Question

Please help!

3. Imagine you were born in 1830. Throughout your life, you witness one momentous change after another. By the first decade of the twentieth century, the world around you has been transformed thoroughly. Now comes an important event in your life. It may not make it into the history books or the newspapers, but it’s all your family members can talk about…the birth of your first great granddaughter in 1914! You’ve lived through a lot of changes, and you begin to wonder about how the world might be transformed during her lifetime. After all, your granddaughter might well live until the year 2000! You sit down to write a letter to your newborn granddaughter—something she can read in the years and decades ahead. Reflecting on the types of changes that have taken place in your lifetime, you decide to write about what you think will happen in the century ahead. Your letter will address possible changes in the four categories you looked at in the previous activity: political/military, cultural, science/technology, and social/economic.
In addition, you’ll want to write about these key points:

(a) Ways in which life might improve in the future.
(b) Good things from the previous century that might be lost as times change. (c) How your granddaughter should view change, what she should resist and what she should embrace.

Answer 1

Dearest great-granddaughter,

I have dreamt of talking with you, playing with you together with your Barbie dolls, just spending time with you. But I know time won’t permit that to happen, so I wrote this letter to tell you stories of what I have experienced and what the world might become in the future. I hope this would be a guide for you as you go along in your journey. Below is enclosed the changes I have been through and advice to help you through them in the future.

Wars are awful. Conflicts tear people apart. They are terrible, terrible things to witness. As soon as you think everything is better it gets worse again. You find everything around you crashing down. My advice on this is: stay strong and believe in what you know is right. The military has never been an easy topic. I wish that you may never experience such thing, but no matter what, STAY STRONG. This is the most important thing.

All through your life, you will find people changing and growing into different lifestyles. You’ll find that the people you know now might not be all the same in next years and maybe you’ll grow apart from each other. That is okay. Change is constant and as such culture also changes, my dear. Choose what you feel is right and live it out with all your might. Culture is what makes us unique. What is important is to stay true to our beliefs.

The changes are evident especially in science and technology. It seems that every day a new man finds a solution to a problem he has been searching for for years! First, it was that man Thomas Edison, presenting the light bulb and now W.H. Carrier patents the design of the air conditioner! And oh, the Wright Brothers who achieved the first powered sustained and controlled airplane. I'm sure soon there will be a different type of telephone and all these fascinating things and gadgets to imagine! I do wish I could watch it all, but I'll just leave it to you to enjoy.

With the development and expansion of technology, people's life will get so much better and easier but make it a point that you won't overly rely on them. Of course, too much of anything isn't good. The economy will probably boom with the help of the businesses and new opportunities that will open, the unemployment rate would plausibly go down. How I love to see that moment.

I love you, dear, and I hope that this will help you find your way through life. Embrace what you think is right and let the bad experiences shape you into a better person. I love you with all my heart.

With Love,Great-grandma