“Even though I was born in the 70s, I was keenly aware of what all sorts of devices were that were from the early 20th century to the 60s.”
The twenty-something’s are not nearly as widely read or informed as we were. Many have never seen a black and white movie and seem proud of the fact. They aren’t interested. Another possibility is their parents are not as informative. I was dragged to antique shows and gun shows and given constant input on the importance of this or that item at the time. I think later parents use video as a way off keeping the kids entertained while they go off and do things not involving the kids. I was fascinated by the fact my mom road a horse to school and the neighbor boys brought their rifles to school so they could hunt on the way home. (If they shot something the family had meat. If not, then no.) The past is fascinating. I wonder how they’d respond to the 45 rpm record player you could buy as an under-dash option.
Most of the record players that went in cars in the fifties were a special format-17 rpm and choice of music titles were very limited. they had the right idea but the technology wasn’t quite there yet. BTW if you see one cheap, grab it. classic car guys will pay top dollar for a working one in good condition.
CC
They are from the first generation that has had entertainment developed specifically for them. They are totally isolated from the culture we grew up in.
I think it’s just technology changing much faster now. When we bought a new stereo when I was a kid the primary differences from the old were that it was smaller and nothing was broken. All the main “parts” were the same, LP player, 8 track, AM/FM radio, RCA jacks in the back. We got a new car it had all the same stuff in all the same places as the old one. The previous poster mentioned the cartoons, the stuff in my house was basically identical to the stuff in the 30 year old Tom and Jerry cartoons I watched.
Now it’s just not that way. Things change now very rapidly, 10 year old stuff is ancient, and there’s no longer a reason to keep the old stuff around. These kids don’t know what a walkman is because nobody their related to has owned one in their lifetime, hard to learn about things you’ve never seen. The rubberband is moving very quickly and the old stuff is winding up in the trash. Not really worth keeping it around just to show your kids what personal music devices looked like before they were born.
A major difference is that back then, stuff was simple enough that an inquisitive child could grasp the basic concepts behind pretty much anything. Today, gadgets are so sophisticated as to be indistinguishable from magic. A mere iPhone (a small glassy black slab conjuring up worlds near, far and virtual) consists of literally hundreds of billions of distinct components, all operating according to billions of individual instructions; when I started, radios could be built from a handful of simple parts, and computers weren’t much more complex. Kids can’t comprehend gadgets by just disassembling them anymore; it’s magic, it works, and no amount of staring at the pieces (short of an electron microscope) elicits how it works - you need a major degree to understand a common phone. Texting and playing Minecraft is more rewarding to most kids.