At 46 I'm not old enough to remember the "good old days" like many of you, but I remember even 20 years ago things were so much simpler.
The funny thing to me is that when a topic like this is brought up, the things that make today "better" than the "good old days", are also the things that have made today worse.
Think about it, when the cell phone was invented it was supposed to make our lives easier. Now I will admit, yes, it makes my life a bit easier because I can call around and find a part, instead of wasting time driving around looking for it, when I am in the field working. The flip side, and I don't know about you, but my life was much easier when I didn't need to keep my phone on 24/7 to keep people from thinking I had keeled over dead because I don't answer.
Along those lines, remember when you didn't need to be available "instantly" when someone (a customer) called? Back then the whole world moved a little slower because it basically went at the speed of 'snail mail'. I mean things couldn't happen instantly, so no body expected anything to happen instantly. Now an email arrives a second or two after you hit the send button, and everything else is expected to happen that fast.
Take a step further in the 'good old days' a draftsman might take weeks to draw up a design for a project, then maybe weeks more to test the design (if needed), then the craftsman making it might take weeks to make the piece. Now, the design is easily drawn up in CAD, testing is done on the computer, the the design is input into a CAM program and the part is done in a few minutes. When a house was built there was a crew cutting all of the boards, and nailing them in by hand. A house might take a few weeks just to get the framing done. Now the boards are cut on a computer operated saw, laid down (often by hand I will admit) and nailed together by a machine. The it's put together by a handful of guys with air nailers and can be ready to put siding on, and begin on the interior in a few days.
Yes, I know I am talking in generalities here, but the jist of things is this. In the good old days people worked hard, but the whole pace of life was slower. People had time to live 'The American Dream", and many did. If they died at 40, 60, or 80, it was because it was their time, nothing more, nothing less. I mean people still die every day, at every age, from the same things that folks died from 'in the good old days', the difference is there are just more people around, so there are more 'to save' and for us to hear about.
So, yes, new drugs, and new medical advances might keep people alive longer, but in many cases, what's the real use? on the one hand the computers that made out life so easy have made way too many people so 'soft' that they are now suffering from obesity, high blood pressure, diabeties, and many other medical maladies because they aren't as active as people in the past had to be just to get through the day and live.
That said, who wants to live to be 100 when your 100 lbs overweight because nearly everything that you used to have to work for is now being done for you? Who wants to live to be 100 when you have to struggle to live because a computer/robot took your good paying job (or it went overseas) 20 years ago and you had to survive on a minimum wage job, working until the day you die just to survive?
Seriously I love my life, I love my family, but I'd much rather pass 'when it's my time' knowing that I had a chance to do more with my life than to work, work, work, work, not because I wanted to, but because that's how things have to be to survive in the US nowdays because things are "so much better" than they were in the past.
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Today's Featured Article - A Belt Pulley? Really Doing Something? - by Chris Pratt. Belt Pulleys! Most of us conjure up a picture of a massive thresher with a wide belt lazily arching to a tractor 35 feet away throwing a cloud of dust, straw and grain, and while nostalgic, not too practical a method of using our tractors. While this may have been the bread and butter of the belt work in the past (since this is what made the money on many farms), the smaller tasks may have been and still can be its real claim to fame. The thresher would bring in the harvest (and income) once a y
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