Humans have been evolving and its been happening over so long, the changes have generally been so slow, we mostly don't take it into account in the course of one human life.
When I compare how I grew up to how my daughter grew up - I biked around the neighborhood every day after school - for fun! She walked to Borders books with friends - and they missed it terribly when the store closed - so much so, they bought souvenirs for each other when they sold the store fittings.
My social circle was limited to the folks I saw in school, the neighbors and local cousins plus a penpal in New Zealand.
Her social circle is unlimited - she is part of a tribe she joined on the Internet: At a young age, she wanted to go to LA to be part of the first Youtube conference put on by the Vlogbrothers & friends! So I went and was part of it too. It felt like the average age was 16 years, .... 12 year olds accompanied by one of their parents. I think there were 2000 people there in that sold out conference at the Century City hotel on the Avenue for the Stars. It was fun for parents too!
We host people as part of the AirBnb network - its like staying at home and the world comes to visit! I realized how different a life we lead than most because our visitors tell us.... "I have never stayed in a house with so many magazines (Atlantic, New Yorker, Harpers, the Economist, etc) and the New York Times newspaper delivered daily"
My life is so different from my mother's that she has been saying for decades that she has no idea what I do for a living, but it seems to involve computers. She tried to learn but never could get the hang of it - she actually went to a class with friends - and for none of them would it "take".
Yesterday my sister from Singapore sent me photos that she'd taken during my visit home for my mother's birthday. They arrive in an envelope in a card, in the mail delivered by a postman - and my husband exclaimed "Nobody prints out regular photos anymore, much less mail them to anyone!" I liked them very much, its nice to get actual photos that I can frame - thank you Sis!
Just this morning, I woke up and signed up for an Indiegogo project and found one that my daughter might like so sent a link to her.
Thinking about how differently lives are lived in the course of 3 generations: my mother, myself, my daughter.... I think we have reached a speeded up part of human evolution.
When the first living animals crawled out of the sea onto land, they lived a different life from their parents.
Even my daughter was born before the mobile phone was prevalent - by the time the next generation grows up, they will not know what it is like to live without being able to contact anyone in the world - synchronously or via the Internet asynchronously - at any place, at any moment.
Are we crawling out from inside our own heads, into a shared head space with the rest of the world - connected by mobile devices?
Thanks to the folks in Singapore from "we are social" for creating the video below which triggered these thoughts on a beautiful morning in Spring.
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