Thought provoking quote:

"You measure change, not by behaviors altered in the first generation,

but by what the next generation takes as a given."

(from  Futurist Guy  via Tall Skinny Kiwi)

So the effect change has on us in the present may not be as important,  but rather the effects on our children and the things they assume.  Attitudes about technology, race and religion come to mind.  My son will never have known a time when we didn't have TiVo, a non-white president, or electric guitar during worship music.  How he reacts to things in the future will be very different than myself.  He is working from a different context.

Think of the things that you take as a given, that your parents did not.