One difference between my generation and the young people of today, is back then, we cared about people and gave them a second chance - or a third, or a fourth.
The new memory chips arrived and they worked flawlessly. I uploaded about 650GB of data to them - about 11,000 songs, a few thousand books, and a thousand or more photos and videos. Videos in particular, take up a lot of space. But I also noticed that cell phone photos take about ten times as much space as our old digital camera pictures - but don't look much better, on a small screen. Digital camera pictures are stored in directories and files with the year and date on them. Cell phone pictures all have indecipherable names like "2051267_1056783" which is really handy when you are searching for that last picture you took of grandma before she died.
The personal computer used to be personal, as I noted before. Now, it is like a device that belongs to big tech, which we are allowed to use. I noted before how a "software upgrade" to my phone remapped the off button to load Gemini AI instead. I noped out of that right away, disabled Gemini AI (still able to do this!) and have ignored subsequent pleas to "update" my phone. Oh, and I am using Duck-Duck-Go for AI-free searches, as clunky as it is. I find that AI results are wrong or misleading about half the time.
I noticed other weird little changes to the O/S on the phone. I no longer click on "delete" to delete old text messages. They changed that to "trash" which is a big improvement. I mean, "delete" - what does that even mean? It was so confusing!
I still haven't figured out how to get my printer to work with the Chromebook - I will have to buy a new printer or keep using one of my four old Toshiba laptops to print from. A friend of mine complained about the same thing - she had a Macbook but switched to a Windows machine and found it frustrating to figure out. Once you get used to a certain machine and software, having to re-learn all the changes with each "upgrade" gets harder and harder - particularly as you get older. And as you get older, you start to think that maybe these "upgrades" are not upgrades at all, but merely a cash-grab by big tech to force us all to throw away functioning technology in favor of the latest-and-greatest. Microsoft no longer supports even the previous generation of Windows, which is a big switch from the past, when even three or four previous generations were supported.
Anyway, I mentioned to my friend that the new Macbook Air came out and people are saying good things about it (supposedly) and I saw them for sale at Walmart for about $500. "Really?" she said, "I do so loathe going to the Apple store!" She wanted an Apple product, but not the Apple "experience." It is akin to saying you like Starbucks coffee but not the sneering "barista" talking down to you and expecting a huge tip for pouring coffee.
So she lugged her new Macbook home in a grey plastic Walmart bag, not a fancy paper Apple bag with the logo facing out. Wasn't that the whole point of Apple? And Starbucks? Mark's store (Sutton Place Gourmet) had lovely bleached white paper bags with string handles and the company logo (an artichoke) on the side. People would actually come in asking for bags, so they could put their Safeway groceries in them and make other people think they had money to burn. Humans are fascinating - and incredibly stupid.
Anyway, she is happy with the Macbook Air and maybe it isn't as powerful as the old-school Macbook (nor is a Chromebook a proper substitute for a real PC), but for us older folks who just want to answer e-mails and get sucked into online scams, it works perfectly. And with these new tablets we bought (outrageously outdated Galaxy Tab A's) we are all set for the retirement home. Funny thing, they give junky tablets like this, with simple games on them, to toddlers - and to the elderly. We have come full circle.
I digress. Today's topic is boomerism and how lucky we had it back in the day compared to the present.
I finished loading all these books on my tablet and thought I would test it out by loading one. I picked this book, "Riding in Cars with Boys" at random, mostly because I recalled there was a movie made from it and I suspected it might be about Catholic girls and teenage fellatio, as Frank Zappa once sang about.
Close, but no cigar.
The protagonist (the author - it is largely autobiographical) documents how she became a "bad girl" because her parents were mean to her and poor and gave her the initials "B.A.D." so she dated and slept with "bad boys" and got pregnant in high school and dropped out and married the schmuck who knocked her up. He becomes a heroin addict and disappears. She smokes pot and does a lot of drugs and drinks heavily - while raising a kid as a single mother in the 1970s - and blames all her woes on society, her family, her teachers, and everyone but herself.
The first part was a depressing read, but I plowed on. In the second part, she gets arrested in a drug raid and turns her life around - with heavy lifting from the government. Yes, back then, you could get welfare, food stamps, a free house to live in, and so forth. It wasn't so much they wanted to help her out, but realized the kid was an innocent bystander in this train wreck. Of course, today, welfare is largely dead - you can get "TANF" - Temporary Assistance to Needy Families - but only four five years for your lifetime. And while Section-8 housing exists, the waiting lists to get on that program can stretch for years.
