Recently, I happily celebrated another birthday. My birth year places me right in the middle of the baby-boom generation. Fortunately, my age group does have a nifty name. More recent age groups are simply designated as Generation X, Y or Z. Pretty generic if you ask me.
Baby boomers can still be found shopping at malls and watching re-runs of “The Match Game.” We like The Reader’s Digest, retirement funds and meatloaf dinners. As the years and decades have slipped by there are several terms of endearment that have changed over the lifespan of boomers.
Many phrases we hear today resonate familiarity. One extremely popular topic we hear today is renewable energy, a term that describes sources that primarily generate electricity. Years ago, renewable energy is what you suddenly found when household chores weren’t done when your parents got home. Group insurance didn’t used to be a cost-effective way to lower premiums, it instead meant taking three carloads of buddies to a Saturday night dance in a rival town.
No industry or organization has come up with more new terminology and acronyms than that of information technology. One example is data loss technology or DLT. This term refers to security measures to prevent data loss and cyberattacks. The earliest form of this has been widely used in schools, classrooms and driver’s license examination stations but were called cheat sheets. Other primitive forms of DLT include test answers written on palms and shoe soles. Here’s another new phrase you hear — gain of function. I witnessed gain of function many times after the wasp nest was cleaned out of the fuel sediment bowl on the old Massey Harris combine. Once the fuel flowed freely, you gained function, and work resumed.
No matter what age group you fit in or the terms and phrases we use, one thing for sure is the enjoyment, comfort and convenience we all enjoy thanks to everyone involved in providing clean, safe, and affordable electricity.
Terry Hobbs is the board president for Kansas Electric Cooperatives, Inc. He is also a member of Western Cooperative Electric’s Board of Trustees in WaKeeney.