I remember thinking - when my father died in 1995 - that his generation must have been the most priviledged since time began because of the progress which had been made during their lifetime. He was born in 1912. So, insofar as military matters were concerned, for example, servicemen and women, in more recent times, had gone from hand-to-hand combat in the trenches to a situation where someone sitting in an office in Washington DC (or somewhere similar) could direct a missile through any particular window in any particular building on the other side of the world. Similarly, in another example - the world of transport - they had witnessed man's progress from the horse and cart to rockets to the moon and beyond.
Without a shadow of doubt, no other generation before them had lived through such an range of advancements. However, I've recently got around to thinking that almost all of the more significant changes which my father's generation saw actually occurred during my own lifetime - and none more than in the world of communication. In an earlier blog, I alluded to the fact that, as a young schoolchild during WW2, I used to write on a slate. Who could have imagined that, sixty-five later, I would be writing onto a device almost identical in dimensions to the aforementioned piece of stone hewn from a neighbouring quarry - and, furthermore, that my message could be sent around the world in nanoseconds?
******* I suppose, with all due modesty, it's quite impressive to be able to recall events which happened well over half a century ago. Unfortunately, however, remembering what happened rather more recently isn't quite as easy because I've just discovered that I've already attempted to follow this particular line of thought almost a year ago (scroll down to 2/27/2010). *******
