Incoming college freshmen may have never used a card catalog in the library, have never had to shake a thermometer down after taking their temperature, and they live in a world where condoms were always advertised on TV.
This is according to the Mindset List, released every year by Beloit College in Wisconsin.
I get a kick out of this list every year, and it reminds me how old I really am.
Most of the new college freshmen were born in 1991, when we were at war with Iraq, a Bush was in the White House, and Roger Clemens was throwing seeds at American League hitters (see my sidebar for more on that year). But the Internet -- which is to this generation what the moon landing was to my own -- was more of a concept than a way of life that year.
For a benchmark, the Beloit list uses the year the incoming college class reached an age where they were aware of the world around them (for argument's sake let's say it was at around age five or six, or around 1996). Anyway, here are some of Beloit's findings:
- Tattoos have always been chic, and not just something bikers, sailors, or prison inmates wore.
- Students have always been able to read books on an electronic screen.
- The Green Giant has always been Shrek, not the big guy picking vegetables.
- Margaret Thatcher has always been a former prime minister.
- Salsa has always outsold ketchup.
- Earvin "Magic" Johnson has always been HIV-positive.
- They have been preparing for the arrival of HDTV all their lives, but there have always been flat screen televisions.
- Rap music has always been main stream. (Footnote: Why must they call it "rap music?" Either it's rap or it's music, but it can't be both.)
- Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream has always been a flavor choice.
- Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Latvia, Georgia, Lithuania, and Estonia have always been independent nations.
- There has always been a computer in the Oval Office.
I menntioned card catalogs at the library. It was a special size of filing cabinet, useless for anything but a library. Inside were index cards affixed into a slide-out drawer. Most card catalogs had a small drawer for each letter of the alphabet, and if you knew a book's title, author, or subject you can find that book. In theory. You can take the whole drawer out, plop it on your desk (but quietly; this is a library), and find the "address," or Dewey Decimal System number of the book.
Libraries still use the Dewey Decimal System, only you use a computer terminal to find your book's address. And I suspect the numbering system is another thing that may yet become a memory. Libraries keep it around for dinosaurs like me.
As is the glass thermometer. You stick it in your mouth, under the tongue, and wait a couple of minutes. To read it you angle it so you can best see the mercury through the trangular glass. Then you grab the thermometer by the far end and give it a few good shakes, forcing the mercury back into the bulb. That's how you reset it. Low-tech, but it worked.
Although the design was enduring enough to last for generations, encroaching technology -- electronic thermometers where you don't have to wait for a reading -- doomed it. That, plus its unofficial name didn't do much for it. Like the time a wife or girlfriend or somebody in my house was sick, and I was practicing the ol' bedside manner. I took the thermometer out, read it with a practiced eye, announced the results, looked again at the thermometer, and asked: "What's rectal mean?"
That's why I don't like the newer electronic thermometers. They take away a perfectly good one-liner.
This is according to the Mindset List, released every year by Beloit College in Wisconsin.
I get a kick out of this list every year, and it reminds me how old I really am.
Most of the new college freshmen were born in 1991, when we were at war with Iraq, a Bush was in the White House, and Roger Clemens was throwing seeds at American League hitters (see my sidebar for more on that year). But the Internet -- which is to this generation what the moon landing was to my own -- was more of a concept than a way of life that year.
For a benchmark, the Beloit list uses the year the incoming college class reached an age where they were aware of the world around them (for argument's sake let's say it was at around age five or six, or around 1996). Anyway, here are some of Beloit's findings:
- Tattoos have always been chic, and not just something bikers, sailors, or prison inmates wore.
- Students have always been able to read books on an electronic screen.
- The Green Giant has always been Shrek, not the big guy picking vegetables.
- Margaret Thatcher has always been a former prime minister.
- Salsa has always outsold ketchup.
- Earvin "Magic" Johnson has always been HIV-positive.
- They have been preparing for the arrival of HDTV all their lives, but there have always been flat screen televisions.
- Rap music has always been main stream. (Footnote: Why must they call it "rap music?" Either it's rap or it's music, but it can't be both.)
- Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream has always been a flavor choice.
- Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Latvia, Georgia, Lithuania, and Estonia have always been independent nations.
- There has always been a computer in the Oval Office.
I menntioned card catalogs at the library. It was a special size of filing cabinet, useless for anything but a library. Inside were index cards affixed into a slide-out drawer. Most card catalogs had a small drawer for each letter of the alphabet, and if you knew a book's title, author, or subject you can find that book. In theory. You can take the whole drawer out, plop it on your desk (but quietly; this is a library), and find the "address," or Dewey Decimal System number of the book.
Libraries still use the Dewey Decimal System, only you use a computer terminal to find your book's address. And I suspect the numbering system is another thing that may yet become a memory. Libraries keep it around for dinosaurs like me.
As is the glass thermometer. You stick it in your mouth, under the tongue, and wait a couple of minutes. To read it you angle it so you can best see the mercury through the trangular glass. Then you grab the thermometer by the far end and give it a few good shakes, forcing the mercury back into the bulb. That's how you reset it. Low-tech, but it worked.
Although the design was enduring enough to last for generations, encroaching technology -- electronic thermometers where you don't have to wait for a reading -- doomed it. That, plus its unofficial name didn't do much for it. Like the time a wife or girlfriend or somebody in my house was sick, and I was practicing the ol' bedside manner. I took the thermometer out, read it with a practiced eye, announced the results, looked again at the thermometer, and asked: "What's rectal mean?"
That's why I don't like the newer electronic thermometers. They take away a perfectly good one-liner.
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