<p>The Tonight Show has always been hosted by Jay Leno? WWW has never stood for World Wide Wrestling? For more than a decade, a professor and administrator at Beloit (Wisconsin) College have compiled a "Mindset List", which includes entries like these, to remind faculty and staff of the "cultural touchstones" that have influenced their incoming freshmen. </p>
<p>You can read the current list, as well as past ones, at: Beloit</a> College Mindset List</p>
<p>awesome! I have always loved reading those!</p>
<p>and of course every year I come up with things that I don't agree with, and this year will be no different:
--I'm not a big Harry Potter fan but I do know he was supposed to be born in 1980.
--the GPS satellites have been there, but the signals weren't unscramble for civilian use until 2000</p>
<p>but this list is a very solid one! the best thing is that it doesn't claim that we can't "remember" historical facts that we should all be aware of whether we lived through them or not.
also, the technological updates were good because they were with products that would change all at once. I remember on in the past saying that the class of '10 or '11 never had to roll up windows in a car, but of course many of our parents continued to own those "old" cars into our childhood, and we obviously used them then!</p>
<p>Oh dear...what have our generations done to us...</p>
<p>They never “rolled down” a car window.
Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre.
MTV has never featured music videos.
Harry Potter could be a classmate, playing on their Quidditch team.
"Google" has always been a verb.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Oh dear...what have our generations done to us...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The characteristics of a generation are shaped by the ones before it.</p>
<p>this is funny. just a few minor things... and i'm a year younger than this stuff...
-i grew up on pee wee (in the daytime)
-my grandma's walker still doesn't have wheels on it
-i didn't have caller ID until i got a cell phone.</p>
<p>still, i'm being nit-picky. very good list.</p>
<p>"98.6 F or otherwise has always been confirmed in the ear. "</p>
<p>Huh? I always got it taken underneath the tongue. Is this normal?</p>
<p>Yes, but temperature can be taken rectally as well.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Huh? I always got it taken underneath the tongue. Is this normal?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That's what I thought too. </p>
<p>And as for the generation stuff that scares me, I was talking to my younger cousin the other night about 9/11 and she didn't remember it. Then I realized she was only 2 months old when it happened. That scares me how long it's been.</p>
<p>And how about the Cold War has always been something parents talked about, not something that affected us. Isn't our generation defined by those who don't remember the Cold War?</p>
<p>As someone who worked on GPS back in the late 1970's, I can assure you that it was available for civilian use well before 2000. Widespread automotive use is more recent, but GPS has been in fairly wide civilian use since 1995, when NAVSTAR declared it fully operational.</p>
<p>Beloit probably picked 1990 as the year when GPS receivers first became available because the first modern Block-II GPS Satellite was launched in 1989 and there were some very early systems in use on private boats and aircraft back in the early 90's. Actually, the system was not declared to have reached initial operational capability until the end of 1993 when there were enough Block-IIs in orbit to make the system more generally useful.</p>
<p>GPS satellites transmit both unencrypted and encrypted data. The encrypted data has a key that changes each day, which is available to the US military, its allies and a few other governmental agencies. The information transmitted with encryption allows a receiver to determine its position within about a sphere of radius 10 meters.</p>
<p>The information transmitted without encryption can be modified by a "feature" called Selective Availability (SA). Up until 2000, this feature was used to cause slowly varying random errors of up to 100 meters in receivers that used the unencrypted signal. The idea was to prevent enemies from using the GPS system to accurately target a missile or other projectile.</p>
<p>
[quote]
and of course every year I come up with things that I don't agree with, and this year will be no different:
--I'm not a big Harry Potter fan but I do know he was supposed to be born in 1980.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The books take place from 1991-1998, but speaking as a member of the class of 2011 the books were released when we were approximately the same age as Harry. For example, book seven came out the summer after I graduated from high school. That's why we sort of "grew up" with Harry Potter.</p>
<p>
[quote]
They never “rolled down” a car window.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I did. My parents didn't get cars where the windows rolled down automatically until I was about 9 or 10. We didn't have phones with caller ID until I was 10, either.</p>
<p>The intro made me laugh, though- recently, my mom asked me if I wanted to get a phone for my dorm, and I was amazed. I hadn't even considered the possibility that my roommate and I wouldn't just use our cell phones.</p>
<p>This list is pretty idiotic and false. I've used landlines, the generation that seldom used a landline is 4 years or so away (thats when kids started getting them at 9,10,11).</p>
<p>Yay! I love these lists. They make me sort of sad though. It makes me sad to think about time passing... not completely sad, but that is part of the feeling.</p>
<p>Of course, the list isn't completely and totally accurate about everyone. But it's a pretty good representation.</p>
<p>
[quote]
"98.6 F or otherwise has always been confirmed in the ear. "</p>
<p>Huh? I always got it taken underneath the tongue. Is this normal?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Ear is not the most accurate method of obtaining a temperature.</p>
<p>That list is interesting, I was surprised to see a pro wrestling shoutout on the list. And for the few who have long memories, World Wide Wrestling did exist until we were all around 3. I guess in ten years, our little brothers, sisters and cousins will be told that the WWF was always a wildlife foundation.</p>
<p>But yeah, World Wide Wrestling is an incredibly obscure reference. Most people born in 1980 wouldn't even get it!</p>
<p>A few things about sports: this generation</p>
<p>1) Has never seen an Olympic Games where the U.S didn't participate
2) Can't remember when NBA players were banned in the Olympics.
3) Who's Mark Spitz?<br>
4) Wonders, well, why WOULDN'T they have major league baseball in Canada?
5) Isn't old enough to know the glory of the Los Angeles Rams
7) Has never known a year when world's best golfer wasn't Tiger Woods
8) Knows, unlike the previous generation, what the Tour de France is.
9) No such thing as the American Fooball League, Dad. Its called the NFL.</p>
<p>and here's one more for an even ten: </p>
<p>10) Think its totally reasonable to have ice hockey champs (NHL) from Tampa, Florida and N. Carolina</p>
<p>My D was astonished last night at dinner when I explained that kids in my day had their school lunch sandwiches wrapped in wax paper!</p>
<p>Every time I pull out a handy-dandy piece of foil, plastic wrap or a plastic bag (avail. in multi sizes & ziploks) I try to figure out what my grandmother would have used to wrap leftovers in. But with a family of 11 children, they probably didn't HAVE leftovers. :)</p>
<p>"The Tonight Show has always been hosted by Jay Leno"</p>
<p>Wait, you mean it HASN'T??! :P</p>
<p>I think some of the ones the posters have mentioned, like MonoTombo, are even better than this list. </p>
<p>This reminds me of the other day, my daughter heard us talking (she's four years younger than this crowd), and she says, "hey wait a minute, what's a walkman?"</p>