It's a whole different world than the one I grew up in...

...but then again, my Dad's world changed dramatically in his lifetime as well. My Dad was born in 1923. He grew up during the Great Depression and served in the Navy during WWII. When my Dad was a young boy aircraft and cars were still in their infancy. The steam engine ruled the continent as the primary means of transcontinental transportation.

My grandfather farmed not with giant combines and tractors, but, with horses and equipment that had not changed much since the mid-nineteenth century. When my Dad was a teenager movies cost a nickel for a double feature on a Saturday afternoon where he would go to watch Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials.

During WWII my Dad joined the Navy, aviation and and the automobile industry had come of age and were producing the tools for the Army of democracy to use in its fight against axis powers. During the War my Dad loaded ships at Port Chicago California. After Fat-man and Little-boy were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki my Dad's superiors gathered all of the men of my Dads section to give them the news that both of those bombs had gone through Port Chicago and my Dad's section had been the one that had loaded them on one leg of their journey to Imperial Japan. My Dad not only saw the dawn of the Atomic age, he also may have played a small role in it.

After the war my Dad came home to Chatfield, Minnesota where he realized that being the youngest of four brothers, who were also coming home from the war, that he needed to strike out on his own. He moved to Madison, Wisconsin and began working at Oscar Mayer foods in inedibles, the lowest place you could work at Oscar's. Dad quickly left and got a job working as a house to house milk delivery man. Over the the years his job changed from house to house, to delivering to small mom and pop grocery stores. As those died out he delivered to milk to schools and other institutions. If a customer wanted to complain about my Dad's service, which was rare, they had to call my Dad's boss or take it up directly with my Dad. During this time he saw aviation turn to Jet engines, diesel engines take over for steam, man walk on the moon and cars becoming bigger, more reliable and the primary mode of transportation.

At the end of my Dad's life and in my lifetime we have seen man walk on the moon and technology explode at a rate never seen before in recorded history.

As a child if I wanted to watch cartoons I had to wait until Saturday morning. Today, cartoons are on 24/7. When I was a teenager if I wanted to call a friend, I had to wait until my Mom got off the phone with my Aunt Erma. If I wanted privacy on the phone call, this was mainly only needed if I was calling a girl, I had to stretch the phone cord out and sit around the corner on the basement stairs.

If I had a problem with the new cassette deck I bought, I took it back to the store. Customer service meant that Prange-Way took the cassette deck back despite the fact that I took it apart and it was now just a box of parts.

The world my son is growing up in is far different than the world I grew up in, one he gets his photo taken with UW-Madison football cheerleaders. Two is that he has to deal with issues neither me or my father ever had to deal with. The biggest issue in his life that he will have to deal with is one of privacy, or lack thereof. When both my father and me started our first job searches as adults we had a clean slate. If an employer wanted to know what our background was they would have to ask the hand-picked references we gave them. My son will have to make sure he has nothing embarrassing on his facebook page.

One thing that scares me most about facebook is that while I love the ability to keep up with friends and family, I fear how some can use the lack of privacy against us. What if at some point in the future a young man with the same name as my son commits a federal crime. If my son has a facebook page his activities could be monitored by the FBI without my son's consent. He will have basically signed up for government surveillance just by having an open facebook page.

Another change is the concept of customer service. As I mentioned earlier, in the past if you had a problem with a product you purchased you could just take it back to the store and in most cases the issue was cared for, if it wasn't you might tell a few friends; however, that small circle of friends would more than likely not impact the store's bottom line. In today's world if my son were to purchase a defective product he more than likely would be directed towards the manufacturer's website or customer service line. If my son were dissatisfied with the company's service he could with one simple blog post, twitter or facebook posting, reach millions of people. Which can have a very negative impact on the bottom line of any company.

Comparing my world to that of my Dad's still amazes me. My Dad was literally born at the end of the horse and buggy era. I was born at the dawn of the space age and my son was born in the first month of this millennium. With all of the changes that have happened in both mine and my Dad's lives, I wonder what the future will hold for my son (Hopefully he will let me use some of that cuteness next time we get close to some cheerleaders).