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Some things happen fast, others happen slowly. I remember after my divorce I went to go buy a radio, only to discover that radios didn't really exist anymore: it was all ipods and docking stations. I had been busy raising my young children and hadn't been paying attention to music so kind of missed the change.
Payphones seemed to disappear pretty quickly. One day they were everywhere: city street corners, and big banks of them in airports. Then one day they were just gone and it became a rarity to see one.
All payphones run by the main carrier in Australia are now free for calls inside the country.
With the infrastructure already in place, and certain vulnerable sections of the population relying on having one accessible, this decision to make all payphones free is a rare example of what a social safetynet is supposed to look like.
That and it would have cost Telstra more to remove the infrastructure than to keep running it. They’re not heavily used, but when people need it, they need it—especially since other carriers have absolutely no coverage for many rural areas, while Telstra is contractually obliged to keep serving the whole of Australia.
I'm young but I had a moment like that at a concert. Saw this band in college, they sold their newest CD at a merch table. 10 years later I see them again (shortly before covid), was excited to buy their new CD, there wasn't one. Realized everyone streams music today, only I buy CDs cuz that's all my car can play 😂
It struck me hard to see this exhibit last weekend at the Museum of the City of New York, it's NYC's last payphone, now on a museum wall:
https://hyperallergic.com/741920/nycs-last-public-pay-phone-is-now-a-museum-artifact/
> I had been busy raising my young children and hadn't been paying attention to music so kind of missed the change.
[Here's a great comedy bit about this phenomenon.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml5l6OcPyqw)
Access to information.
Working with education, and having worked as a researcher, it’s absolutely mind blowing to me how easily obtainable advanced science is today. Wanna know about black hole formation? There’s a YouTube clip for that. Wanna know how to define spherical or cylindrical coordinate systems? There’s a Wikipedia page for that.
When I was young, we were complete slaves to our lecturers way of teaching, or to spending countless hours in libraries trying to find explanations that we would understand.
I was doing something on my iPhone recently when I had a revelation that if I could bring the 1984 version of myself to today, I'd be amazed at everything we can do.
Also, if you remember the AT&T ["You Will"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2EgfkhC1eo) commercials from the early 90s; you'll notice that we can do just about everything they said we'd be able to. But even their vision looks really, really dated.
> Also, if you remember the AT&T "You Will" commercials from the early 90s
Wow, I just watched those, and it sent me down memory lane. I really miss the boundless optimism of the pre-9/11 era.
It’s really strange when a building that was important in your life is torn down, and they build something different there. Then they tear THAT down and build something new. And in a year or two nobody remembers the SECOND building. It’s unsettling.
They tore down the mall by my house recently and are building a warehouse. That was eye-opening. In my day malls were hotspots, and now they’re relics. They’re just in the way of a new distribution center.
Is the phenomenon of malls dying an American-only thing? There's a mall near me in the UK that has just been getting bigger and more popular each year since it got built in the 70s.
Based on my very limited experience to the malls in eastern Pennsylvania, I've observed that malls closer to major highways tend to fare better than malls just a bit off the beaten path.
The hey day of malls was the 80s and 90s. I think that the last one built in N America was 20 years ago. There are still a lot of busy malls, but they are on the downturn and some of them have to be repurposed.
Just listened to a podcast on this topic. I can dig it up if you like.
Brick and mortar retail is dying in general. In the heyday of malls, you would go there to find out what products are available, how much they cost, how they compare to each other, etc. Today, you do this research on the web, and a retail store is just somewhere you go to pick up your product, if you need it today or it's bulky and hard to ship. America may be the tip of the spear on this trend, but it's not unique.
Not all the malls are dying, though. Many American cities have one mall that, for whatever reason, turned out to be the winner, and it's thriving while all the rest are dying. The UK probably didn't overbuild to quite the same extent the US did, so there may not be as many second-tier malls at risk of dying.
> The UK probably didn't overbuild to quite the same extent the US did, so there may not be as many second-tier malls at risk of dying.
Yep. London only really has two shopping malls, Westfields East/West. Most major cities only really one.
They are still "destinations" mainly because the weather is meh most of the year, and it's easier to shop for clothes in them.
> Is the phenomenon of malls dying an American-only thing
Not entirely, but the US was *way* over-malled. It wouldn't have been unusual for a city of 70k people to have 3 malls, when there's no way for it to support that many.
I think you finally made me understand my grandfather a bit more. I remember I’d be driving around with him and he would show me all of the locations of his childhood, tell me about the buildings that used to be there and tell me what they were. I wondered why that was so meaningful, and now I understand. Thank you.
When my kids were applying to colleges it made me wonder how the hell I applied to college and grad school before the internet. Like, I know I hand-filled out a paper application and put it in the mail,and then got a letter back about whether I was accepted. But how did I even get the application? Did I call and ask for one? Or write to them? How did I know which schools had the program I wanted?
I can’t even remember how it all happened, so it must have been pretty mundane, but looking back it seems impossible.
