I can relate to a lot of this, though I've promissed myself to keep up with current developments, at least. In my mind, I mean.
Not that I must participate each new fad, but I try being aware of it, at least.
I'll try to understand how modern things work, which shows my sister watches, the music that plays on the FM radio, the current games and so on.
To not to loose touch with society, in short. Otherwise it'll be hard to catch up, eventually.

Heck, I've even watched some episodes of Bluey and Paw Patrol! 😁
Not that I must like these kids shows, but it helps a bit understanding the future generation.
So getting used to them a bit and try being tolerant torwards them can't hurt.
After all, in a few years, these shows maybe will hold same place in the hearts of the young people that say, Peanuts, Garfield, Looney/Tiny Toons and the Disney animations from late 80s/early 90s did to us (just to name a few).

Cartoons I used to watch was the hannabarbara club on Sunday mornings and they used to smoke gamble drink and do drugs in them until that stuff got phased out with informative messages at the end of the show and road runner and Tom and Jerry nearly got cancelled for being too violent.
Gi joe used to warn you not to play with fire or don’t hide in fridges or look both ways before crossing the road or stay away from railroads and power lines transformers and you used to have cool shows upto your middle teens now everything seems to be for pre teens and a lot of it is drivel.
Tried watching a cartoon the other day on Netflix first episode 5 mins in a group of kids was introducing each other with she/her pronouns and this is my girlfriend I thought **** this shit I’m not so close minded as I’ve watched plenty of anime where people’s interests were naturally woven into the storyline without the need to slap you across the face with a smelly wet fish. Why can’t I just enjoy cartoons when they were designed just to flog toys or told an interesting story

^This is a phenomenon of our time, I suppose.
Everything must be made look harmonic, perfect, conflict free and fair.
On a superficial layer, at least. Depth of story line is rather flat at times.

However, the point is that previous generations had felt that then-new cartoons/films of our generation are annoying or being too "soft", as well.
Just like we now think about the current cartoons or films.
Breaking free from this cycle is a way of staying young, maybe.
Rejection in old age is typical, after all.
Being able to see through eyes of the younger people makes us question ourself, which sometimes isn't bad to do.

(Ok, in parts this is also because cartoons were original meant to be watched by adult audience.
It was roughly in the 1950s/1960s when in the eyes of society cartoons shifted to children as primary audience.)

Edit: I've forgotten to mention, I too had endured watching the episodes of STD and PIC. And I've survived. ^^

It’s what I find with a lot of technical things nowadays too growing up you would fix things either yourself or pay someone and now you need experts or throw it away same with new computers it’s so complicated now that even with an idiot guide you’re still unable to fix it unlike in the past an idiot guide could get you through it

I can't stand flat interfaces. Studies have been done showing they decrease productivity, yet still they get pushed. Isn't it about time to go back to better interface design?

So much of this all reflects my own experience.

* Having and using hardware older than all 4 of my kids.
* Thank Zeus for technology to securely store passwords. (Plus, paper copies!)
* I forget where I put things all the darn time now. Very annoying.
* If I step away from a project for too long, I forget where I was, and sometimes have to "re-learn" things to complete it.
* Sometimes, I re-learn things from my own posts on forums, my blog, or my notes. (Thankfully, I take good notes, most of the time.)
* Sometimes, I look back at notes I wrote within the past few months and have NO idea why I wrote them.
* Being easily annoyed with modern operating systems, and lets me honest, a lot of modern so called "smart" tech REALLY annoys me. I like to control my own stuff thanks.
* I rarely get excited about "new" hardware. When it does happen, it's a rare treat.
* I see my dad looking back at me in the mirror, and onset of the amazing color, grey.
* Don't fix it, just throw it away and buy a shiny new one! Not if I can help it. Right to repair!

That last one really gets under my skin. Planned obsolescence has been a thing for a long time, but today it's vastly worse when the items you buy require some form of online DRM to even function. You'll own nothing and like it! On a similar note, one of my favorite phrases these days is "There is no cloud, just someone else's computer.". Hence why I rely on exactly zero online services for anything. I can do what they do safer, cheaper, and have full control over it.

I could go on and on. 😀

Shagittarius wrote on 2025-01-15, 17:16:

I can't stand flat interfaces. Studies have been done showing they decrease productivity, yet still they get pushed. Isn't it about time to go back to better interface design?

