Baby Boomers and how we/they are perceived in today's world

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ASPartOfMe
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24 Jul 2021, 4:46 pm

All sorts of computer stuff from operating systems to the internet.


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25 Jul 2021, 9:45 am

ASPartOfMe wrote:
All sorts of computer stuff from operating systems to the internet.

Please don't take it personally if I question that assertion. I have made my living programming for over 40 years and have worked with a lot of different technologies.

COBOL was invented by Grace Hopper who was born in 1906!

EDIT: despite what many have assumed from seeing me, I have never worked with COBOL! I went from assembler and machine code programming in the 80s to C, C++, and Java programming in the 90s, to J2EE and now Javascript/Typescript today.

Linux, by far the most widely used OS in the world as it forms the basis for the Android operating system that powers most of our smartphones was originated by Linus Torvalds (sp?) who is in fact a Swede and is now only 51 years old. Torvalds actually grew up in Finland where I don't know if there ever was a baby boom but if there was it was well before he was born.

Linux's forebear, Unix, was developed in the early 1970s by engineers at Bell Labs who were young at the time but members of Joe Biden's generation. Those people could also be given credit for creating the Internet, with military funding (something Baby Boomers weren't real comfortable with in those days). You can Google (Sergey Brin and Larry Page were both born in 1973!) the details for more info or to find any discrepancies with what I have said.

You may be thinking of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, both true Boomers. Unlike Hopper and Torvalds, those 2 have the reputation of being "techies" but are actually primarily businessmen, both of whom have driven their techie subordinates very hard. Were the poor blighters who nearly worked themselves to death developing the first release of Windows NT Baby Boomers or Gen X? Probably the latter though I wouldn't know. Same for those who have labored to bring Jobs' many products to market. Mac Draw, which I can recall being told was developed as a "killer app" for Jobs' MacIntosh personal computer, was single-handedly developed by Mark Cutter who apparently graduated UC Berkeley in 1980 which would make him very late Baby Boomer of the group that were born late enough to remember the Vietnam War as more of an historical event, that I have previously identified as "not true Baby Boomers" for that reason and having more in common with Generation X with regard to mindset; but yeah I suppose he would count. Steve Jobs actually represented a Boomer archetype I can recall who wanted you to think he was super-cool but turned out to be a real dick if you got to know him. Gates is hard to categorize, he was a techie nerd who also had a mind for business and a knack for getting people to do things for him — I think he transcended "generation" in general.

Bottom line is I have a real hard time associating the Technology Revolution (if that what it is) with any particular generation.


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01 Aug 2021, 10:49 am

Has anybody here ever seen the film Return of the Secaucus Seven? It portrays Boomers when they were at the age Younger Millennials are at now. Might serve as a good comparison for some people.


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01 Aug 2021, 10:52 am

Does anybody know what generational cohorts dominated the group of "insurrectionists" that rioted at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021? Some people might assume there were predominately boomers. My impression is that Gen-X was the largest group.


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01 Aug 2021, 12:25 pm

MaxE wrote:
ASPartOfMe wrote:
All sorts of computer stuff from operating systems to the internet.

Please don't take it personally if I question that assertion. I have made my living programming for over 40 years and have worked with a lot of different technologies.

COBOL was invented by Grace Hopper who was born in 1906!

EDIT: despite what many have assumed from seeing me, I have never worked with COBOL! I went from assembler and machine code programming in the 80s to C, C++, and Java programming in the 90s, to J2EE and now Javascript/Typescript today.

Linux, by far the most widely used OS in the world as it forms the basis for the Android operating system that powers most of our smartphones was originated by Linus Torvalds (sp?) who is in fact a Swede and is now only 51 years old. Torvalds actually grew up in Finland where I don't know if there ever was a baby boom but if there was it was well before he was born.

Linux's forebear, Unix, was developed in the early 1970s by engineers at Bell Labs who were young at the time but members of Joe Biden's generation. Those people could also be given credit for creating the Internet, with military funding (something Baby Boomers weren't real comfortable with in those days). You can Google (Sergey Brin and Larry Page were both born in 1973!) the details for more info or to find any discrepancies with what I have said.

You may be thinking of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, both true Boomers. Unlike Hopper and Torvalds, those 2 have the reputation of being "techies" but are actually primarily businessmen, both of whom have driven their techie subordinates very hard. Were the poor blighters who nearly worked themselves to death developing the first release of Windows NT Baby Boomers or Gen X? Probably the latter though I wouldn't know. Same for those who have labored to bring Jobs' many products to market. Mac Draw, which I can recall being told was developed as a "killer app" for Jobs' MacIntosh personal computer, was single-handedly developed by Mark Cutter who apparently graduated UC Berkeley in 1980 which would make him very late Baby Boomer of the group that were born late enough to remember the Vietnam War as more of an historical event, that I have previously identified as "not true Baby Boomers" for that reason and having more in common with Generation X with regard to mindset; but yeah I suppose he would count. Steve Jobs actually represented a Boomer archetype I can recall who wanted you to think he was super-cool but turned out to be a real dick if you got to know him. Gates is hard to categorize, he was a techie nerd who also had a mind for business and a knack for getting people to do things for him — I think he transcended "generation" in general.