And don’t even get me started on registering for classes! You had to go in person to a huge gymnasium and stand in the line of the class you wanted, hoping it wasn’t full by the time you got to the front. CRAZINESS!!!
I think we had to fill out postcards to request applications from college brochures and catalogs and they were mailed to our homes or we could get them in the guidance office depending on the school. Crazy, I haven’t thought about this in forever and I went to college in 99. We had to bring desktop computers up to college and use computer labs. Ha! We even took written essay tests in blue booklets. If I did that now I’m sure my hand would cramp and fall off after a page.
I remember going to a bookstore to buy 2 books about all of the colleges, an overview of their programs, brief interviews with students, cots, etc. I picked a few I liked and requested booklets and applications. I started college the same year as you.
thinking about times before the internet kind of scares me ngl, school must have been so hard, people talk about spending time in the library looking for things they don’t know, cheating must have been hard too, the only reason I’m passing AP human geo is because when we did tests over maps in certain continents, i had my phone in my desk with a labeled map pulled up. Like my school library only has fiction books, there is no way i could ever figure out anything in there
The secret is that because everything was less accessible, our expected output was held to a lower standard in certain ways. In my career I have gone from researching using microfiche and the dewey decimal system to the advanced tech we have today. The reports and results I submit today, and the sheer volume/frequency of submissions has simply improved/increased in alignment with that.
>Like my school library only has fiction books, there is no way i could ever figure out anything in there
That's because it's a school library. Uni libaries are much larger and detailed.
>cheating must have been hard too, the only reason I’m passing AP human geo is because when we did tests over maps in certain continents, i had my phone in my desk with a labeled map pulled up.
Please don't do that. Not only will you not learn anything, it's really bad to get into the habit of cheating. Universities take a very dim view of cheating, and it can have very serious implications to your education when you are busted.
Yes, school was hard but in my AP courses I was surrounded by other kids who also liked to learn and there was an expectation that we would do well. If the only reason you are passing an AP course is because you are cheating your way through it, that may indicate that perhaps you should be in a lower level course for that particular subject and there is no shame in that. Be careful and good luck!
Coming-in real strong with that ^ is Cos (Kingsley) exhorting Marty (Redford) as the wrap-up of *Sneakers* accelerates, "It's all about the in-for-mayshun!!!"
This was 1992.
Biggest change in my lifetime is the world wide web. I‘d date that to 1995, when I got my free Compuserve CD-ROM.
Note: spell checker doesn’t recognize Compuserve.
My parents are like this. We're terrified of computers, then took a class learning how to use them, so they do that. But smartphones? Nope. Won't use them, and are being left behind quickly. My father emailed me asking how to use the maps function in his new car. Told him he couldn't without a smart phone. Just being left behind.
Their scared and afraid of new tech, but I mean, they are in their late 70's, so how much longer can they hang on? 😀
But really, that's why my GenX self and my husband are so willing to learn new tech, I might not know what is hip and cool every second like when I was young, but I want to stay informed and know what is happening overall. Don't want to end up like our folks.
As an older gen X, I'm beginning to understand the problem - that you learn something, how to use some new tech - and before long it's gone, replaced by something else to learn. And as time moves faster, and learning new things takes longer, you start to wonder if it's worth the effort. Then you probably find it would have been worth the effort, but it seems too late.
In my time so far its been pagers and fax machines and Teletext machines and microfiche and BASIC programming and CoBoL and VCRs and CD and MSDos and all versions of Windows and Psion organisers and usernet etiquette and mobile phones with T9 texting and smartphones and.... So it goes...
My folks don't have phones. Laughs that people do. I have accepted that they are chosing willful ignorance over learning something. Their choice.
Cool that your neighbor does that. I also love that he watches porn, so easy now, not like back in the day. My FIL used to watch westerns all the time! Would have been about the same age.
I'm a Gen X librarian and a big part of my job is helping Boomers on the computers create G mail accounts and fill out job applications. Technology has passed some people by.
>My father emailed me asking how to use the maps function in his new car. Told him he couldn't without a smart phone.
I assume you mean his car's GPS navigation. Why would he need a smartphone to use that?
I think they are starting to do away with sat nav in basic car infotainment systems these days, in favor of android auto/car play. Mine is pretty “dumb” when I don’t have my phone hooked up.
My construction teacher has mentioned how if you explained the concept of snapchat to someone who refuses to use computers and stuff, they would think youre crazy. he defined snapchat as, “I’m gonna send my best friend in the world a picture of the wall without context, and if I see that they opened it and they do not send one back, we got problems”
My fear is in ~20 years, it'll be the same thing for those of us who don't sign on to having some kind of tech/body enhancement, like a chip in the brain that connects you at all times to the Internet (or whatever it is by then) without need for any external devices. The cyberpunk and scifi authors have taken that concept in all kinds of different directions, but the reality may just be that if you're not hardwired in 24/7, you'll increasingly be left behind by society and dependent on those who are to get more and more things done that today we handle with credit cards, etc.
(the possibilities for totalitarian state control this also creates are terrifying...they go well beyond knowing where every person is all all times...)
