What have you seen change big time in your life so far?

Biggins

I currently working on a manuscript for publishing and a number of things occurred to me recently while putting it together. Things that I have withnessed and/or lived through, taken for granted to some extent but before never really thought about or put into context.

In my time so far I have seen a major religious org' lose control and influence, I've seen more openness about sexual wants and needs, major change in attitude towards taking part in social change and protest, change in attitude towards those that still do participate and change in the way we interact with our fellow neighbours, citizens and fellow workers.
...And that's just a few things that immediately spring to mind.

I was wondering if there is anything that fellow board members feel they have seen a major change in, within the course so far of their current lives?

Food for thought?

AnonoBoy

Those little switches on plug sockets. No more zapped childers in the house!

LenaClaire

I think there have been major changes in how news is disseminated as well as how much personal freedom we are willing to lose in the name of security.

If you told anyone in the '90s that 10 years later they would be walking through an x-ray that showed them naked in order to get on a plane they would laugh in your face.

smash

The price of property.
Career women.
The popularity of social networks and how stupid can be on them.

Duggy747

The rise of social networking and Youtube, now everyone wants more than 15 minutes of fame.

Mobile Phones, I remember when the Nokia 3210 came out and it got the ball rolling completely.

How powerful the internet itself has become in terms of freedom of speech and the spread of news.

Biggins

Good points indeed.

alwaysadub

Technology. God be with the days when you had to rewind your VHS videos before bringing them back to Xtra Vision, and you'd always have a pen handy when your music tape got caught in the player.

TanG411

Again, sites like Youtube or Facebook. When something dramatic happens, rather than spectating it there and then, people just take out cameras and start recording them. It's just not the same when looking at what is happening through a small screen. Put the camera away and experience it yourself!

Shenshen

I've seen the communist block in Eastern Europe crumble an fall.

And I've seen the rise in a new mass-paranoia, called Islamic terrorism.

ScumLord

Human society is in the process of a massive change that we're all witnessing. Our technology is finally catching up and surpassing our dreams and expectations.

The people that are around in 20 years could be very different from he people that have been around for the past few hundred years.

Despite so many people trying to hold back that progress to protect their massive incomes (record industry) it's been unstoppable and will be one of the most important changes in Human history.

krudler

jujibee wrote: »

I think there have been major changes in how news is disseminated as well as how much personal freedom we are willing to lose in the name of security.

If you told anyone in the '90s that 10 years later they would be walking through an x-ray that showed them naked in order to get on a plane they would laugh in your face.

It was movie makey uppy technology in Total Recall, now it exists, but I do have to ask, where the fcuk is my hoverboard?!?!!?

sagat2

News coverage: instead of seeing snipplets of what's happened we've transitioned to seeing what's happening, live, from the four corners of the earth, 24 hours a day.

Communication: From a bus in New York I can ring my mum as she buys groceries in the local Supervalu back home and the cost is next to nothing. Unthinkable 20 odd years ago.

nobby grande

Great thread - i thought about this subject whilst walking past wicklow street one evening. There was a queue of about 80 people, all shapes and sizes, and ages waiting to get to order legal powders and pills from the head shop.
I was thinking that this was historical. kind of the opposite of prohibition. I also knew it was a brief moment is history and would be over as soon as they could pass the legislation.

Also the influx of non EU nationals into Ireland. I remember when i was a kid distinctly hearing older age groups commenting when they saw a black or chinese person on the street. Nowadays its normal, and rightly so imo.

Big changes. More to come.

Kimono-Girl

i've seen so many people change....most for the better ( including myself)....
some for the worst:(


i've seen my local area change quite significantly too,

sagat2

Murder: once upon a time, not too long ago any murder in Ireland would be huge news and covered by the papers and news for weeks, now we are chalking off dozens every week.

MingulayJohnny

I'm only 28 but I've noticed lots of changes not all of them great tbh.

Irresponsible\corrupt planning in the countryside and some very ugly out of place looking houses , too big and no trees around them.

The transformation of the ham & cheese deli to the multitude of choices from the mid 90's onwards.

New people moving into an area in the countryside who nobody really knows to this day.

The passing on of the old people I used to talk when I was younger.

Black hole sun , won't you come and wash away the paaaaiiiiinnnnnnn!!:p

Sanjuro

The speed of the progress of technology. I remember seeing Centipede on the Apple computer back in 1986 and it blew my socks off. To see where graphics, computers and gadgets have gotten to now really boggles the mind. And makes me so excited to see what the next 20-50 years will bring.

Pauleta

Big Macs are not very big any more

sagat2

Pauleta wrote: »

Big Macs are not very big any more

nah, I've considered this. Big Macs are actually the same size it's just that we are fatter in comparison.

Biggins

War and its coverage is another for me.

