It never ceases to amaze me at how fast the automobile was accepted and completely took over the American landscape. This pic is an example of that, I think. I wonder of those living back then were aware of the monumental changes being made on many levels in their lifetime. In some ways, it's not unlike today. I'm not sure we're completely aware of the incredible changes that have been and are being made in our lifetimes (computers, information exchanges, etc.).

Just a thought

I've often had similar thoughts Marty. My grandmother was born in 1902. In her lifetime she saw horse and buggy, cars, the Wright brothers, two world wars (not to mention a number of others), television, jet airliners, the moon landing, personal computers, cell phones, and the Internet by the time she died in 2000.

I believe there was more change technologically, socially and culturally in her almost 98 years than in the 1,000 years before she was born. What's even more amazing is that we're moving even faster now.

My view. Today, things are moving very fast in details. Scientific gains, discoveries in space, medicine, and computers. However, overall, real changes to how we live, opportunities for most people? Not so much. A photo of city streets thirty years ago would not look much different than one today. Career opportunities for most people today are not as good as they used to be (my opinion?). The "foundation" businesses and industries, farming, manufacturing, providing goods and services that most people need in their daily lives, have severely declined or been "outsourced".

"The greatest single generational leap, both technologically, and sociologically, occurred during the roughly thirty years between somewhere in the mid to late 1890s and the mid to late 1920s. At no other time in all of human history did the means and quality of life for such a significant percentage of the human population change so much."
A couple hundred years of scientific development, on the shoulders of a couple thousand years of sociological development, led to that "Greatest Leap". No other hundred years before, or so far since, has come even close.

Great pic and things are changing so fast it's crazy. Technology is changing the world for the better in some ways and messing it up in others. Jmho

Henry, exactly.

Wayne, hindsight is a great leveler in history. I think 50, 60 or more years from now, that generation may well look at our changes with the same wonder we look at the changes from the 1890s to the 1920s. Granted, the changes from the 90s to the 20s were more direct and "tangible". But the changes that have happened and continue to happen from, say, the 1960s until now, although perhaps more subtle, are still a "great leap" on many levels.

You're right in that lot of the industries you mention in your post have declined. But, they have been replaced with the jobs and opportunities in the high-tech industries, aero-space, Silicone Valley sort of jobs.

But I digress and we have really made an "on" topic post "off" topic.

Or have we?

I'm waiting for the picture of how things look today. Maybe I'll have to go take one !

An sociology professor once put it this way for an modern philosophy class I was forced to take.
"At the turn of the century people were moving to the cities and leaving the farm in numbers that prompted many people to predict the fall of the American farm. The draw of being able to earn a living that was better than the farm could provide was a siren song for people wanting to leave the farm. Industrialization brought many changes to the social landscape and individuals were able to save a good portion of their earnings for a rainy day, bills were few newspapers, magazines and the electricity to run a few lights and a fan in your house were it. Today we have a society where every person has at least 10 monthly bills to pay and more technology everyday to wrest even more money from your pocket for entertainment or to make life easier. The demand for your earnings is so intense that the single wage earner in a family of 4 is close to impossible for for the normal family. The 64 thousand dollar question is even though we have luxuries that our parents never dreamed of and are making more per household is are we living better or worse than in the mid 20's and have we damaged our society by having to spend so much of our earnings to keep up that there is no one at home for adult supervision when the children come home from school?"

Well, to go further off topic, i believe the people in the 20s were incredibly optimistic about the changes going on around them. It's not called the roaring twenties for nothing. I, for one, am incredibly pessimistic about many of the changes I see happening due to the computer: loss of community, social isolation, decline in manufacturing (which made us a world power), lack of skilled labor/trades. I could go on....

Approximate view today. The large building in the upper left of the old photo was the High School. It burned down in the ’70’s. Grew up in the Rupert/Burley area.

G.R.'s point is a good one, but pre-assumes that we all must embrace
"the suck". I have not watched TV since 1997. I have not been to see a
movie in YEARS. I have no interest. TV largely sucks. The crap movies
are made of and about these days is lame, the flash-bang non-stop movement
gives me a headache, ... what kind of "entertainment" is THAT ?

Never owned or played a video game, wouldn't know how or want to do
all the "app" BS on a phone. My bills include one for water-sewer-rubbish
from the City, electricity, and interweb. The wifeperson piggybacks some
Netflix/movie business on the interweb package for her "entertainment",
but I lack the time or interest in parking my arse on the couch when there
is so much to be out doing.

All "choices" we make, .... although I think the majority of the population
are drones and never consider NOT going along with all the brainwash BS
we are told we "must have".

One thing I do embrace from the Old School is NO DEBT. Buy, sell, trade,
make deals as we will, but DO NOT finance a 3rd party into the equation
unless you absolutely must. The way people finance everything and carry
such staggering debt these days blows my mind.

