and computational technology means that 20-year spans are too long to define a generation these days.
Well that's still true of kids born today, lol. There are still some who don't have internet at home. Period.
I remember getting my first cell phone with a COLOR screen. It was a gold flip phone. This was 2003, and my roommates and I were all, "OMG, we're so hot and we have such cool phones and we live in LA." It replaced the chunky nokia that everyone had.
But for many of us, we didn't have internet at home as minors. Period.
To be fair, though, I was 17 years and 8 months when we got it, so technically still a minor.
I do think the rapid evolution of the internet and computational technology means that 20-year spans are too long to define a generation these days.
Well that's still true of kids born today, lol. There are still some who don't have internet at home. Period.
We are talking generalities.
But even with generalities. The first year the US Census bureau even tallied internet use at home was 1997 according to this publication: www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-569.pdf. So, those born before 1979 very very likely wouldn't have had it until they went to college.
ETA-and it was only 18% in 1997.
By 2001, >50% of households had internet at home, so people born in 1983 and later likely would have had some internet access at home. It's a huge difference across those 4 years.
And yeah, when I was a drunk college student, people had digital cameras, but it was a PITA to upload photos and you could easily delete less-than-flattering things. I was still doing things like printing legit photos from my digital camera until, like, 6 years ago, but especially in college. So it was a lot easier to avoid being photographed in situations like that and/or not having the photos fall into the wrong hands.
My dad was all into the techie stuff so I remember having a home computer in 5th or 6th grade. I typed up a report on it and that's why I remember. That would have been 1989-1991, whatever year I was in those grades. We also were on the internet pretty early on. We weren't rich or anything but my dad is one to always need to have the latest and greatest. He used to build his computers.
I was super cool with my red Motorolla pager in 12th grade.
But for many of us, we didn't have internet at home as minors. Period.
To be fair, though, I was 17 years and 8 months when we got it, so technically still a minor.
I do think the rapid evolution of the internet and computational technology means that 20-year spans are too long to define a generation these days.
Well that's still true of kids born today, lol. There are still some who don't have internet at home. Period.
We are talking generalities.
But even though I had "internet at home" when I was a senior in high school, let's be honest. It was mostly screwing around in AOL chat rooms.
And then in college it was "Oh cool, it only takes 4 minutes to download something from Napster versus 18 hours with dialup!"
The digital divide is a lot more intense today. Our school district has gone back and forth about providing iPads or chromebooks to all students, and how to get the all to have home internet, because not all do.
Well that's still true of kids born today, lol. There are still some who don't have internet at home. Period.
We are talking generalities.
But even with generalities. The first year the US Census bureau even tallied internet use at home was 1997 according to this publication: www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-569.pdf. So, those born before 1979 very very likely wouldn't have had it until they went to college.
ETA-and it was only 18% in 1997.
By 2001, >50% of households had internet at home, so people born in 1983 and later likely would have had some internet access at home. It's a huge difference across those 4 years.
Well of course! Things change quickly. It amazes me to see how many of my students had cell phones 4 years ago vs today. It is nuts! but we can't have a different generation every 3-4 years.
Well that's still true of kids born today, lol. There are still some who don't have internet at home. Period.
We are talking generalities.
But even though I had "internet at home" when I was a senior in high school, let's be honest. It was mostly screwing around in AOL chat rooms.
And then in college it was "Oh cool, it only takes 4 minutes to download something from Napster versus 18 hours with dialup!"
The digital divide is a lot more intense today. Our school district has gone back and forth about providing iPads or chromebooks to all students, and how to get the all to have home internet, because not all do.
I agree. I just don't think the cut off for a generation is if a given individual had internet at home or not. I think it's broader than that. Thats all
I think the generational divide here is people who came of age (were teenagers/college students) before the internet/cell phones/social media became a huge part of our lives and those who came of age afterwards. And then you have this minigeneration of ~5 years who came of age *while* it was all happening. That's what this article is referring to.
ETA it's more about living through a particular time than what you had or didn't have.
1982 checking in. I don't think I ever played Oregon Trail though. We had computer class for only a few weeks a year, only about 2-3 hours a week, when I was in jr high. I don't recall what we did, but we didn't do enough! I remember my sister (3 years younger) got a WAY better computer education than I did. I think what the article said about our generation having to figure it out really is true - aside from 1 computer class taken late in college, my whole internet/computer education has been self taught. I don't think that's true of kids younger than me, for the most part at least.
It's amazing when you think about all the stuff we take for granted now that didn't exist even 15 years ago when I finished HS. I remember being really excited to go to college in part because my college gave every freshman a laptop and we had high speed internet. Having my own computer was mind blowing at that point. Now I have multiple devices to access the internet within reach at this very moment. I don't have to check my answering machine when I get home from work and this silly thing on my wrist tells my phone how many steps I've walked today. Really, it's crazy how far we've come in just a short time.
I think it's neat being our generation honestly. I mean I do take things for granted, but I can easily remember what it was like NOT TO have them. I think the appreciation for just how fucking cool a smartphone really is isn't lost on us, where someone 10 years younger probably never gives it a second thought.
I think the generational divide here is people who came of age (were teenagers/college students) before the internet/cell phones/social media became a huge part of our lives and those who came of age afterwards. And then you have this minigeneration of ~5 years who came of age *while* it was all happening. That's what this article is referring to.
ETA it's more about living through a particular time than what you had or didn't have.
Exactly. It's this mini-generation that grew up *with* the technology change, rather than before or after it. And to be fair, at the speed things change, that's still going to be true - kids today grew up with FB and tomorrow they'll have Snapchat, or whatever, but it's this sliver of us who had a totally analog childhood and just built technologies alongside our personal histories.
I think the generational divide here is people who came of age (were teenagers/college students) before the internet/cell phones/social media became a huge part of our lives and those who came of age afterwards. And then you have this minigeneration of ~5 years who came of age *while* it was all happening. That's what this article is referring to.
ETA it's more about living through a particular time than what you had or didn't have.
This this this. This is what I was trying to get at.
I think the generational divide here is people who came of age (were teenagers/college students) before the internet/cell phones/social media became a huge part of our lives and those who came of age afterwards. And then you have this minigeneration of ~5 years who came of age *while* it was all happening. That's what this article is referring to.
ETA it's more about living through a particular time than what you had or didn't have.
This is the exact reason I never feel like I fit in anywhere. lol.