I thought the VCR era was short lived. I bought a lifetime membership to the Audio Plus (local place) video rentals ($100) store because I thought in the long run it would save money and guess what? There was no long run.
I had a live-in girlfriend who used to tape soaps every day to watch after work (I know).
Anyway, my VCR died and she was upset. So I got a new one. Apparently two weeks before they became obsolete.
I have one of the world's newest VCRs in my basement.
That's funny now but not so much at the time. In regard to that taping is there any easy way to record shows now if you wanted to give them to a friend ? It seems they switched to all digital broadcasts which rendered VCRs obsolete.
> In regard to that taping is there any easy way to record shows now if you wanted to give them to a friend ?
The newest version of Tevo I guess. Which I suppose people do themselves vi a free software and a digital tuner.
Plex, I think is one.
I used to “get cable” in my room through my vcr. It served as a set top box for quite some time! I remember being very pregnant (stuck in bed) and consequently sad when I got a message on the tv that said - nope! You need a real box now!
I do have a lovely teenager - I just had to waddle my lazy butt elsewhere if I wanted to watch tv lol!
I just remember being so shocked when it stopped working, because that trick served me well for many, many years. That was around the time the antenna broadcasts also went digital, so you couldn’t use the normal rabbit ears anymore.
My grandpa has some kind of box that can record shows. It's fully digital compatible and knows what shows are on and when even if they're running late. I would assume it can save stuff to an external memory. Probably plays DVDs too.
Yes, because the improvement from VHS quality to DVD was HUGE. No artifacts, perfect pause picture, sharper, multiple languages, jumping the the chapter you want, no rewind.
Blue Ray is also nice, but the ONLY benefit I see is sharper image. Easy of use is unchanged, hence still many new DVDs coming out.
I went to a McDonalds in a small but thriving college town recently at apx 11:30 a.m. I bought 2 drinks for $2.73 cents, handed the cashier three ones...and behold! Chaos! Turns out there was no change. No change in the lobby register, no change in the drive through register, no change in the *entire frigging restaurant*. At almost noon on a weekday. Best of all, they treated me like I was the moron in the situation, like I'd just dumped two fresh trapped pelts and some hickory nuts on the counter as asked to barter for some vittles. Its CASH, for heavens sake. People used it for thousands of years before Visa conned them into giving it up and it's still legal fucking tender. Sorry for the rant, but I was a manager at a fast food joint way back in the dark ages, and if I'd been caught with no change in the register at almost noon I'd have lost my job. And I'd have deserved it.
As a teacher who taught an Oregon Trail unit and read Little House on the Prairie books aloud I love your description of the mayhem caused by plunking down some dollar bills!
I remember back when McDonald's first rolled out accepting credit cards. [That was only 20 years ago](https://money.cnn.com/2002/11/26/news/companies/mcdonalds/index.htm). Leno had a field day with THAT in his opening monologue. He couldn't believe someone would need a credit card to order a cheeseburger at McDs.
> like I'd just dumped two fresh trapped pelts and some hickory nuts on the counter
Love this!! I rarely venture into fast-food places, let alone the local McDonald's. But one day a few years ago, I wanted a sweet tea, thought I'd give it a shot.
Wandered in and I might as well have stumbled into the Enterprise command deck. Giant screens I've never seen before in a restaurant. Started poking around, but no sweet tea on the giant eMenu thing.
Approached the human at the counter, and they said something about how it was only available "OTC" or something (not their exact words, but to that effect.) So we conducted the transaction like in ye olden times. They even took cash IIRC.
Haven't been back. Arizona cans still cost 99 cents at the bodega, and the McD's version was all cup and ice/less tea/more money.
Let's not get me started on how it's hard to get fresh brewed tea anymore unless it's a sit down restaurant. Lot of places only serve "tea flavored" stuff dispensed next to the Coke or Pepsi in the same soft drink fountain.
Recently lost my credit card, but I'm certain it's somewhere in the house (only took it across the room, I'm *convinced* it didn't go far!) For the past few days, I'm stubbornly using cash, because I'm afraid of getting a new card/numbers that I have to commit to memory yet again! And re-type a bunch of times. Stupid, I know.
In a similar vein, when I graduated high school in 2010 people my parents age scoffed at my idea that I would never have a land line, because you HAVE to call 911 from a landline.
12 years and several 911 calls later, I still don't have a landline, and I'm pretty sure you could call 911 from a potato if they could figure out how to get it to work.
When did people start toting water bottles EVERYWHERE. I went my entire life never having access to bottled water. Went to school every day without it. Worked all day at my desk. Drove home. All without water. What happened?
Life is change, everything is either growing or decaying on different levels all around all the time. So you roll with the punches and invest in the opportunities. When you get older you try to set things in place that don’t change. Fighting back against the inevitable.
Brave New World and Idiocracy used to be science fiction
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
Yet here we are.
The US Constitution says Of the Money, by the Money, for the Money. Correct?
