I was just about to post a picture of my Sgt. Pepper LP before I got this far into the thread... My Rubber Soul is mono but my friend has a stereo version. It's a US version. He has a stereo Help too. I'm not sure about anything before that.

I'm 23 and as far as I can tell there are a lot of different kinds of people of all ages. I know people that would do just fine if technology regressed 500 years tomorrow and others that can't change a light bulb. It's just about what you're into. My friend that can't change a light bulb works for a fancy salon and you can't get an appointment with her for a month because that's the length of the line. It works out really well for both of us because she likes and owns several old bikes but can't maintain them for anything. I get free haircuts, she gets trued wheels, etc.

Sorry if I touched a nerve. I don't think everyone under 20 is an idiot. I teach Physics and Honors Bio at a HS. I see kids with LOADS of talent and skills to boot. But I also have sophs of which 90+% can't do a metric conversion. Scary!!!! A tell them colleges will expect more. They say they're not going into science. Business and law is their choice! Just what we need in the US, More pencil pushers and ambulance chasers. My dad was a machinist, My grandfather was too. I just hate that nobody "tinkers" anymore. Thats where the ideas become realities.

PS.. Ive taken a long walk off a short pier... The fishing was great!

I work in the automotive industry. One of my co-workers half-jokingly told me that a manual transmission these days is a theft deterrent -- because, as you suggested, few younger people know how to drive one.

Me, too. I've only seen a bike with brifters once.

I'm 50 and would stall 20 times on the way to the grocery store with a standard transmission. My 23 year old daughter and 18 year old son, hate driving anything that's automatic. Strange world these days.

I just got done packing for a backpacking trip I'm leaving for tomorrow which reminded me of another "outdated" technology that I prefer: external frame backpacks. They are the steel framed bicycles of the camping world. Whenever I look at backpacks they try to talk me into the stupid internal frame packs that are heavy and don't have anything to clip all my stuff to. I'm guessing this being a crowd of people that enjoys cycling (an outdoor activity) it's probably not too much of a stretch to guess some people here like backpacking too. Furthermore, this being a thread about not appreciating old stuff, somebody here probably likes external frame backpacks. Or is that too much assuming?

Going out tomorrow also - with my external framed backpack.

er - make that tonight. Better get to bed soon.

Sounds exactly like my '67 MGB. For goodness sake, it doesn't even have synchromesh on first gear! However, it is fantastic fun and I can fix it - engine, gearbox, wiring.... You can see where all this is heading for me... And my son is interested, I hope he remains so

p.s. my bike shoes have velcro on them....

Funny you mention external frame packs. I was just in an outdoor store in Franconia, NH today and they had their last remaining external frame Jansport (from about 4 years ago) marked WAY down to $59. I was tempted to buy just because it was such a deal. But I'm already way in the hole with my wife and can't be bringing home any more gear. Except maybe an old Dahon. I would risk it for one of those.

I grew Up (i'm 26) with a rotary dial phone. My parents are cheap, the phone worked so why replace it? i moved out long ago but i go back to visit alot, one day i came back and it was gone, they got a new phone, said the old one broke. I was really sad, I wish i could have had the old phone and hung it on my wall or something, i dialed many school chums on that phone. those things are really rare these days.

Another story about phones. so I was working on this movie and we had to pick set pieces for the main scenes. The set was suppose to be a family house that hadn't changed in a long time. I wanted an old phone on the wall to suggest this. One of the girls working on the film suggested a vintage shop in uptown (new orleans) we went up there and they had a rotary phone there for sale. I forget how much but even renting it was out of the question for our budget. Its funny because the object isn't a working object, nobody is going to buy the phone to actually use it. its just something to stick on there table and look... unique.

I think young people in general these days are more interested in old junk sometimes just because its cool or "unique" I've met plenty of people who make a living finding "vintage" clothes at thrift stores then selling them on ebay. but alot of young-ins like me are interested in old stuff because it was made better or because its simpler and easier to tinker with. I love tinkering, I love fixing stuff, i love figuring out who things are put together. but I'm terrible at math, have trouble telling time on an analog clock and have trouble spelling unless i have access to spell check. (my father actually dropped out of college cuz he couldn't spell, I didn't have the problem because i have access to modern word-processing technology). I never really learned to use tools at home my dad is not a handy guy, but i had to learn how to fix my bike mostly because i'm cheap just like mom and dad.

If I'd ever owned a backpack, then I'd want an external framed one, I guess.

The stereo equipment discussion makes me a bit envious -- I did not have money for fancy stereo components back then, although my younger brother spent everything he had on sound equipment, it still wasn't much. I still have about all of it. I don't understand how you guys still have working speakers from back then, because my brother's crumbled into dust.

As for the age divide, truly it isn't so sharply defined. The (50 years old plus) guys in the guitar club at the office like both vintage and new guitars, and they also love the latest in pocket-sized consumer electronics. Well, we work in I/T, after all. Two of the high school-aged boys who are friends of my daughter have a wall-full of vintage stereo equipment.