GUI design of applications in general tends to suck balls nowadays in many cases. Of course and if we are talking about especially mobile, the intent of design isn’t primarily making the experience better for user, but to increase ”engagement”. This means adding features no one asked for and making relatively trivial tasks unnecessarily complicated. This is one feature of the famous enshittification that is going on.

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-01-15, 01:54:

smtkr wrote on 2025-01-15, 01:46:

I know I'm old because I look at new technology and I don't think it's useful, but everyone else is super excited about it.

I feel that way about AI and increasingly, about the internet in general.

100% this.

I keep finding at work that the “young uns” consistently suggest “just asking copilot” or “doing it with ChatGPT”. I point blank refuse to, regardless of how menial a task is.

Another sign for me is that I have absolutely no interest in upgrading my newest gaming PC, which is now 5 years old. I’m pretty sure that the only newer tech I’ll ever buy now will be basic “office task” laptops, and a replacement iPhone every 3-4 years. Modern online gaming doesn’t interest me, decent single-player is a dying breed, and most modern games fail to capture my interest and imagination in the same way 90s-2000s games did. Still plenty of those I’ve not played though, so that can keep my old PC collection happy for a while yet.

. You mistake GB with TB, or MB with GB.
. Remember the days when web browsing was not the main usage of a computer.
. A 10/15 year old computer seems completely modern and functional for desktop use.

IMHO Core2Duo marked the start of this "era" of computing. Then it kind of stagnated and even if some CPUs are now much faster, there's not a significant enough qualitative change.

The way things are going, with everything being done "in the cloud", there's no incentive to make consumer computers faster. On the contrary, they may be nerfed to make the user pay monthly for function X, Y, Z. Smaller screens and bad (or lack of) keyboards hinder interaction and make users dumber and more passive.

Just noticing that all the new stuff that was just recently done is being given "historical" and "milestone" awards and being discovered by ... not old(?) people.
Also, that same stuff that was new when you were ... not old(?) was cool, but the stuff that's new now is just a lame rehash of something greater that came before, that for some reason people don't remember, but you do.

Oh god.

Needing reading glasses when it comes to hardware identification or soldering works is one aspect reminding me on my age while working with old computers.

There is a nice citation of Douglas Adams, some of us may find familiar:

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
Apply this list to movies, rock music, word processors and mobile phones to work out how old you are.

paradigital wrote on 2025-01-16, 07:03:

I keep finding at work that the “young uns” consistently suggest “just asking copilot” or “doing it with ChatGPT”. I point blank refuse to, regardless of how menial a task is.

Another sign for me is that I have absolutely no interest in upgrading my newest gaming PC, which is now 5 years old. I’m pretty sure that the only newer tech I’ll ever buy now will be basic “office task” laptops, and a replacement iPhone every 3-4 years. Modern online gaming doesn’t interest me, decent single-player is a dying breed, and most modern games fail to capture my interest and imagination in the same way 90s-2000s games did. Still plenty of those I’ve not played though, so that can keep my old PC collection happy for a while yet.

I use AI to have fun, like to create imagery, it's mostly a "toy"in my opinion. I have used GPT to help when I got stuck coding, it works pretty well at that. Beyond that, I have little interest.

All the modern PC's in my home are just over 5 or so years old now. I don't upgrade until it becomes necessary for some reason. I just don't see the point, to me, it's a waste of money. If it does what I want, I will keep using it. Simple as that.

I play 2 "online" games these days, that's it. Fallout 76 and, every so often, Battlefield 4, but I've been playing both franchises since their inception. Everything else is local coop with family and friends, single player, or retro/classic. A majority of games today don't interest me, and many of the ones that do are "indie" developers.

One of my biggest gripes about modern technology is that in the quest to make things easier to use my the masses, they've taken away almost all the control of that product from the user. In the name of control and profit, they make it reliant on DRM, also taking away your useful ownership of the product. Drives me nuts.

My most modern PC is 10 years old this August. Only reason I'll be building something up to date this year is because Windows 10 security updates are about to end, and this PC is a couple of years too old to run Windows 11 out of the box. I expect the PC I build this year to last at least another decade.

When young people (that are nearly adults themselves) are interested in "retro" stuff and they ask me about the 90s and early 2000s the way I'd ask someone what it was like having a TV in the 1950s.

Modern hardware leaves me cold too. My personal interest in retro hardware is in trying to do modern work with yesterday's tech. I'm not much of a gamer.