Gone is the waiting (sometimes for days/weeks/months) for news of a battle/war elsewhere.
Now with such fast net access, media communication systems and so many alternative ways for details and news feeds to get out, wars and individual battles are now watched in real-time!

That if we really think about it is both amazing (sad that it occurs of course) and such a leap in technology from our armchairs that we can just sit back and watch a country at war from our home sitting positions. Crazy, really mind blowing stuff!

_feedback_

Technology will certainly be the big word in this thread!

One that is very slowly changing, but hopefully will be subject to massive changes by the time I knock off:

The attitude towards mental health in this country.

Sykk

I can't say it was THAT strict and I growing up, but the church has seem to lost pretty much it's whole grip on the balls of the world. A change I'm happily sitting back to view.

cherryghost

The evolution of the internet

Biggins

Without getting into the why's and where's, I've seen a massive change in attitudes to fearing the strong arm of the law (heavy topic alone for another thread).

Hells Belle

I remember being on a plane with people smoking, the seats had ashtrays built in, you don't see that anymore.

Skype, now thats a great bit of technology.

Blowfish

When I was young my Dad brought home an original IBM PC as they were replacing them in the place he worked. We were quite literally the only people we knew with one.

Everyone the same age as me at the time thought it was pretty much a completely obscure, incredibly nerdy hobbyish thing to have. It's amazing the complete reversal as now I have several people the same age as me that think it's a bit nerdish to not be on Facebook/Myspace etc.

itac

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe....attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate....all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

Anyhoo...!

One thing that sticks out for me, and I know how simple this will sound, but liquid soap! I remember using that blue bottle of Carex for the first time, and thinking-blue soap? Liquid?! Madness! And then a few years ago when I told my niece to wash her hands at my Gran's old house, she didn't know what a bar of soap was...suddenly I felt very old...:(

Aside from that, mp3s are big one for me. I was notorious for bringing about 10 tapes into school each day, as I never knew what mood I'd be in afterward, and so wanted all my favourite tapes with me. The fact that I can now transport 80gb of music (and picture, and video!) around with me in my pocket still occasionally makes me go "wow..."

The relative peace in the North is also something I thought I'd never see-I love driving from Sligo to Enniskillen and not being stopped by soldiers with guns at the border. Unfortunately, other types of terrorism abound, and the memories of hearing about and watching the Sept.11th attacks will stay with me forever. It's a very different world now because of that day.

On a final note, to paraphrase another poster....where's our hoverboards Doc. Brown?!

_feedback_

At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man:

Youngsters attitudes.

When I was young, I would be truly terrified of the repercussions if an adult threatened to tell my parents <insert wrong-doing here>.

Youngsters these days would spit in your face if you said boo to them.

kfallon

The size of me cock!

Can't believe nobody has said it already, AH your standards are slipping!

Duggy747

Porn, oh my lord, how this came from a small thing for wierdos sitting in dark, midnight theaters to having helped pushed the power of the internet.

Believe me, there really is everything catered for in porn. Some kinky, others just.............woah! But the subject of porn is now fairly accepted.

Porn is one thing, Google is another that rose up against the powerhouse that was Yahoo and now practically is the internet!................in a few years they probably will own the internet.

Biggins

Blowfish wrote: »

...Everyone the same age as me at the time thought it was pretty much a completely obscure, incredibly nerdy hobbyish thing to have. It's amazing the complete reversal as now I have several people that think it's a bit nerdish to not be on Facebook/Myspace etc.

Yes, thats a good example. Years ago I would have been the nerd with his head stuck into a monitor box and keyboard, now I'm just another (going silver!) surfer dude. :pac:

Major attitude change itself, in people perceptions of one another.

problemchimp

My hair has disappeared and re-appeared on my back. Farmers used to grow things for their money. Stuff used to get fixed and not dumped in the past. T.V. through the night now and no test card. Milk doesn't go off the way it used to. Mental health budget has almost disapeared. Not enough honey bees left. No punks, mods, skins, rockers, goths, new romantics etc... Now it's short skirts for the girls and regular shirts for the lads, no individual style left. Now I'm off to wax me back and shoulders!

madrabui

Black Tower, Blue Nun and La Piat d’Or were fine wines.
Instant showers - I don't know I survived, or how smelly the population was.

scientific1982

Less organized religion.
Growing popularity of the internet.
Increased consumption of drugs and alcohol.
Growing importance of biotechnology and science in general.