Bottom line is I have a real hard time associating the Technology Revolution (if that what it is) with any particular generation.

Tim Berners Lee designer of the World Wide Web born in 1955. That is kind of important. I should have said WWW instead of internet. No shade on the originators but the average person is not entering line commands on room size machines. Sorry Linux fans, The ideas of Jobs and Gates are a large if shrinking part of how the average person interacts with their devices. The coders made their ideas happen.


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01 Aug 2021, 12:39 pm

MaxE wrote:
Does anybody know what generational cohorts dominated the group of "insurrectionists" that rioted at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021? Some people might assume there were predominately boomers. My impression is that Gen-X was the largest group.


It seemed that way. But as good autistics we are going by literal not colloquial. “Ok boomer” refers to anybody older than zoomers with ideas that are perceived to be old and in need of canceling.

One should not just look at January 6th. The ideas and voters for the “alt right” trend older or dead but it was the zoomers with their use of social media that drove the phenomenon out of peoples basements and into the mainstream. And also with people such as Ben Shapiro in traditional media.


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02 Aug 2021, 12:20 pm

I've found this thread quite interesting to follow. My parents are first year boomers, so it's always surprising when I read about younger ones because of how different the views & opinions & impressions are from my own parents & their friends. I'm a first year gen y (hubs calls us Xillennials), so that also makes it interesting since gen x was skipped.

My parents had college degrees & were married before Woodstock occurred, & they disagreed with the hippie movement. They like some of the music, but very much viewed most of the hippies as people who should grow up & get to doing something "real". Even with mom as a feminist who protested a few times, she never became a bra-burner type. Gen x was viewed in the same light as the hippies.

The contrast between their lives & others always interests me (& can be startling at times). Being on the cusp of generations myself, I only "Ok Boomer" actual boomers or those older.



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22 Aug 2021, 12:57 pm

As I remember it, this is the image boomers had of themselves when they were the age Zoomers are now.

What thoughts go through your mind when you look at these pictures? Do you see anything here that clearly shows a stark contrast between young people in those days vs. young people today?


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22 Aug 2021, 1:18 pm

ASPartOfMe wrote:
Sorry Linux fans, The ideas of Jobs and Gates are a large if shrinking part of how the average person interacts with their devices. The coders made their ideas happen.

Not sure if I understand this last bit, but as I mentioned earlier in this post, most smart phones are running Linux because Android uses the Linux kernel (https://www.howtogeek.com/189036/androi ... n%20kernel). On that basis, I would say Linux won the OS Wars, and most people are interacting with it using their thumbs, not a keyboard and a text-based terminal.


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22 Aug 2021, 3:38 pm

MaxE wrote:
ASPartOfMe wrote:
Sorry Linux fans, The ideas of Jobs and Gates are a large if shrinking part of how the average person interacts with their devices. The coders made their ideas happen.

Not sure if I understand this last bit, but as I mentioned earlier in this post, most smart phones are running Linux because Android uses the Linux kernel (https://www.howtogeek.com/189036/androi ... n%20kernel). On that basis, I would say Linux won the OS Wars, and most people are interacting with it using their thumbs, not a keyboard and a text-based terminal.

Besides the desktop, most "work" is done on laptops and tablets although smartphones have a significant place.

MaxE wrote:
As I remember it, this is the image boomers had of themselves when they were the age Zoomers are now.

What thoughts go through your mind when you look at these pictures? Do you see anything here that clearly shows a stark contrast between young people in those days vs. young people today?

Not in constant contact with parents?

The zoomers know about and some of them like their grandparent's era music. That was not true then. If it was known you liked your parent's "square" music(Frank Sinatra, Big Band) you would be thought of as weird.


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Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 22 Aug 2021, 3:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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22 Aug 2021, 7:19 pm

ASPartOfMe wrote:
Not in constant contact with parents?

The zoomers know about and some of them like their grandparent's era music. That was not true then. If it was known you liked your parent's "square" music(Frank Sinatra, Big Band) you would be thought of as weird.

I was 16 at the time these photos were taken. I could never have been one of the people in these photos. I didn't bond with my peers in the way Boomers were expected to so never had an entrée into the Counter Culture.

The impression I get from these photos is that we're looking at thousands of people in their late teens and early 20s who sincerely believe they have the answer to the world's problems, and are therefore the wave of the future. I don't see any of that in Generation Z. I don't think Billie Eilish would have held much attraction for this crowd. Their egos were way too inflated.


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23 Aug 2021, 4:50 am

MaxE wrote:
ASPartOfMe wrote:
Not in constant contact with parents?

The zoomers know about and some of them like their grandparent's era music. That was not true then. If it was known you liked your parent's "square" music(Frank Sinatra, Big Band) you would be thought of as weird.