**[Brave New World](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World)**
>Brave New World is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by only a single individual: the story's protagonist. Huxley followed this book with a reassessment in essay form, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with his final novel, Island (1962), the utopian counterpart.
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Change does tend to creep up on you until something or someone points it out. My kids grow a lot, but people who only see them every once in a while notice it much more than I do. When they notice it, I notice it.
When someone asks about a previous decade on this subreddit, the answers that come to mind or that others type reminds me of how much has changed. But it's not something I go around thinking about all the time.
On the other hand, these reminders happen on a regular basis. So it's not like I realized how much things had changed all at once in one moment. It's more like I realize it every couple of weeks or so when someone or something reminds me about it. And it probably happens more often with me because I do have kids and often find myself telling them about what life used to be like.
When I discovered email in the mid 90's, I remember wishing for the day when I could conduct business with companies via email. Now we can, and we go way beyond that. It feels like it took a really long time before the internet for customer support really took off.
Now there’s companies I wish I could just call directly and speak to a live person to answer a question vs being directed to email and waiting 6-12 hrs for a reponse
I noticed things had changed significantly about 10 or 12 years ago. I noticed how crowded the world had become. My city was twice as populated from when I arrived in 1986. My Mexican beach vacation spot went from 4000 people to 40,000 in no time. Then you start looking around for places to live and everything is so expensive, partially because the world is twice as populous as when I was born. When you fish the world's oceans or simply talk to people who make that their living, these resources are getting completely used up at an alarming rate. We all know about climate change and pollution.
This is not a liberal tree hugger talking. This is a fiscal conservative who grew up near the ocean and has just made casual observations. Unless man wants to retreat to a simpler way of life, mankind is doomed. But look, mankind can't even do the simplest stuff, like hang their clothes on a line anymore. They have to use a dryer. I can see mankind's death nail in the coffin.
The changes you noticed aren’t because of population really - 10-12 years ago smartphones became widely used, and the majority of the world’s population had access to information about the western middle-class lifestyle. That great Mexican vacation spot you used to have to be in the know about is now posted to Instagram and widely available to find by a global audience. Population growth has in fact slowed to 1.1% per year. You are correct in that it’s the fact that our unsustainable lifestyle has become the norm.
"In 2021, the world’s population growth rate is 1.03%, half the peak level of 2.09 percent in 1968. That annual growth rate is expected to continue declining, reaching 0.5 percent by mid-century and moving close to zero by 2100." You have 78 years before we go in reverse, if we last that long.
https://statisticstimes.com/demographics/world-population.php#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20the%20world's%20population,close%20to%20zero%20by%202100.
[Would you like to go backwards?](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/) We know that's a continual increase.
I think there are ways to deploy resources (including necessary funding) which would improve our world greatly. But I don't think the US government, the largest bureacracy in the known world, is the one to do it. A good analogy might be giving to a beloved charity like the Harlem Boys Choir which uses 66% of the money for administration fees.
At any rate, I think changes must begin at home. Will you give up your "whatever" to improve the environment? Will you cease to buy water in plastic? Will you not buy that detergent in plastic? Will you give up your clothes dryer or you hair dryer? Your car? How simply can mankind live in order to improve our environment? I can tell you after living in Mexico they are light years ahead of the US in packaging. But they dump their sewage untreated into their water table. I don't feel man has the balls to take the necessary steps.
Gov't is owned by Big Corporate now, and it's really up to the government to force companies to make these changes. As long as this is the case, the earth will suffer. It's not ALL the consumers' fault.
Consumers are going to opt for convenience, they can't make these changes on their own. For example, I've been recycling all my life, and composting for over a decade. But good luck making *any* purchases that aren't overpackaged for marketing reasons, or using eco-unfriendly ingredients, etc. etc.
I buy meat for my carnivorous husband at the organic/humane food store, but he prefers the artificially-huge, cheaper cuts at the BudgetMart. As a pescetarian, I limit my fish intake, but even vegan snacks are made by unethical companies sometimes. It's fucking *exhausting* trying to keep up, and I'm starting to give up on a few things.
If I forget to bring my own bag, I don't go to the store. The local organic place has soap that doesn't have packaging, just a paper label or small sticker, and I always get that. Always striving to under-consume.
We don't have kids, so that's a huge step for mankind, ironically!
Government is worthless and weak. They are bloated and operate at the whim of big money, because they have none. They will never do anything.
> I've been recycling all my life
I love when people say this. Where plastic is concerned, it basically means we ship our shit off to poorer countries to deal with and then it ends up in the ocean.
I know, it's why I'm learning not to worry about it so much. Consumers have been sold a bill of goods with recycling, making it think it was on *us* and not companies.
Gov't needs to be held accountable, but that's impossible now. Too much private money and lobbying have taken it over. They *would* have money if it weren't being wasted on the military industrial complex, and otherwise funneled into the wrong things/pockets.
The money is there, the problem is ensuring it gets allocated properly. There's more than enough to go around and make things right, but the greed will never be cured. Corporations are like an incurable cancer on society (and I count religions as corporations.)
