It really is. My great-grandfather was born in 1898 and died in 1999. He almost lived in three different centuries. He rode a horse and buggy in his youth and played Windows Solitaire in his later years.
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2024
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Ha! My great grandma beat yours! She was born in 1898 and died in 2002!
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Same for my Great-Grandfather, but it was much more than that when I look at his life.
Went from horse and buggies and steam trains, lived through 2 world wars, saw rural electrification - 1930s for him - bring lights and washing machines and telephones, survived his own pandemic - Spanish Flu 1918-1919, saw the invention of automobiles, radios, and TVs, heavier than air flight, the Great Depression, the beginnings of the digital world, and watched the Moon Landings with me sitting in his favorite chair in our living room.
When he died, no one really knew how old he was - there was no official record of his birth certificate since he was born at home in a very rural area. While I'm old myself now and have seen some few changes, I cannot fathom the sheer number of societal upheavals and disruptions he went through every decade of his life.
Well, let's see. Depending on your age, you were alive when JFK was assassinated. You watched the moon landing. You were alive during the Vietnam War. You remember 9/11, the Great Recession, and the spread of Facebook. You were alive when America elected its first Black president. You witnessed the explosion of technology, namely, smart phones. You've driven on roads alongside self-driving electric vehicles. You survived an international pandemic. You have access to the largest library of human knowledge to ever exist. If you'd like to, you can have a decent conversation with something pretending to be human.
I'd say you've lived through a decent chunk of history as well.
Everyone lives through history. But few live to see so many wrenching changes as his generation did. The best I can say I lived through was the beginning of the internet and the inter-connection of every person on the planet.
Fuck, that's my dream but realistically it won't happen. I'm an early 90s kid. I would have to live a decent bit over 100 to see 3 centuries.
It's kind of a sad way to live. Your family is mostly dead and all your friends are gone. And the world isn't what you knew anymore. So you just sit there and wait to die yourself.
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I remember on New Years Eve 1999 the local newspaper ran an article that was interviewing people who'd been alive for the last turn of the century and comparing the two New Years' celebrations. In hindsight I wish 10 year old me had had the presence of mind to save it, it was pretty neat.
I have a recording of interviews I did with all my living grandparents for a school project when I was a kid. One thing that stood out was the level of abject poverty they experienced. They were teenagers during the great depression and it definitely had a major impact on all of them.
Would you be willing to digitize that recording and upload it to the Internet Archive for preservation? You certainly don’t have to add the link here, but I believe it would be a wonderful thing for the next generations to watch one day.
I love watching old restored footage so I can vicariously experience that moment in time and reflect on how far humanity has progressed.
I love this idea! I have videos of my grandparents where my dad interviews them about their lives. And then one of my dad when we interviewed him about his life after he was diagnosed with cancer. Can’t really bear to watch that one but some day I should save them online somewhere. I like the idea of them being part of an archive and part of searchable history fo future generations
I think it’s a noble thing to preserve these digital recordings. It’s tough, because they’re the individual person’s memories. But long after we’re dead and our names and lives are forgotten, it would be an important artifact for our future generations to have access to.
Now I’m thinking about all the old VHS tapes my parents have. If they haven’t already degraded, I’m going to ask for those tapes and see what it costs to digitize them myself.
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The oldest person alive right now was born in 1907 and is 117. Depending on how well her memory has held up, she might be able to remember a time that nobody else in the whole world can.
My grandfather was born in 1910. He was a bombardier in WWII for the US Army Air Corps, since the US Air Force didn't exist yet. He's no longer with us, but his life was so very different than mine. He grew up on a farm with a horse and carriage. I grew up in an apartment playing Atari.
She deserves a free xbox
Imagine being born before World War I and still being alive. You've seen more change in the world than anyone ever has, more deeply transforming events and previously unimaginable things become real. Even teens complain about changes in the world and many work so hard to stop them, I can only imagine experiencing so much makes those things seem so childish and ignorant.
And you know, in a way it goes even deeper, because for her parents, at least half of their life and frame of reference took place in the 1800's. When she was born, 10 year olds would have their earliest memories be of the late 1890s. And the adults around her would be able to vividly remember and discuss events they were present for way back in to the 1850s or even earlier, depending on how much contact she had with old people.
Also, I'm in my late 20s now, and I recently had the startling realization that the old people I remember from my childhood don't really exist anymore. When I was a kid, old people used to be prim and proper. They dressed a certain way, much more formal and traditional. They weren't all uptight, but they had an idea of what's proper or not, and wouldn't be afraid to tell you. They were typically more quiet and less outspoken. All the women knew how to cook and sew, and all the men knew how to do woodwork and make leather shoes shine forever.
I had this realization the other day walking through my city, when I suddenly noticed how all the old people don't seem that old anymore. They're all relaxed and casual, dressing up in colors. They actually smile at you on the street and seem to have a sense of humor. And then it hit me: they're not even the same generation. Old people are the kids of the old people I remember. They grew up with the early prototype of modern rock and pop. They were hippies and greasers. I think the end of WWII and the invention of modern pop culture reaching out beyond the cities really made a cut down between those two generations, the current old people and their parents.
This comment ran longer than expected. Thanks for coming to my ted Talk.
I had a client years ago who was in his late 80's. He grew up on a farm in Indiana and I remember him telling me a story about threshing grain. He was just a kid in the 1920's, shoveling coal into the firebox on a big Case steam engine that they took from farm to farm. He said they would try to stay near a creek whenever they could so they had a water source for the engine. It was hard, hot work. He said there was a "big German fella" who worked on their crew who never drank anything but hot black coffee, something which fascinated him as kid.
It was an interesting story to listen to. Such a mundane activity but the fact that it's no longer a thing and only existed in the memory of someone who remembered doing it made it kind of fascinating
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As an American, if I can't die of heart disease all at once liked a normal person, then I have staggeringly excessive secondary options to remedy my own excessive lifespan.
Oh absolutely not. No thank you. The world at large has my permission to smother me with a pillow if I hit 90 and don't die. But it's fine, I'm sure the microplastics/ultraprocessed food/climate change/whatever will take me out before that.
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Every time I feel old I remember that all of my grandparents lived to well over 90 and that I'm barely halfway through my life. With modern medicine and the Boomers beta testing any advances, I'll probably live to 130 with good quality of life with just over the counter medication and regular automated cancer screenings.
And extra colon cancer screenings if I'm a good boy.
I can't afford to live as long as my grandparents.
Neither did they, but they borrowed from future generations.
Now ppl can't & even might not want to live that long.
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This will happen to all of us if quantum immortality is real.
Meh. Solipsism is lame. Way more fun to believe in a world where my actions have consequences
I like dualipsism. There’s two of us across infinite lifetimes and we have no idea who’s who
Nice. I like the one where I'm Batman and you're Joker
Wait I thought those were both you…
Ohh well this iss embarrassing....
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My grandfather just turned 95. He will probably continue voting for Republicans until he is 120.
Another 5 years and then he can run for president
Millennials worst nightmare.
But I think its clear that through freedom and equity of the markets we have chosen to fight this problem and mitigate the number of people becoming old. You can see the results already.
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