The Oregon Trail Generation: Life Before and After Mainstream Tech

[The Professor]

 

Anyone born in the late '70s or early '80s probably has memories of huddling around a bulky desktop with five (or more) friends to play Oregon Trail. This article, titled "The Oregon Trail Generation: Life Before and After Mainstream Tech" and originally featured on Social Media Week, discusses what life was like for that generation who grew up at the cusp of modern technology.

 

 

 

 

You Have Died of Dysentery

If you can distinctly recall the excitement of walking into your weekly computer lab session and seeing a room full of Apple 2Es displaying the start screen of Oregon Trail, you're a member of this nameless generation, my friend.

We were the first group of kids who grew up with household computers, but still novel enough to elicit confusion and wonder. Gen X individuals were already fully-formed teens or young adults when computers became mainstream, and Millennials can't even remember a time before computers.

But, when we first placed our sticky little fingers on a primitive Mac, we were elementary school kids whose brains were curious sponges. We learned how to use these impressive machines at a time when average middle class families were just starting to be able to afford to buy their own massive desktops.

This made us the first children to grow up figuring it out, as opposed to having an innate understanding of new technology the way Millennials did, or feeling slightly alienated from it the way Gen X did.

 

 

More: http://www.popsugar.com/tech/How-Technology-Influenced-Generation-X-37522155?campaign=sugar_social_button_m