It seems to me that we can mark each generation by some kind of invention that transforms it. Perhaps without realizing at the time that a small revolution in technology is changing us as a society.
For my father's generation there were two things: Automobiles and radios. My grandmother Crossley rode side-saddle on an Arabian pacer when she shot quail. Grandmother Baird drove a team from the farm to town. Neither ever drove an automobile. In the West, at least, automobiles quickly displaced railroads as transportation between towns. Horses became playthings. Railroads hit a high point during WWII, when gasoline limited travel by automobile. Passenger service fell off after the war. I miss it.
Radio developed rapidly in the 1930's, when the big networks -- RCA, CBS -- united local stations into a nation-wide service. Way down in Kingsville, Texas, we could receive WOAI from San Antonio, crystal-clear on our Atwater-Kents. Then the little five-tube "superhets" brought comedy shows right into the kitchen table. Jack Benny and Fred Allen united America. We listened to the big bands of the Swing Era.
For my generation? I point to TV and to airline travel. Television grew so rapidly in the early 1950s, it was almost instantaneous. In Amarillo, Texas, a local station opened with local talent. It wasn't long before the networks took over. I recall dashing to the drugstore with a handful of tubes. Plug them one-by-one into the tube tester there. Race home with a new tube or two. "TV repairman" was a profitable profession. Perhaps I should list the transistor as the most revolutionary development.
By 1960, airline travel replaced automobiles for long business trips. My first flights were in Viscounts and DC-3s, barely 5,000 feet up at best. Exciting then, aggravating today. Maybe I should have proposed Ike's Interstates as the development for my generation.
And the current generation? Cell phones seem to be transforming our society, and in ways we can't anticipate. On my campus, so many students walk along, heads down, reading what? A text? A news site? A social site? Do the youngsters prefer that isolation? I have had a cell phone for years, and I'm anxious if I don't know right where it is.
For our grandchildren? Robotics might be the development that defines them. Or maybe drones; I can't see how that might play out.
They may need robotics to save them. Our planet is changing too, in unhappy ways. We depend upon natural ecosystems for our very livelihood, and we are altering them willy-nilly, at an increasing pace.
My mother asked me to wake her up every ten years and tell her what's happened. I'm getting curious myself.