But better still, she was able to get a GED diploma and a scholarship to the local community college. A $500 student loan allowed her to buy a secondhand VW Beetle and commute to classes. After two years, she was able to transfer to Wesleyan for her Bachelor's degree - on a full scholarship, including a free house to live in!
While it is a heartwarming story of redemption, I thought that the author really placed more emphasis on her efforts to get ahead, while sort of glossing over the huge opportunities offered to her by the government - opportunities that are evaporating rather rapidly, if they are not in fact gone today.
I realize, looking back on my life (and growing up in the same era, albeit a few years later) that I had a lot of opportunities handed to me, by the government, the private sector, and by friends and family, and that I probably wouldn't have made it as far as I did without that help. I also realize that these same opportunities are harder to find today and that the newer generations' grievances are, in fact, legitimate.
General Motors Institute is now Kettering University, Still in business, but the behemoth that was GM is no longer. Today, GM merely assembles light trucks from bought components - a far cry from the era I was in, where we made every part of the car except the gasoline in the tank and the tires on the wheels. As a result, GM sponsors far fewer students (we were paid salaried employees of GM - as students!) but some other companies have taken up the slack.
Similarly, Carrier is a far different company than when I worked there. I am not sure if they reimburse tuition for lab rats like me anymore. They took a chance on me and it made all the difference in the world. Syracuse University had a "Returning Students" program for drop-outs like me, and I was able to attend school at night and eventually (after a decade) earn my BSEE.
At the time, I owned my first house - thanks to the Farmer's Home Administration (FmHa, not FHA) which had a loan program subsidizing interest based on income. Lest you think it was a rampant giveaway, they recouped that interest from the sales price when I sold the house several years later. I guess this program is still around, now called "USDA Loans" but I am not sure what the terms of the program are like.
I had a lot of help along the way, as did the author of "Cars With Boys." Today, though, going to college is a much more expensive proposition - and one that is so pricey that some young people are starting to opt-out. The "happy ending" in the book, where the author graduates from college, moves to New York, and becomes a writer for the Vilage Voice, is now a nightmare today. Graduating from college today means struggling under the weight of staggering student loan debt while working minimum-wage jobs. And jobs for English Lit majors? They simply don't exist - and what few jobs available in writing these days are being replaced by AI-slop generators.
It is a different world today.
And that is not only sad, but bad for business. When we offer a scholarship for a disadvantaged student, it is not just blind charity, but bread cast upon the waters - returning tenfold. We hope the recipient graduates, gets a good job, and .starts paying taxes. In the case of a single mother, perhaps it means a more stable home life for her child. And of course, colleges hope alumni become successful and contribute toward the college endowment fund.
It is cheaper to send someone to college (or a trade school) than it is to put them in prison. When someone gets out of prison, they are largely unemployable. But someone with an education or skills (or both) can be a contributing member of society - and more than pay back the investment that society placed in them.
Sadly, it seems we boomers have "pulled up the ladder" behind us, and talk about nothing other than cutting our taxes and slashing government programs (but not our Social Security, of course!). Although programs that help individual people make up a tiny slice of the government budget (as compared to say, military spending) they are always being offered up for the chopping block.
Companies don't want to train new employees, but rather want five years of experience for an "entry level" position. The logic is, it is cheaper to hire someone that your competition has trained, than to spend valuable resources training in-house. At GMI they told us that they expected more than half the graduates to seek employment at other companies - even Ford and Chrysler! The horror! But as they explained, by training new Engineers, they were increasing the size of the "brain trust" and, as they say, a rising tide lifts all boats.
Of course, increasing the size of the talent pool also tends to dampen salary expectations - as we are seeing today with Computer Engineering graduates - the field is now flooded with people who "learned to code" and salary expectations have dropped as a result. So maybe GM wasn't being completely altruistic by running their own college. Perhaps we were just another part of the car, with specifications and part numbers, interchangeable as well.
Whatever the case, it illustrates that investing in people can pay back to society - and to companies as well.
Maybe it is time we went back to the "good old days" where we actually cared about people.