Neyite

being able to get the pill without being married.

being able to buy condoms without a prescription, in a chemist.

being able to buy condoms in the Gents toilets.

being able to buy condoms in the Ladies toilets.

not having to save for a year for a plane ticket to america.

having an MP3 thats the size of the play button on my old walkman


... and i am only 35.

smash

Neyite wrote: »

being able to get the pill without being married.

being able to buy condoms without a prescription, in a chemist.

being able to buy condoms in the Gents toilets.

being able to buy condoms in the Ladies toilets.

not having to save for a year for a plane ticket to america.

having an MP3 thats the size of the play button on my old walkman

So you like sex, music and travel? It's like a bio in a playboy magazine

flyton5

There was a time when the police were friends of the church. Drink driving charges quashed, a blind eye turned to the odd murder...

Bill2673

I went away backpacking in Asia & South America, for 18 months, leaving in early 1999. When I left, nobody had a mobile phone. When I came back, everyone had one. (slight exaggeration, not quite everyone, but most people did).

Stepping back, how we communicate is much much easier. When I was 15, I would ring my mates gaff. If he wasn't there, he wasn't there, and that was that. Ten years later I could send him a text from Beijing and he could reply straight back to me.

Biggins

I remember as a kid just having to ask permission to use the house phone to call a friend or girlfriend (if I had one my parents then didn't seemingly know about), ever cautious that ma and da might be listening in.
If I was on the phone more than 5 minutes, I was interrupted on my call and given stern looks!

Now a days using the phone is just like picking up a pen, a simple communication tool. But back as a kid, it was a major thing for children to be allowed even make a call at home.
How things change!

Bill2673

Biggins wrote: »

I remember as a kid just having to ask permission to use the house phone to call a friend or girlfriend (if I had one my parents then didn't seemingly know about), ever cautious that ma and da might be listening in.
If I was on the phone more than 5 minutes, I was interrupted on my call and given stern looks!

Now a days using the phone is just like picking up a pen, a simple communication tool. But back as a kid, it was a major thing for children to be allowed even make a call at home.
How things change!

Yeah, I remember there being uproar when one of the girls down the road from us rang her friend in Wexford and stayed on the line for 40 minutes......"jaysus that must have cost a fortune".....(and it probably did too).

Biggins

Bill2673 wrote: »

Yeah, I remember there being uproar when one of the girls down the road from us rang her friend in Wexford and stayed on the line for 40 minutes......"jaysus that must have cost a fortune".....(and it probably did too).

During the late 70's/early 80's recession I remember things were that bad that there was an actual small wooden coin box beside the phone in the house, to try and cover the calls alone.
We (my sisters and I) didn't dare use the black round dial phone unless we hand coins in our pockets.
We feared the wrath of ma and da.

(That 'fear' too now has gone from parents grasp in their attempt to control wayward child strife, another thing that has changed - and often not for the better.)

r3nu4l

Communications:

In the late 70's when my Mam wanted to phone my Granny she had to go to the phone box at the end of the street to call her.

In the 1980's she could call from the phone we had installed in the house! Making an international call was out of the question though because it was too expensive!

In the late 90s, mobile phones meant we no longer had to wait under Cleary's clock for ages looking up and down the street to see if our date was coming. Our dates could just phone us to say they would be late (or had dumped us )

In the 21st Century, my international calls to 30 countries are free (Talk Talk) and I can actually hold Video calls with my parents in Ireland via VoIP services like Skype or Google chat.

In 1997 my email address (before hotmail was bought by Microsoft) was a novelty and I thought I'd never really have any use for email.



Politics:
Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe has all but disappeared and 'the Reds' have been replaced by Muslims as the new bogeymen.

In Ireland, our Fianna Fáil (in particular)politicians have been shown to be self-serving and corrupt unlike in the 80's...oh, wait! :pac:

Son Of A Vidic

I remember when a packet of Tayto went from 2p to 4p in price. It was the first time I felt a true sense of injustice.

Big Pussy Bonpensiero

The quantity and quality of entertainment on TV.

Biggins

medicman2009 wrote: »

I remember when a packet of Tayto went from 2p to 4p in price. It was the first time I felt a true sense of injustice.

LOL true ...and you could buy a sweet for a penny. :pac:

KilaWhale

No more Cilla Black every Sat night followed by Glenroe on a Sunday .... if you didn't see Fidelma and Miley rolling around in the hay and the red light wasn't on the VCR, it meant that the moment was gone forever!

zuutroy

The ring pulls dont pull away from the cans no more. I miss that. I was in China last month and they still have them.

Sanjuro

Yeah, a can of coke used to cost 50p. And a mars bar, 30p. Now you need to sell a lung to afford to get really really fat.

I remember our old local shop (closed 10-12 years) used to sell individual cigarettes, I was only a (non-smoking) youngster at the time. I can remember been sent to said shop with a note from my mother for a pack of fags too!

KeithAFC

Lots. A new police force set up, a power sharing government, the 'war' ending, got a job etc.

_feedback_

This change to this.

These change to these.