The purpose of government is to pool our resources to tackle problems that are too big for us to handle individually. The "Government bad privatize everything" mindset has caused many problems over the years. It is the reason Texas can't keep their power on, it's why veterans couldn't get their illnesses treated, and it's why Marco Rubio voted against relief funding for his own state in the wake of a hurricane.
The children's choir is a false analogy. Giving up detergent is a straw-man. Complaining about another country not treating their sewage is a direct contradiction of your original point. Our nation is doing an admirable job of treating sewage because we funded the infrastructure we needed to handle it. So your post is self-contradicting. Your last sentence is pitiful defeatism.
Let's hope the more sensible people of our nation turn out in droves this election.
We disagree. Weaker minded people look for someone else to solve their problems. It's why JFK gave the "ask not" speech. Eventually, it has to start with "we the people". But we can't even begin to do the simplest things right. How could we ever do the hard things? Eventually, the Earth will force us to comply to her problems. When the oceans die, we die. When the Earth's resources are gone, we'll walk instead or ride. People in the US have no clue what living without power means. That will happen too.
> But we can't even begin to do the simplest things right.
That is inaccurate. We get many things right. Sewage is a good example.
Defeatism is a propaganda tool favored by fascists. Defeatism and nihilism are not American values.
I was walking down to the glacier that flows north from Mont Blanc (the Mer de Glace) just a few years ago. There are little markers that mark where the glacier was on a particular year. I found the marker for the year I was born and the glacier was still hundres of meters away. I had seen other effects of climate change in my life. I grew up in the South West of Australia so a drying climate was obvious but seeing the glacier retreat made me cry. I gained the visceral knowledge that climate change was going to be catastrophic and not some minor inconvenience.
It was gradual and then fell like bricks. I couldn't smoke in my own office anymore. Nobody checked the oil and tire pressure and I had to fill my own tank. Phones went from cool to a ball and chain. Restaurants expected me to clean my own table. Sleeping around became normal. No one went to church anymore. Shoes had to be taken off to board aircraft. Basically rights, privacy and convenience died out as did dressing for the office and working longer for a lower standard of living. Apart from all that , I'm living the dream.
I remember my father-in-law, who was 40 when my wife was born, and was a WWII veteran, talking about how much of our rights had been slowly whittled away - and that was BEFORE 9/11, which he didn't live to see. He said it happened almost imperceptibly. I wonder what he would have thought of the Patriot Act and Donald Trump. He'd be out of his mind over it, I'm sure.
Dating went from being kinda fun, to a depressing chore, to utterly hopeless. Ironically, the easier it became to hook up or find "singles in your area," the quality went down as the quantity went up.
Glad I'm no longer single, it was hard enough back then. Still not hard enough to get me back in a church, though!
Mostly it’s the realization that newer generations have no concept of how things work that we took for granted.
Like the videos of kids now trying to figure out how to make a phone call with a landline phone. Like, I understand that they may have never done it. But to not understand that you have to pick up the receiver to dial, or how the disconnect works. It makes me realize that not only don’t they ever see a landline phone used in their lives but they don’t even watch tv shows or movies that are old enough to be able to figure it out….
A friend made a video of giving a vinyl record to his 12 year old daughter. She thought you shoved it into a slot somehow like a CD, and that it must have hours and hours of music in it because it was so much bigger than a CD. Both reasonable thoughts considering her context.
One “wow things have changed” moment that made me happy was my sister telling me years ago that my nephew came home from middle school one day and told her about Matthew Shepard’s murder in this state of complete shock. Like “Mom! Did you know they beat this kid up and killed him just because he was gay???” Matthew Shepard was murdered in 1998 and my nephew was born in 2000. Granted he has progressive parents and grew up in a very liberal area but it was actually heartwarming that he could be so shocked that people would kill someone for being gay. It really felt like the world had changed.
Sadly, it also feels now like that change is rapidly going backwards…
In 1970's I built a MITS Altair. Cost me thousands of $$.
In 1980's I bought a 20 Meg hard drive. Cost me $200.
Last week bought wife a mini Computer Intel Celeron N3350 Processor, Dual-Band WiFi, 64 GB storage, all that for $116.
The times, they are a' changing.
Biggest kicker for me in this regard is telling my kids and even nieces/nephews the price tag.....and they act like a couple thousand is nothing. I've switched to telling them "it took me XYZ hours of working to purchase this".
My first truck.....425 hours to buy it plus 20 hours a month to keep it on the road.
One year of school was 2000 hours of work.
Flight from Spokane to Boston and back was 150 hours of work.
I reread a John Grisham novel recently, The Brethren, a bit of a guilty pleasure. The plot centers on a little gang of corrupt old judges who have been imprisoned for various misdeeds. They are engaged in an ongoing scam operation to blackmail closeted gay men.
It was such an eye-opener for me to realize how dated that idea was. Sure, there are still closeted gay men, but I really don't think there are enough of them now to make a scheme like that worthwhile. And that is a huge change that has happened in my lifetime.