Put on a suit today to go to the funeral of a good friend. I noted the Roper's tag on the inside pocket. They had stores in Burley, Rupert, Twin Falls and Buhl at one time. The suit outlasted those stores that went away in the 80's and 90's. Take a look at your down towns again now because we are again going through changes that will see more changes with these hard times for the local businesses.

First; Dale, you can still fit in that jacket?? Egads! I tried to put one on yesterday and had to give up. Guess I do have to go on a diet!
Second, Burger I pretty much agree with you, and I seldom go to the movies, but there is one out the (or was)that I thought was extremely well done, and told an important story: "Hidden Figures." Having lived through that time, as have most of us here, some of it was very familiar, but the rest was eye-opening.
Third, I to have much dread of where we are going as a society nowadays. "Experts" tell us that our use of electronic gadgets is actually re-wiring our brains, especially those of the young. We are seeing radical changes in our society. Some of these changes seem good, but most do not (to me at least). The lack of tolerance in hour halls of higher education, lack of empathy, failure of respect for other's expressions of opinion, and the inability of many to handle even simple disappointments all seem like a loss of civility and shared Hmm, I can't think of the right word; we just don't seem to be able to handle being human anymore.

An even earlier photo of the same view. One can clearly see a horse drawn wagon in the lower right. Dirt streets. Snow capped mountains barely visible in the background. Gives some perspective on how fast the the automobile was completely accepted. I’m guessing 1910’s?

Jay, thanks for the cool photo. My Grandfather worked at that Roper's store at the time of the first photo. I am slow to comment because I was waiting to confirm with my mother. She was born in Burley in 1932 and her sister was born there in 1930. My grandfather was working at Ropers prior to their births.

The automobile was adaptable to the existing horse trails and roads. It was faster than a horse and you didn't need to feed it when it was parked. They were also low priced (after Ford and a few others developed the production line). The BIG difference I found as I grew up till today, is that you could keep a car running just about as long as you wanted to unless it was completely damaged in an accident. Proof is the Model T. Also the Victrola and other phonographs which were developed in the early part of the century were still usable in the 1950's when you could still buy records and needles for them. They still work today, if you have the records.

Later the radio developed and is still usable on AM FM or shortwave.

However if you have a 5 year old computer, the system is considered obsolete. And not only is it obsolete, but the system becomes obsolete. You learn how to operate your machine and the next one is different! Even the storage devices which went from tape, to floppy disk to CD have changed and are not usable with modern equipment.

These days by the time someone graduated from technical school, the things he learned are oblsolete.

Maybe it's me, because weeks seem about as long as days used to!
Norm

Norman T K, Not you. And the worst part is, what you describe is by design. My greatest fear is that the short sighted "me and now" generation could actually cause all of humanity to lose two hundred years of development in about two generations to come.

Or maybe it is just that I have gone completely crazy. I know there are people that are truly convinced of that.
Wait a minute. If I question my own sanity? Isn't that supposed to mean I am NOT crazy?

BbLbBbLbBbLbBbLbBbLbBbLb-------

The OP photo is still a great photo!

Kind of hate to add to all this "gloom & doom", but it does remind me of something I was discussing with one of my sons the other day:

Several years ago, my family was encouraging me to put all of my Dad's lifetime collection (and my lifetime collection) of 35mm slides on VHS. Well, for awhile, felt kinda' bad that I never did it. However, now, don't feel so bad as VHS is a thing of the past. Then I was "encouraged" to put all the slides DVD, but I didn't do it, ..... but guess what, .....that's almost "history" now too! So, by now, I really don't know what to do to preserve all that 35mm "family history", because nothing lasts. Funny thing though, .....my Mom's old photo album, full of Kodak black & white prints from the 30's, 40's & '50's are a delight to every family member who looks through that album, especially my kids & grandkids! Hmmmm, .....maybe just leave well enough alone, huh?

And for that matter, .....look at how we seem to appreciate the old photos that we all enjoy on this forum!

Harold, get an inexpensive slide scanner, and make your own prints of the slides and put them in photo albums--voila! However, those prints are not as archival as the slides.

Harold S, I have more than a thousand VHS tapes (literally!). I started recording TV shows I liked (not too many of them), movies, (old and new), and probably thousands of documentaries, in the mid '80s. I knew the medium was not forever. I collected and recorded things I or my wife would want to watch some day. About ten years after I began recording VHS, early DVDs began coming out. They were very expensive, so I waited almost ten years more before I got my first one (and, even then, the player and DVD were a gift from the kids).

