As someone stated (movie? book? paraphrased regardless): We stand on the shoulders of giants, building on their successes.
Every generation builds on top of what the previous generation accomplished. Supersonic aircraft built with TLAR engineering and slide rules, someone looked at the slide rule and those new-fangled "integrated circuit thingies" and came up with a calculator. I would say anyone born in the 1970s-80s is in the generation that saw the "old way" of doing things, and the "new way."
Grade school I was memorizing multiplication tables (badly,) by high school calculators were almost standard, and not long into college scientific / programmable / graphing calculators were becomming the norm. Computers went from the Atari 400 / Commodore 64 to the IBM PC Jr to the first Pentiums.
I think technology in general, and IT even more so, doesn't grow in a straight line, but more like a series of steps. But, each step comes faster and faster, as the tools to achieve that next upward step get better and better...
Dalkeith (6/2/2014)
I have been struggling to find a car van. Vauxhall (GM) used to make something called an astra van which was perfect an estate car but with paneling on the back. They stopped production and no other manufacturers do anything similar. I am left with mini vans or proper industrial vans but nothing in between.The mini vans are pretty small and the bigger vans are good but tend to be too high. I windsurf and its useful to have a lower roof so I can put boards on the roof.
Here in the US, that would be a station wagon (although a station wagon was generally 4 doors.) They went out of style around the time mini-vans took off, and in some ways it's a shame as they didn't have the "bulk" of a mini-van but cargo capacity was at least as good.