My main work PC is a Supermicro Xeon something-or-another server from 6 or 7 years ago, which drives a couple of LCDs. One of the LCDs I can switch over to my 1993 486-33 running Slackware 8.1, and pretty much do all the same work I would do on the Supermicro, just slower. They share an NFS filesystem and I can SSH back and forth. I have a Raspberry Pi running the WRP web proxy, and I also use it as an email gateway so I can read and write my Gmail on the old box. Once in a while I forget which system I am on until I type a command that would be instantaneous on the Supermicro but makes the 486 wheeze! It's kind of fun having two systems that span a 30+ year period.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-01-16, 21:18:

When young people (that are nearly adults themselves) are interested in "retro" stuff and they ask me about the 90s and early 2000s the way I'd ask someone what it was like having a TV in the 1950s.

Or when their retro is newer than our retro.
I remember about 10 years in a large share house me and a flatmate (yeh we were kinda checking each other out) were going to get the place to ourselves for a day and she suggested classic Disney movie marathon.
I went and downloaded torrent's of Bambi, Dumbo, Snow white, etc. She meant Aladdin, Lion King, and that era!

Up until recently I didn't consider myself old but I hit 45 and it was like a switch was thrown - OLD.

My iPhone started to confuse and annoy me, I fall asleep on the couch, I forget just about everything, interest in new tech dropped right off (not good for a tech worker), and yes note taking has skyrocketed.

I'm not loving it I must say but it's just a challenging time of life I think. My enthusiasm is dropping off while the world seems to be getting more complicated.

@chinny22 To be fair, I'd consider both groups to be classics by now.
I'd add Aristo Cats and The Rescuers (aka Bernard&Bianca) to the classics, too. ;)

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-01-16, 21:18:

When young people (that are nearly adults themselves) are interested in "retro" stuff and they ask me about the 90s and early 2000s the way I'd ask someone what it was like having a TV in the 1950s.

yes that's true, and also some of the misconceptions about "life back then" they have, which tells you that you must have the same misconceptions about the 50's etc

I've noticed that period drama based in the times as recent as 80's and 90's manages to get things slightly off somehow, like its trying to concentrate every high profile media-aware thing into too little 'space' while missing the subtleties and the more hum-drum normal existence. i'd guess that drama set before that are similarly slightly off, so no one gets anything depicted really accurately

badmojo wrote on 2025-01-17, 02:21:

Up until recently I didn't consider myself old but I hit 45 and it was like a switch was thrown - OLD.

My iPhone started to confuse and annoy me, I fall asleep on the couch, I forget just about everything, interest in new tech dropped right off (not good for a tech worker), and yes note taking has skyrocketed.

I'm not loving it I must say but it's just a challenging time of life I think. My enthusiasm is dropping off while the world seems to be getting more complicated.

i found it moved slower - but i remember the slow switch in the way i was perceived in workplaces, from the young one through a kind of less noticed middle ground and then realising that i was one of the older ones now.

my memory is still ok - but perhaps not as sharp as it was but there is a drop off in enthusiasm for "new tech" - i think because experience tells me it isnt often that new really, just another layer and/or abstraction. I'm not sure its a loss though, with it has come a bit more insight and an ability to not be distracted by the latest acronyms etc. Of course that still can set someone apart from the younger group, its different and the the difference is attributed to age

actually that's a more general point about the way groups of people seem to perceive age - if you forget things when young its because you're busy, distracted, stressed, not one for details or any number of excuses but if you forget something when older its because you're old, nothing else - it starts to dominate perceptions and become the one factor above others to account for any behaviour. I also hate when colleagues and friends my age make comments like "i cant walk up these stairs like i used to" and so on - not helping that perception, letting the side down! 😀

debs3759 wrote on 2025-01-16, 20:41:

My most modern PC is 10 years old this August. Only reason I'll be building something up to date this year is because Windows 10 security updates are about to end, and this PC is a couple of years too old to run Windows 11 out of the box. I expect the PC I build this year to last at least another decade.

that ties into something else - but suspect this isn't my age but more the maturity of the whole tech market - i hang on to things far longer. like you i will get something for win 11 and i expect it to last a long time.

i think though that's due to tech, in the past like in the 90's and early 2000's many things were changing quickly - PCs, cell phones, televisions - there were more tangible differences every 2-3 years. Now it's very static.

Having said that lots of phones (and TVs even) now are being more and more advertised on the basis of being able to speak to an AI, that has the reverse effect and will make me hang on to old stuff longer 😀