Richard Croker's "The Boomer Century 1946-2046"

This is a companion book to a PBS documentary. Not having seen the documentary I can't comment on it. The book, however, is disappointing. The initial part, the history, is satisfactory but nothing special. There is too much focus on individuals and not enough on "the big picture" and the historical context. The last third is focused on boomers in their old age and the "expected" influence they will have on society. Most projections into the future are linear extrapolations and this falls into that category. There is nothing particularly insightful about this author's projections.

On the whole, this is a book that I would have skipped if I had known how unsatisfactory it would be. Oh well. I'm the kind of fool who compounds a mistake by ploughing through a book -- once started -- all the way to the end.

Cassity & Levaren's "The '60s for Dummies"

I'm not a big fan of the "Idiot's Guide" of "Dummies" series of books. But I am a sucker for a history of the 60s, so I read Brian Cassity & Maxine Levaren's The '60s for Dummies.


It isn't a scholarly account. It has no new revelations or special interpretation. It is just a good solid review of that decade. It wasn't particularly "dumbed down" for a broader audience, but it did keep the trajectory of the history straightforward based on a theme approach. First a top-down view of decade in terms of presidents and their policies & actions. Then a series of sections dealing with major drivers of the decade: civil rights, Vietnam, social change, and cultural change.

On the whole I appreciated the book as a no-nonsense review of the history. Certainly a good starting point for anybody who didn't experience it. My favourite history is the 1971 book Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960's by William L. ONeill.

Portal on the Past

I think it is funny that technology now gives me better access to the culture of my youth than I had at the time. I love to now watch videos of rock songs that I don't remember getting a chance to see as a kid on the few TV teens shows in my youth. Now, 50 years later, the stuff is at my fingertips. It is delightful that technology is able to resurrect what I didn't really get to experience the first time around. On the other hand, these old bones of mine just don't have the youthful zest to appreciate the performance as much as they should. As well as aging, some of the joy is gone because I've been jaded by the increased sophistication of our culture (and of myself) over the last few decades.

Here's Dusty Springfield with a fine rendition of the Burt Bacharach song (Hal David lyrics), Wishin' and Hopin'.



And here's a less famous singer, Leslie Gore, who wrote her own songs. I don't ever remember seeing her as a kid but I sure remember the music because a friend had an older sister who had a stack of 45s of her songs. Now, with YouTube technology, I get to see the performances and, through Wikipedia, I get to learn more about her than I really need to know. I guess it is cheating, because I'm thinking retrospectively of her life and art. When you are young it is all ahead of you and its all big, new, and mysterious.

A Lament for the Boomer Generation

Robert X. Cringely writes a series on education which includes a lament for the Boomer Generation:

I'm from the Baby Boom generation and we, by our sheer numbers, have had an inordinate effect on what it means to be "perfect in every way." But our time is passing quickly just as technology explodes after 50 years of Moore's Law. The result is technology that will shortly be beyond us but not beyond the generations that follow. Our grandchildren will run a world very different from the one we ran and many institutions will simply have to adjust or die.

He has a vision:

Today technology is cheap and getting cheaper, while human labor is expensive and becoming more so. Yet our model of education technology is still so defined by that remembered Apple IIe in the corner of the classroom that is it difficult for many to imagine truly pervasive educational technology.

This is in large part because there is no way that Apple IIe or any PC is going to somehow expand to replace books and teachers and classrooms. For education, the personal computer is probably a dead end. It's not that we won't continue to have and use PCs in schools, but the market and intellectual momentum clearly lie elsewhere.

So forget about personal computers: the future of education probably lies with digital games.