I think the boys of 50 years ago would love to see our throw away culture, and thrown out gadgets and electronics, they would be building a mountain of super cool spare parts and building incredible devices for themselves.
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Being on hand held devices has taken a lot of creativity out of the culture. A lot. People who used to tinker, now constantly are interrupted by their device.
I remember my father looking at a pile of needlepoint seat covers saying that my grandmother was making them for the dining room chairs and stopped right there, as he pointed to a half finished seat cover with the needle still in it, the day the television came into the house. For one could still create and produce and listen to radio, but television paralyzes many.
That is correct, I believe, what really changed was that they quit showing up.
It wasn’t lack of things to build, fix, take apart, strip for parts, it was that they are still sitting in their bedroom watching their own personal TV, or playing with some device in their hand.
The boys of today are not doing anything, they are watching some distraction on a screen.