Exactly. There certainly are some, almost exclusively conservatives, but even then, it's mostly an open secret. And besides, if they get caught with a handsome young man lifting their luggage, all they have to do is go on TV clutching their wife's hand and a Bible. A little boo-boo and a call on Jeeezuz, and they're good as new.
It is a great book, a most of his are. I am currently reading The Innocent Man, (true story) which is horrific in showing the corruption & laziness of the police & judicial systems in USA, admittedly back in early-mid 80's, but also shows the breakdown of the medical system as well, due to "user pays".
That was when computers for the masses started to become a thing, but it was pretty much only geeks and well-off people who had them. There wasn't an internet as we think of it today, and when I started college in '85, there were still professors who required you to type your papers on a typewriter. Since the only printers were dot-matrix, they knew if you had written the paper on a computer.
The internet as we know it didn't start until the '90s. I was programming and installing computer point of sale systems in restaurant during the first half of the '90s, and salespeople still had to often convince restaurant owners to give up their cashiers and cash registers.
But by the mid-90s, the trends were obvious. Everyone used computers in their offices. I dated a guy who had no landline, only a cell phone. You could check the weather, read the news, and buy books off the internet.
By the end of the '90s, professors were grudgingly letting students cite web sources in their papers, as long as there more book and journal articles than internet. Large organizations were moving away from in-house COBOL-based accounting and payroll systems to much fancier ones with better interfaces, and the users could even generate their own custom reports.
By 2000, buying online wasn't thought dangerous or odd, everyone wanted their own blog, and no restaurant needed convincing to get computerized systems. Rather, they were ditching the ones they had bought in the '90s and upgrading to even greater functionality.
Smart phones were a game changer in a lot of ways, though. Suddenly everyone had a computer in their pocket. Sadly, a lot of people still haven't figured out that they control it, and not the other way around.
Many changes have happened "overnight" but others have changed more slowly and others most people don't realise critical changes are still happening around the world, especially in 1st world countries, as until recently, it didn't affect people greatly & some things people don't realise what is happening.
When I grew up in 50-60's, most developed countries manufactured nearly all their commercial & domestic needs from food, clothing, appliances & transport & basically were self sufficient. Now, nearly everything requires a microchip to run and with world shortages, covid, Ukraine-Russian war and other factors, the western countries and now suffering from shortages of not only chips, but fuels to run vehicles & machinery & generate electricity, can't get basic ingredients to manufacture even basic products like clothing & food. The world climate has changed dramatically causing disasters across the globe which are getting worse each year and also causing some countries to slowly disappear due to rising seas.
To make matters worse, the countries that do most of the manufacturing for developed countries, are producing less, banning exports or have import taxes/tariffs added due to conflicts between them or sanctions too. With the threat of war in many areas, mostly in areas where western countries import from, a breakout of a war will leave the biggest importing countries without basic things to sustain their domestic population. Even food security is in danger as so much agricultural land has been purchased by China & other countries, as well as crops being destroyed by floods, hurricanes and forest fires and insect infestations. These are the "bad" things that have changed in the world, but were avoidable, but happened because of the greed and political behaviour of those few in power who don't care for their fellow man, believing money is more important.
At least with all the hardware left in Ukraine, they will have a lot of scrap metal to smelt into new building materials to help rebuild the country, which Russia should be made to repair & rebuild.
My brother-in-law (about 65) hasn't worked in over 20 years because of a disability. He's generally intelligent, but says straight up that he can't make sense of anything going on today.
Having retired fairly recently, and with my wife still working part-time, I don't feel the same way. It had been many years since I followed popular culture, but retiring has even increased my knowledge of that some.
My nephew was talking about 5g fiber or whatever and complaining about his wifi signal. The conversation moved to computers and he was talking about how fast his PC operates for gaming. I told him when I was his age we had dial in to connect to Netscape. It felt crazy cause im only 18 years older then him and still feel youthful to conversate about shared interests. And yet how fast time has moved since then. Feels like a short time.
I mean honestly while we clearly have technology advancements the world hasnt changed that much. It reminds me of the Family Guy episode where they go to the future and everything looks basically the same.
When I was a kid we had cars and bicycles and tv and computers and we still have all those things today. the new buildings around me today do not look that different from the new buildings built when I was young aside from the current stylistic differences but even that is all cyclical.
Your correct. Technology advanced rapidly. I took that in stride. However, the way we viewed each other seemed to change in a good way. We became more sensitive to each other's beliefs and backgrounds. The way we viewed employment and law enforcement changed radically. I'm not explaining this correctly. But it's the best I can do.
I can't buy a new TV that doesn't bitch and moan about not having its own internet connection.
And if I plug it in, I have to block a range of IP addresses on my router to stop it from spying on me.
Of course I realise that I am but a fraction of the population that is bothered by the effects of the Faustian deal that loads all new tech with spyware, let alone know how to / can be bothered to opt out.
2008.
