I was born in '78 and my first computer (a VIC-20) had a cassette drive. Well, actually it didn’t even have that initially; only a cartridge slot. But the cassette drive was the first magnetic media. A 5.25" disc drive was a later add-on. 3.5" drives (on the PC) didn’t arrive until much later.
I was doing all my classwork on a computer when I was still in elementary school. I reject this “Gen X had an analog childhood” premise.
You reject it because you are an outlier who is not at all representative of most people your age?
Could be. I was not much of an outlier compared to my friends, though. I was a little ahead of the curve but lots of my childhood friends had Commodore 64s. We traded games and occasionally typed in the programs in the back of Compute!'s Gazette and other magazines. Maybe there was some selection bias, but for the most part I was friends with neighborhood kids and my classmates. It wasn’t a selection of only nerds. Or maybe our area was an outlier, but we weren’t in Silicon Valley or anything, either.
This is the story of my life*…and the story of most GenX’ers. Go ahead, join us, welcome. Not that it will help though.
*GenXer, born 1969. However, my born-in-2005 son likes to say “OK Boomer” to both his parents, which I ignore because I know he’s just trying to be silly.
Oh, yes, tape drives. I had one for the VIC-20 as well. My 5.25 I got when I got my C128 c. 1986. I vaguely remember seizing 8” disks, too, at Radio Shack, but not for any of the computer I owned. I think that was more a 70s thing and maybe no for personal computers so much? I don’t know as I don’t actually remember seeing a computer with that type of drive, just the media.
I’m GenX, born at the very end of 1971, with an older brother born in the beginning of 1969. Parents born in the late 1940’s so definitely boomers. I think that the years for the Millennial generation goes too long. I have several friends that are nearly 10 years younger than me that I’ve known since I was in my late 20’s. So they would have been like 19 through about 21 back then and now only pushing 40, while I’m almost 50. I consider them to be GenX.
Now I work with a lot of people in their early to mid 30’s, and I can tell they are a different generation from my younger friends, they call themselves and I consider them Millennial. I can still kind of relate to them.
My nieces were born in 1992 and 1995, still by most guidelines, Millennial but other than on a family level I can’t relate to them at all. I don’t understand their culture, music, or technology. It’s so different that I can’t really see how they are even considered Millennial. As an example, they couldn’t use a cassette deck 10 years ago.
People born in 2000 are starting to work at my job now, and they are supposed to be Millennials as well? No way.