First, let me admit that I have many hundreds of VHS tapes that I have no idea if they are any good anymore or not. I haven't looked at those ones in decades. And, I do know of several (maybe a dozen) earlier VHS recordings I made that have gone bad. I do not know of any manufactured format VHS tape that has failed yet.
When DVDs first started coming out? They were touted as the "forever format" unlike the lousy, old fashion, VHS that would go bad in a few years. I have maybe a couple hundred DVDs (most purchased second hand for cheap).
What I find most interesting, comparing the two technologies, is that I still watch so many of the VHS tapes I recorded back in the '80s and '90s (complete with the commercials to date them). While I can see that some of the earlier ones have degraded slightly with age (I used to work professionally with video technology and have a professional's eye), I have many tapes from even the late '80s that still play just fine. Many have not even degrade much at all. Again, yes, a few tapes have failed. A few out of more than a hundred I have watched in the past couple years.
That "forever format"? In the past years time? I have found at least a half dozen DVDs, professionally (?) produced, that I bought new and paid good money for, have gone bad and failed. These were all bought new by my wife or myself maybe five to fifteen years ago, and have been well cared for (I did work professionally in video, and like any good professional, respect my tools). All of these failures had been previously viewed by me, and used to work.
So much for the "forever format". I have discussed the problem with people more familiar with the more current technologies. They tell me that yes, the failures are by design. They say, it is because people are not willing to pay enough for what they want. But I know from my days in the field, that the cost difference between a quality copy, and a designed to fail copy, is very small (in quantity). If you buy cheap knock-offs, you deserve what you get. But when I paid good money, for a supposedly good product? I deserve what I was willing to pay for also.
Just more of what is wrong with this world today. Design to fail, build cheap, bank as much as you can. Make the sheep pay for it all over again a couple years later.
I probably don't have that many more years ahead of me. Why should I care? Because I DO care.

Yep, as Wayne found out, DVDs are (mostly) not archival. If you get military grade DVDs (very expensive, compared to the ones you buy at Staples) they will last about 20 years. The ones you buy "over the counter?" Unknown!! Might fail in a year, might last 20 years, more likely it will be closer to the former.
Wayne; I have boxes of RR VHS tapes myself. What to do??? I also have a VHS copy of a professional video that I have a speaking parts, and evne did illustrations for it, trying to figure out how to get it onto a DVD for the nieces' and nephew's kids (it's a Kid's video on trains; ITGO and the Time Trains)

Technology, ... yeah.

I have been looking for technology to create an electronic shovel for me.

Just download the app to my phone and the holes dig themselves, right ?

I would rather vomit razor blades and habañeros than care/know what the
Kardashians are doing.

Hand me my shovel. I'll dig this one myself, thanks.

Burger, From what I hear, the new virtual reality goggles can let you sit on the couch in your living room, and dig that hole at your customer's place in comfort. They let you visit anyplace in the world, go anywhere, do anything. All in comfort and safety. I still can't figure out how that stuff can put real food on the table. No real fields, no real plants, fruits, vegetables. No actual transporting of anything. Oh and forget the meat or gravy. Not politically correct.

David D, I wish I had a good answer. I don't have a good CD/DVD burner. My laptop can do simple music grade CD burns. We have used it to save old family slides by making multiple copies to share with many family members (similar to your suggestion to Harold S). I personally doubt they will last nearly as long as the slides did.
It does take digitizing equipment I do not have access to. But converting your old VHS to non-compressed digital and storing on a computer hard drive is probably the best you can do at this time. External hard drives are available, and not really expensive (well, to me? And maybe to you? They might be too expensive). Once digitized, and carefully handled, many copies could be made. Archival (as you mentioned, military) DVDs could be made and shared with family, and probably last a long time. But the common burners, flash drives, and other data strips are not likely to last as long. We use a flash drive to transfer data between devices that have decided not to communicate like they are supposed to. I do not know for sure, but I have been advised not to trust flash drives for long term storage. My eldest son, who is a programmer and computer consultant, has told me he believes the external hard drive is the best long term storage readily available to most of us. But, then, I wonder what happens when they change the data format again. Right back where we were a few hours ago.

Thanks Wayne! Burger, who are the Kardashians? (no, I've heard of them, but actually I don't know anything about them!)
Wayne, I will admit to being a bit of a Star Trek fan, and one thing I always got a kick out of is when they would land on a new planet (OK, not land, "Beam Down")that had an ancient, now gone civilization that left behind data disks--and they would immediately "read" them and find out all about the long-gone civilization. Universal compatibility!!
speaking of compatibility, anyone remember the video disk players????
I'm wondering if I'll have to set up my VHS player to run the TV, and my Digital Movie camera record the image and sound to make a DVD? I do have a set-up to record my records into the computer (but it has to be done in " real time" an that takes a lot of time! so I can listen to my albums while driving the car.