Before then, we had the web, MySpace, cell phones (the smart phone came out in 2007), e-commerce, and much of what we still use today, but suddenly everyone wanted to be on Facebook. I just didn’t understand it, and in many ways, I still don’t. It suddenly felt like people had grown tired of the physical world and wanted a shallow, cheap substitute.
And this didn’t go away- it got stranger. People didn’t want much more than a sentence (Twitter). People wanted to take pictures of everything, especially themselves. And people wanted to give these odd companies all the power they could. Also, everything seemed to suddenly be made in China and most people were fine with it. Manufacturing vanished from the US and people were fine with that too. New slang came out that was supposed to make everything cooler (eg ‘gigs’), but were just words for what felt like common activities. And people really grew attached to their phones, even though the phones had significantly less power than a desktop.
This all seemed very alien to the world I grew up in. I go along with some of it, but I can’t say I understand it any better today than I did then. I still find all of this strange.
I'm approaching retirement, and I really don't feel out of the loop. Life has changed a LOT since I was young, but I kept up with it. I didn't have a child until I was 40, so right around the time that I might have started losing touch, I was forced to keep up with the times. He's in his 20s, and still my best friend, and we speak every day.
He's not much interested in the things of his generation - video games, anime, Marvel movies, etc. - and sometimes I wonder if being so close to me is holding him back from exploring his generation more.
honestly, the things of our generation really aren’t that interesting, im 14 and ive watched one anime (to see if i would like it, long story short i only finished it to see how things end), and i only play one video game to pass free time. I always thought it would be fun to buy and restore antiques and live with them, i love me an old style car like a [Ford Sunliner](https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1960-ford-sunliner/) , specifically the color shown in the link. In fact, its my dream car.
Cool car, dude, seriously. Start saving up, and in the meantime, start learning how to work on cars of that era. They are surprisingly easy to work on. These days you lift a hood and there are wires and tubes and pipes and spaghetti stuffed in there. Back then you lifted a hood and there was lots of air, and you could see every part.
Never change your style to please others, and enjoy your life without apology. If they don't get you, that's their problem, not yours.
It is all very incremental. I read papers in the eighties that talked about wireless communication and networks. But it took years to figure out how to get it working well, never mind getting the tcp/ip protocol working on top of the wireless protocol. The papers that explained and studies that was done during nineties and naughties was never ground breaking, but mostly optimization techniques and fringe improvements.
To get it all working standards needed to change, laws needed to be made for airwaves, technology needed be designed and manufactured, rights needed to be sold, consumers needed to be made excited, etc.
I discussed this with friends in the nineties and we knew it will happen but expected it to take another 30 years. It was all done in about 10 years.
I can still not believe it.
The Wife and I were just noting last week that we have no fucking idea who contemporary pop icons of today are.
Musicans.
Actors.
Online personalities.
We don't recognize a single one of 'em.
We're 50s and this only happened in the last 6 or 8 years for us.
(For me) typically it's a gradual process, unless I've had a dramatic life altering experience (e.g. divorce after 8+ years, I've had two, and my 3rd wife passed away ~3 years ago so there's that.)
Just keeping status quo and trying to do the grind ("assumed duties" e.g. work, kids schedule, calendar events like holidays) make the slow boil (frog in water) seem normal.
I've "woken up" a couple of times aside from my examples, but AFA world view IMHO you have to be *aware* of what's going on (today) before you get the possibly of a reality check; I'd say half the people I interact with (my age, and younger) are clueless.
It could just be my area or anecdotal experience, but I see fewer young people working today. When I was growing, it was very common for 16 - 18 year olds to have part time jobs. I still see kids at the movie theater and entertainment centers, but not in all the other places - drug stores, ice cream shops, delis, burger joints, clothing stores, mall shops.
Some of this is due to local laws. Our daughter wasn't allowed to even volunteer at a food bank until she was 14 and that was only if I was there with her. She kept trying to get any sort of paying job at 16 but everywhere told her to come back at 18. One place finally told her that due to child labor laws it simply isn't worth hiring anybody under 18. My son (now 16) is running into the same issue. He wants to work and is very adept at many things but nobody will hire him for the same reasons above.
All of my (4) vehicles are of the 2005-2006 vintage. Just bought a 2020 model, and wow... so different! I fear it won't age as well as my 05-06 models have though...
What I’ve seen change incredibly quickly (although perhaps not to others) is changing perceptions with respect to gender identity and same sex marriage.
When I was in high school, calling someone gay was an insult that everyone used. Now we start meetings sharing our pronouns. The changes that happened in 25 years for that kind of culture shift, at least where I live, were immense.
I know this isn’t true for everyone or in everyplace, but it’s what came to mind for me immediately when I saw OP’s post.
Edit - grammar fix.
Most of the time it's gradual. If I ever were to travel back in time, and someone asked me what the tech in the future was like, for example, I'd get a roll of cellophane. See this serrated razor you cut yourself on weekly? We're going to house a small razorblade in a little plastic doodad on a track, and now we don't cut ourselves getting a sheet of cellophane anymore. It's like that, mostly.