As for a generation of morons who can't read or write, it's partially true. My eighteen-year-old son reports that his first college language arts class "went all sixth-grade on us", and the students corrected each other's essays. The essay my son corrected was full of the simplest grammatical errors. My son's paper was focused on the topic and coherent, and he received a grade of 90%, while the other student got a 0. He wondered how anyone who couldn't write a sentence could even get into college. But I encountered the same situation when I was in college 35 years ago myself.

As my dad told me repeatedly, it takes all kinds to make a world.

For whatever reason, it seems that every kid is supposed to grow up and go to college these days. In fact, most people I went to high school with looked down upon anyone who aspired to go to tech school and learn a trade. Truth is, we don't need that many managers, accountants, and lawyers. Despite having good grades and test scores, I didn't feel like the university suited me and I graduated from a tech school. I may not end up as rich as my old classmates, but I'd like to think I'll have more fun while I'm busy tinkering.

On a charity ride a gent pointed to my barcons and said to his buddies "this guy has TT shifters stuck in the ends of his handlebars!" he wasn't all that young, either, maybe mid thirties.
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I'm fairly certain I win. I have a slide rule manual sitting beside my drafting board.

Well, I can't recommend any Beach Boys recordings after 1967 or so, but the early recordings are great and very influential. Some people listen to them because they like to dance, or because they like the lush harmonies, or even Carl Wilson's take on the Chuck Berry style of guitar playing. People with a historical bent are blown away by the innovative arrangements. And musicians continue to mine the early Beach Boys records for ideas and inspiration. And not just recently, either; the Beatles listened to them. Back in the USSR was a parody, of course, but the Sgt. Pepper album was a serious response to Pet Sounds.

The really early stereo releases have all the instruments on one side and the vocals on the other... pretty terrible! But even worse, some of the early mono albums by the Kinks and other British Invasion bands were reprocessed into stereo by adding a bunch of reverb and echo that bounced from one speaker to the other... way awful bad.

Jeeze I've been on bikes for close to fourty years, and I'll be durned if I know what that is !?!

I'm in my fifties. I have brifters on my "newest" bike (bought from bikes direct!!!) and I like them. I hated the whole idea back in the late eighties early nineties when they were being experimented with by Shimano, but having ridden thousands upon thousands of miles with them now, i have to say I think they were a marvelous invention. However, I would NEVER put them on my 35 year old A/D, or my Bianchi! Part of the pleasure of riding my old bikes is that they are NOT modern.
My 17 year old daughter has never seen or used a "record" player, or lp's I would very much like to see her reaction to listening to music on one, and I may have to set up an experiment to see how she'd make out.

I would fall into that camp.

He'd not seen this bike before and asked, pointing at the down-tube "what are those things?"

I think he was asking about your ba11s.

OTOH, I know some 70'ish people who have a hard time operating ATMs, remote controls, cell phones, etc.

Yep, you ought to see the look on young people's faces when I crank up the Victrola or my Edison Cylinder phonograph!

It's not that kids are idiots today. On the contrary, my 13 year old constantly amazes me with how adaptable and how fast she learns. Its simply that the rate of change in technology today is accelerating at a pace that things we might have dealt with sometime in our lives came and went, and young people were never exposed to them. I too laugh at that, but it won't be long before I'm in the position that my parents are in - they don't get it, and have given up trying.

The pressed disk recording had a 100 year run. What about wire recorders, reel-to-reel tape, 8 track, full size cassette, compact cassette, mini cassette, DAT, CD, DVD, HDD, various forms of Flash memory, etc.? What will displace them all? I'm in a development lab doing 22nm integrated ckts for multi-gigabit chip. I have a 3'x3' picture of a 1k PROM on my wall in which I can visually count each memory cell - something I worked on in the 1970's. People even within the field cannot relate, but then technology is changing so fast!

My daughter is writing code and moderating a web site. I look over her shoulder in awe.

Far as I can tell, stupidity has been around a long time. T'was a time when 20 percent literacy in a population was outstanding. You know, before the printing press. Some generation lamented that these newfangled kids can't get across the country without a train. "What, horse and carriage too good for you?"


If it was a long enough outage they would be. But older generations would be dying too. Its not like you grow a cabbage with your Grand Torino. You have to go back more than 100 years for a generation familiar with a subsistence lifestyle. We've been using fridges for as long as anyone on this board has been alive.

My point: stupidity-wise, all the generations here are probably equally stupid, or smart, however you want to look at it. We can debate over whether generations of previous eras that subsisted on what they grew were smarter or wiser than us, but my suspicion is that any generation in Western culture has had some stupidity bug. Course we're brilliant as well, tower of Babel, etc., that's another conversation.

They're re-issue's then, after Apple got distribution rights they re-issued the original albums in stereo.

USAZorro is correct, the original releases are all mono up til Sgt. Pepper. The studios they recorded in weren't equipped for Stereo until then.

Wait a minute... you mean I'm hanging out with a bunch.... uuhhh.... oooooollllllddddd guys?

<Insert Forest Gump quote here>