For the last 3.5 weeks, I’ve been fortunate enough to spend my winter break with my parents and brother in Japan. During the first week of the break my brother had a top notch idea: breaking out all of the old photos my parents have from before digital photography was common. We found photos from Germany and Cuba and China and Oregon; photos dating from as early as my parents’ college years to as recent as my brothers’ college years and my early elementary school years. I decided to task myself with the job of scanning all of our photos to ensure that we would have them even if something unfortunate were to happen (i.e. a fire or flood or typhoon). As I sorted the photos into various piles in an attempt to make it more organized I noticed that photos of my brother’s life were much more numerous than photos of my own life. When I finished I found the numbers to be 472 for my brother and 218 for myself.
Before I continue I’d like to add some background knowledge for anyone who doesn’t already know me and my family. My parents had my brother in 1983; 13 years later I was born (although I wasn’t adopted until a year after my birth). And thus although my brother and I are siblings, and are actually quite close, we have a large age difference. Most of the time it isn’t too prevalent; however, sometimes there will be a generational gap. Sometimes there will be an actor or world event or common game that my brother grew up with but I have no idea about.
The reason I mention our age difference is because it means that when my brother was starting college, I was starting elementary school. Thus, by the time my parents had a digital camera that was used consistently, I was only in fourth or fifth grade; due to our age difference however, this put my brother at an age where he was already out of school. Because of our age difference, my brother’s entire childhood and the first few years of adulthood are captured through film or printed photos. Since I’m 13 years younger, half of my childhood was documented through film or printed photos, but the other half has been documented digitally.
This made me think about a post I saw online that attempted to explain the nostalgic attitude that can so often be found in people of my generation (of which most people say my brother is not a part of). “I read a post once that described 90’s kids as a generation of nostalgia because so much technological advancement happened in such a rapid time frame when we were growing up. We can clearly remember having technologies that are now obsolete like going from a corded, huge ass phone to a small computer in your pocket just within our formative years is a major thing and sparks a nostalgia for our seemly ‘simpler’ childhoods because the rapid development makes it seem like it was a lot longer than it actually was.”
Following this explanation, was an additional comment I found interesting: “Just to add onto that, our childhood wasn’t even technology based. We grew up knowing of chalk, skateboards, jump rope, street hokey, playgrounds, butterfly collecting, etc. Slowly technology took over our lives and now there are hardly kids playing outside in the summer. We can clearly remember our childhood as it was and now we can see the clear line between it. We were the generation right smack in the middle of it all. Our parents were of non-tech and our children/younger siblings will be all-tech.”
I really think that the two together explain my generation a lot. So many times when I meet someone near my age we get to talking about old shows we grew up on, or old music. We’re old enough to have our childhood without technology, but we’re young enough to have had technology become common by the time we got to high school. The change between the two happened so quickly, and yet the change is so large that it feels like more time should have passed. Personally I can remember using the dial-up internet on our large computer that the entire family shared; I can remember the Play Station games; I can remember the flip phones that had a 1.3 megapixel camera; I can remember when the iPod touch came out and when the iPhone came out; I can remember when people around me began to acquire laptops to replace their desktops; I can remember when the lowest flash drive held 1 GB of information and the highest flash drive held only 64 GB of information. Now internet is found everywhere, everyone in my family has their own laptop, there are Play Station 4’s, phones double as actual cameras with up to 12 megapixels, there are 9 different types of iPhones, flash drives are sold with a minimum of 4 GB and can go up to 128 GB. Things are so much more advanced and yet, these memories occur as late as my sixth grade.
Sorting through these photos just reminded me of how differently my brother and I grew up even though we’re only 13 years apart. It also reminds me of how quickly we’ve advanced in technology and it makes me wonder what we’ll accomplish in the next 10 years! We’re already developing floating cities, making 3D-printed organs and prosthetics, discovering new things in space, and making smaller devices capable of holding more information. The future has so many possibilities and it will be very interesting to see what happens.
Before I continue I’d like to add some background knowledge for anyone who doesn’t already know me and my family. My parents had my brother in 1983; 13 years later I was born (although I wasn’t adopted until a year after my birth). And thus although my brother and I are siblings, and are actually quite close, we have a large age difference. Most of the time it isn’t too prevalent; however, sometimes there will be a generational gap. Sometimes there will be an actor or world event or common game that my brother grew up with but I have no idea about.
The reason I mention our age difference is because it means that when my brother was starting college, I was starting elementary school. Thus, by the time my parents had a digital camera that was used consistently, I was only in fourth or fifth grade; due to our age difference however, this put my brother at an age where he was already out of school. Because of our age difference, my brother’s entire childhood and the first few years of adulthood are captured through film or printed photos. Since I’m 13 years younger, half of my childhood was documented through film or printed photos, but the other half has been documented digitally.
This made me think about a post I saw online that attempted to explain the nostalgic attitude that can so often be found in people of my generation (of which most people say my brother is not a part of). “I read a post once that described 90’s kids as a generation of nostalgia because so much technological advancement happened in such a rapid time frame when we were growing up. We can clearly remember having technologies that are now obsolete like going from a corded, huge ass phone to a small computer in your pocket just within our formative years is a major thing and sparks a nostalgia for our seemly ‘simpler’ childhoods because the rapid development makes it seem like it was a lot longer than it actually was.”
Following this explanation, was an additional comment I found interesting: “Just to add onto that, our childhood wasn’t even technology based. We grew up knowing of chalk, skateboards, jump rope, street hokey, playgrounds, butterfly collecting, etc. Slowly technology took over our lives and now there are hardly kids playing outside in the summer. We can clearly remember our childhood as it was and now we can see the clear line between it. We were the generation right smack in the middle of it all. Our parents were of non-tech and our children/younger siblings will be all-tech.”
I really think that the two together explain my generation a lot. So many times when I meet someone near my age we get to talking about old shows we grew up on, or old music. We’re old enough to have our childhood without technology, but we’re young enough to have had technology become common by the time we got to high school. The change between the two happened so quickly, and yet the change is so large that it feels like more time should have passed. Personally I can remember using the dial-up internet on our large computer that the entire family shared; I can remember the Play Station games; I can remember the flip phones that had a 1.3 megapixel camera; I can remember when the iPod touch came out and when the iPhone came out; I can remember when people around me began to acquire laptops to replace their desktops; I can remember when the lowest flash drive held 1 GB of information and the highest flash drive held only 64 GB of information. Now internet is found everywhere, everyone in my family has their own laptop, there are Play Station 4’s, phones double as actual cameras with up to 12 megapixels, there are 9 different types of iPhones, flash drives are sold with a minimum of 4 GB and can go up to 128 GB. Things are so much more advanced and yet, these memories occur as late as my sixth grade.
Sorting through these photos just reminded me of how differently my brother and I grew up even though we’re only 13 years apart. It also reminds me of how quickly we’ve advanced in technology and it makes me wonder what we’ll accomplish in the next 10 years! We’re already developing floating cities, making 3D-printed organs and prosthetics, discovering new things in space, and making smaller devices capable of holding more information. The future has so many possibilities and it will be very interesting to see what happens.