People in general, regardless of age, tend to make assumptions that everyone else has the same experiential baseline that they have--and also tend to forget that the future, the past, and the present are not the same environment.
That is, while Baby Boomers could watch Moon landings, remembering that at the time there were no Internet, no LiveJournal, no Facebook, no personal computers, no compact disc, no home videotape or camcorders (there were film cameras with grainy black and white 8 mm and scratch sound and scratches and dropouts and it was expensive...), no cell phones, and people forget that those things weren't around on a regular basis, because they are so much a part of contemporary consumer culture.
Those sorts of things get very weird very fast... people forget thing, and then their "memory" attempts to do reconstructions based on what would have been resonable.
A generation from now, the world probably will look quite different from wht it looks like today....
Traditionally science fiction conventions have tried to be relatively age-insensitive in the non-discriminatory definition. E.g., there is no lower limit for age to vote in the Hugos, site Selection, and participate in the Worldcon Business meeting, if the person has a full membership and not a "kid-in-tow" or child membership. The outside world, however, has laws regarding minors, and those can be quite constaining.
(As regards special rates, that's a sort point with me--when I was in years of unemployment and underemployment and with a negative cashflow, nobody ever gave me any discount, while families regardless of income status, the elderly regardless on income status, and students regardless of income status, all got substantial discounts for all sorts of things... when I was a college student I had a lot more discretionary spending than I did when I was years out of work and watching the balances on credit cards and loans get larger and which... So, I regarded preferential rates subsidized by other who had to pay ore, as offensive and obnoxious, and still think is offensive and obnoxious. I'd rather not give discounts to any class, and instead have the prices be the same for everyeone, and not have Groups A, C, and D, subsidized by gouging Group B...
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2009-07-16 05:17 am (UTC)That is, while Baby Boomers could watch Moon landings, remembering that at the time there were no Internet, no LiveJournal, no Facebook, no personal computers, no compact disc, no home videotape or camcorders (there were film cameras with grainy black and white 8 mm and scratch sound and scratches and dropouts and it was expensive...), no cell phones, and people forget that those things weren't around on a regular basis, because they are so much a part of contemporary consumer culture.
Those sorts of things get very weird very fast... people forget thing, and then their "memory" attempts to do reconstructions based on what would have been resonable.
A generation from now, the world probably will look quite different from wht it looks like today....
Traditionally science fiction conventions have tried to be relatively age-insensitive in the non-discriminatory definition. E.g., there is no lower limit for age to vote in the Hugos, site Selection, and participate in the Worldcon Business meeting, if the person has a full membership and not a "kid-in-tow" or child membership. The outside world, however, has laws regarding minors, and those can be quite constaining.
(As regards special rates, that's a sort point with me--when I was in years of unemployment and underemployment and with a negative cashflow, nobody ever gave me any discount, while families regardless of income status, the elderly regardless on income status, and students regardless of income status, all got substantial discounts for all sorts of things... when I was a college student I had a lot more discretionary spending than I did when I was years out of work and watching the balances on credit cards and loans get larger and which... So, I regarded preferential rates subsidized by other who had to pay ore, as offensive and obnoxious, and still think is offensive and obnoxious. I'd rather not give discounts to any class, and instead have the prices be the same for everyeone, and not have Groups A, C, and D, subsidized by gouging Group B...