[speaker001:] it seems to me that one of the biggest differences is the computer revolution
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] and I can very clearly remember ten years ago I was just beginning to explore computerizing my office and and exploring trying to find out what kinds of computers might be useful and we did end up with uh IBM PCs which I now would not have chosen but that was before the Macintosh
[speaker002:] really yeah
[speaker001:] and twenty years ago I was uh in graduate school pecking out a dissertation on on a manual typewriter
[speaker002:] oh I know it
[speaker001:] so I would say that's one of the largest changes in at least in my life
[speaker002:] yeah I've I've seen that just in the last um even five years how much they've increased uh increased in use or probably eight years when I was a freshman in college
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] uh my degree was in computer uh technology originally and it seemed like it would they were just getting out with the you know the disks and all that getting away with the cards
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] you know doing away with the the programming cards and uh
[speaker001:] right yeah thirty years ago I I had a college job uh working as a programmer and we had to write code in binary and uh have it punched in on those little cardboard cards which I don't think exist anymore you never see one of those punch cards anymore
[speaker002:] I know no um I think TV has a lot to do with the changes too don't you in like people's attitudes
[speaker001:] well very possibly uh I'm not sure in the last ten years it's been very different from before uh certainly in the last thirty I would say there have been significant changes even even the change from black and white to color television thirty years ago I guess there were color TVs but I sure didn't have access to one
[speaker002:] yeah oh
[speaker001:] and uh by twenty years ago practically everybody had a color TV and now I think they're as almost as many well there are more TVs than households so
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] it's close to getting uh one TV per person they say
[speaker002:] and now everybody uh has VCRs and two or three VCRs
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] and that kind of thing
[speaker001:] yeah certainly ten years ago uh VCRs were just coming on the market so that's made a significant difference in the way I watch television for instance because uh now I almost never watch a TV program when it's on
[speaker002:] yeah I know
[speaker001:] I tape it and then watch it when it's convenient and that way I don't have to worry about being interrupted I can just put it on pause
[speaker002:] yeah and you can you can flip through the commercials so you don't have to watch the commercials
[speaker001:] right yeah
[speaker002:] that's always hassle convenient
[speaker001:] um-hum yes you can watch a program in forty five minutes instead of an hour you skip the commercials
[speaker002:] uh-huh so what was their question about decline in sociological
[speaker001:] wasn't the decline so much I think they just said the changes in uh social social changes in the United States
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] how was life different ten twenty or thirty years ago so
[speaker002:] well
[speaker001:] it
[speaker002:] I can't really remember back that far but ten years ago um I don't know I'd say like in the nineteen seventies you remember how kids would walk around with AM what do you call those little AM radios and now people have jam box with CD players in them you know
[speaker001:] yes yes that's certainly a difference
[speaker002:] and hand held TVs and car phones
[speaker001:] yeah that's another one yeah car phones is a good point and uh cellular phones of all types and beepers uh ten years ago I was working in a job at a medical center and I had to carry a beeper around and they were
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] kind of bulky and all they did was just uh make a beep noise and then you had to go find a telephone and call in to find out what they wanted you for and who you were supposed to call
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] these days they have these tiny little things that are only about the size of two or three pencils and they fit in your shirt pocket and they have a little display screen that shows you a message and either tells you a person or a a phone number to respond to and
[speaker002:] those are cool
[speaker001:] yeah those are pretty neat and they have the kind that just vibrates so you can shut them off in a theatre or something and you can still get your messages
[speaker002:] yeah yeah
[speaker001:] but let's see social changes uh
[speaker002:] where do you think it's where do you think it's going to go in twenty years
[speaker001:] I haven't the slightest idea I was just thinking though about a a a huge social change in the last ten years is AIDS
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] it was just beginning to be recognized and noticed ten years ago I I know that because I was writing a a paper about it
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] I was writing a a journal article uh and they still didn't even know what caused it or anything uh there was a suspicion that it was a virus but nobody had identified it and they were really just going on epidemiological uh
[speaker002:] wow um-hum
[speaker001:] uh guesswork uh because the way it was transmitted made it look an awful lot like uh hepatitis and then
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] from from the spread pattern of hepatitis they could work backwards to the transmission by uh blood and semen and then I
[speaker002:] I'm curious what was your uh graduate study in
[speaker001:] well I was I was in English as a matter of fact and medieval studies
[speaker002:] oh wow uh-huh
[speaker001:] uh but I went to work as an editor and writer so uh uh uh uh ten years ago I was working in the medical center uh publishing a journal and writing about medical topics
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] and let's see twenty years ago I guess we're were just beginning to get into what they were calling the uh the sex revolution where uh after the pill and uh uh
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] freed people up from worries about uh illegitimate pregnancy and I guess in the seventies is the the time when that was supposed to have exploded thirty years ago there was no pill
[speaker002:] um-hum do you think that's caused a lot of pressure on like younger kids today to make choices that they probably shouldn't have to make
[speaker001:] yep I do I really do I have uh
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] four kids in college right now children and stepchildren and I know that the expectation for them was uh to have sex and uh much earlier than the expectation when I was in college
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] in my day we talked quietly behind our hands about people that we suspected might be sleeping with their boyfriends
[speaker002:] yeah yeah yeah
[speaker001:] but they certainly didn't expect everybody to and it was really only uh acceptable if you were engaged and planning to get married in in the relatively near future
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] and I certainly know from talking to my stepdaughter that girls in high school were under a whole lot more pressure nowadays
[speaker002:] oh yeah it's kind of scary when I think of what will happen in twenty years you know when I have kids and they're grown and um just kind of some of the changes that will happen even more so seems like it can't get much worse
[speaker001:] and I guess the answer is is stay flexible because nobody can predict what's going to happen in twenty years I certainly wouldn't have been able to twenty years ago tell you what uh my kids were likely to be like course one of them was just a a an
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] a brand new baby twenty years ago so I sure wouldn't have been able to predict
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] for him
[speaker002:] hm
[speaker001:] and some of the other ones weren't born
[speaker002:] yeah so sounds like America's going to become even more communication society with faxes and cellular phones and
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] worldwide communication and
[speaker001:] electronic mail I just got on that this past about a year ago and that's made a difference in the way I do my job because it's so much easier to get hold of people and get quick answers to things
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] even when they're another on another continent
[speaker002:] yeah  it's pretty wild
[speaker001:] yeah and even you know that reminds me Federal Express was around ten years ago but it was used as kind of an extreme emergency
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and nowadays people use Fed Ex all the time
[speaker002:] yeah sure do huh
[speaker001:] people do seem to travel more it's much more common for people even teenagers to be going to Europe and South America and Asia uh
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] I was almost thirty before I got off this continent and uh both my kids had been abroad when they were still in high school
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] I know that's what uh what my family was talking when I picked up and moved to Texas from Indiana and they were like well you know twenty thirty years ago we wouldn't have done that you know
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] and uh especially come home every couple months
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] you know and