I was 16 at the time these photos were taken. I could never have been one of the people in these photos. I didn't bond with my peers in the way Boomers were expected to so never had an entrée into the Counter Culture.

The impression I get from these photos is that we're looking at thousands of people in their late teens and early 20s who sincerely believe they have the answer to the world's problems, and are therefore the wave of the future. I don't see any of that in Generation Z. I don't think Billie Eilish would have held much attraction for this crowd. Their egos were way too inflated.

That is the Woodstock mythology anyways. Somehow I think a lot of them were there to get stoned and laid. They ascribed these more utopian motives to themselves after they read about how historic it was.


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03 Oct 2021, 11:47 am

Sorry to have given in to the urge to resurrect this thread, but it's my thread after all.

I gave this considerable thought and have decided that Baby Boomers (according to my personal definition those born before roughly 1959) can legitimately lay claim to one distinction:

They are the first generation to rebel against established tradition in such a way that the rebellion reached beyond their own cohort and affected those from earlier generations that were around at the time, and began a progression of societal changes that continues today, although admittedly today's world looks very little like the sort of utopia most young activists envisioned at the time of Woodstock.

There is nothing new about rebellious youth. The flappers in the 1920s, the Beatniks and Rebel Without a Cause in the 1950s, and Ferris Bueller in the 1980s were all rebellious youth. It may be significant that these rebellions achieved prominence in eras of relative prosperity. But they didn't lead to anything further.

OTOH the Boomers changed some things forever. Slavishly conformist business attire, for example. The traditional role of the Housewife/Homemaker. Acceptance of sexuality other than straight heterosexual. Openly cohabiting outside of marriage. Using "recreational" drugs without being considered a "junky". Rejection of mainstream religion. Questioning Western values in general. Not feeling obligated to cooperate when pressed into military service. And so forth. The latter act of rebellion is probably the most important to understand, insofar as it was undoubtedly the very real prospect of being sent to die in the War in Vietnam that caused the sea change from the usual youthful rebellion to long-term societal change. Some of these things such as extramarital cohabitation and recreational drug use had always existed, but were relegated to the less "savory" walks of life. Suddenly it was OK for graduates of Yale and Harvard (and I supposed Oxford and Cambridge) to do those things.

I suspect when most people think of Baby Boomers, they mostly think of people in a certain age group who've had economic advantages they didn't have or points of view that were developed decades in the past. It also didn't help that many of the more fortunate boomers eventually rebelled against the ideas they espoused in their youth and became Libertarians, Objectivists, and so forth, or came late to traditional religion, having felt they'd lost their way. Those people might not seem recognizable given what I said above. But I challenge anyone to argue my basic premise, at least as it applies to Baby Boomers in the days when they were young.


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04 Oct 2021, 6:47 am

I would add they changed pop music forever although it could be argued that the musicians themselves were from the silent generation. They popularized the idea of music genres belonging to a generation.

As far as casual sex was concerned it was all over TV, movies, and the news but as far actual people most of it in my experience was guys bragging and trash talking.

Acceptance of alternate sexualities, not in my world. Sure that was when the what was called “gay liberation” started and those activists get credit for getting the ball rolling. Being called a “fag”, “homo” etc was considered the worst insult you could be called. I remember in college there was a gay club meeting and somehow word got out and people were watching to see who was going into the meeting.


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05 Oct 2021, 6:58 am

ASPartOfMe wrote:
I would add they changed pop music forever although it could be argued that the musicians themselves were from the silent generation. They popularized the idea of music genres belonging to a generation.

What I consider revolutionary about the era is that "popular" music genres like Rock'n'Roll and R&B became mainstream. Until the mid 1960s College Men didn't openly listen to that stuff, they cultivated a taste for Jazz and Classical.

I can recall an instructor remarking on how strange it was for him to hear the sound of the Doobie Brothers coming from the open window of a building on campus. He wasn't angry about it, it was just such a radical change from his prior academic experience. Such music had never been considered intellectual.


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05 Oct 2021, 11:58 am

MaxE wrote:
ASPartOfMe wrote:
I would add they changed pop music forever although it could be argued that the musicians themselves were from the silent generation. They popularized the idea of music genres belonging to a generation.

What I consider revolutionary about the era is that "popular" music genres like Rock'n'Roll and R&B became mainstream. Until the mid 1960s College Men didn't openly listen to that stuff, they cultivated a taste for Jazz and Classical.

I can recall an instructor remarking on how strange it was for him to hear the sound of the Doobie Brothers coming from the open window of a building on campus. He wasn't angry about it, it was just such a radical change from his prior academic experience. Such music had never been considered intellectual.

I would not consider that unusual. They may add styles but people tend to still like most of the same music they grew up with.The people who were children and teens during the first rock and roll wave were in college in the 60s. The college students listening to the Doobie Brothers in the 70s were kids and teens in the 60s.

In my schools it was bubblegum around 5th grade, Progressive Rock and Zep in high school, the Doors, the Dead and Southern Rock in college were most popular (confederate decals in homage to the bands not uncommon with students mostly from Long Island many Jewish)


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