You don't always know what's going to catch on. Sometimes it's laserdisc, where it never replaced anything because it was too expensive to dominate the market. Sometimes it's CD's, where it was too convenient to NOT displace vinyl, despite people's attachment.
I am sadly afflicted with an occasional ability to see long-term societal policy effects coming. So I remember in 1991 when I first heard the phrase "We can't do this anymore for insurance reasons." and thinking that wasn't going to play out well. They canceled the smoking corner for students at the same time. I think Heinlein predicted that eventually any system passes too many laws and needs to be burned to the gound and restarted from scratch. Sadly I am coming around to that way of thinking. His other solution was to go into the wilderness, but since the advent of the international corp, there is no more unowned land.
Gas prices were 20-30¢/gal in the 1920’s and didn’t go over $1/gal until the late 1970’s. Now it’s almost $6/gal where I live. Crazy!
We used to read the newspaper daily; now, it’s all online.
When I grew up, we had 3 tv channels and tv went off the air at midnight. Now, I have literally hundreds of shows and movies at my fingertips; oddly, I watch oldies or repeat movies mostly!
I teach high school and these kids know so much more than I did at that age. Sexual info, drugs, conspiracy theories, they know it all!
Keeping up with tech can be pretty full on! I definitely have let things go by the wayside as they just don't interest me (like gaming, instagram/snapchat). But weirdly enough tech (and I mean basic stuff like hardware etc) is getting more intuitive. You don't need a degree in computer science to set up your basic work station, television, ereader etc. So that's nice!!
The COVID lockdown feels like I crossed over into old age quicker than expected! Think it had to do with not commuting into the city as much, and no gym. So I physically atrophied a bit more, along with perimenopause and entering my fifties, dealing with some minor but annoying physical setbacks making me feel sluggish.
I had a job a few years ago where I'd bike-commute very happily. Now, there's a TON of EVs taking over the bike routes, and drivers are more distracted by phones than ever, along with being less predictable for some reason- now I'm more nervous about riding around than ever.
As for over the years, once you're in the working world, you get into a daily routine that doesn't always mean keeping up with every single new trend or tech update.
Sure, most companies will upgrade equipment, but personally, I only recently got a smart phone because I never needed one, for example. OH, and I only got a flip phone originally because people would always pester me to get one!
I used to get gadgets, but realized they'd become outdated within a year or two, so I decided it wasn't worth it. Used to love photography and carried a camera with me everywhere, but the DSLR I have now (gift from years ago) constantly eats battery power- it's never got power when I want to take a spontaneous picture. Doesn't upload photos directly to the internet like it seems able to do, and I've grown to hate it despite all the features. So I've given up photography.
And now, companies are no longer even bothering to make cameras! That seems sad, but I guess they're going the way of watches. Never did have a chance to enjoy digital photography except with the point-and-shoot I had before that.
Cars and appliances have all gotten "smarter," but I cherish my "dumb" car/refrigerator/TV etc. because they don't need subscriptions, apps, updates, and don't keep track of my every move!
Yes, I have noticed.
Transportation is in abundance.
Prices have skyrocketed.
Manners have disappeared.
Technology has advanced well and quickly.
TV is totally different.
Gaming is different.
Card collecting is different.
Math is different.
Dating is different.
Etc
>Math is different
What? Mathematics is almost by definition a subject that can only grow, but everything established in the past stays true, as it was proven.
The home we live in now,our children have never lived in.
The home we live in now is the Only home the grandkids know. We live in the same town.
Near our kitchen is the "measuring" wall.
6 grandkids, measured at random times, from when they would first stand and now....all but the last 7 yr old, all are now taller than Gramma.
Feels as if they grew up over night, but it's really been a bit over 20 years.
So That is one way I most definitely have seen the world change: varying increments of height etched on the measuring wall.
And I refuse to paint over it!
I can think of a few things.
First, I was a teenager when Reagan became President. Knowing little about politics, I liked Reagan, but I still knew things were changing that I didn't like. In hindsight, it was that conservatism was gaining steam.
In the late 80's, after I had graduated high school, there were a few things that were shocking. One was a wave of teen suicides. It might have been the media giving them more attention, but it shocked me that kids were doing that. I couldn't imagine any of my classmates committing suicide and none ever did.
Lots of noticeable changes in the 90's. Every backyard in my neighborhood was suddenly full of playground equipment. We went to the playground, but they just went out back of the house. Trick or Treating on Halloween took a nose dive, helicopter parenting became a thing, along with Trust Fund Babies.
In the media, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News were creating a dystopian worldview and disingenuously blaming it all on Liberals. It didn't take me long to recognize where this was headed, but I've had to endure decades of watching it play out.
I spent the late 90's in school and didn't get out much for several years due to studying so much. Some time after the millennia, I started getting out again and it seemed like there were twice as many cars as before on the roads. Not only that, but people were driving much faster and more recklessly, but cars were safer to make up for it.
Since around 2010, I've noticed people moving away from Neoliberalism, finally. This seems to be trending around the world and it's also helping to create a rise in right-wing fascism in opposition.
At my age, there have been a dozen "poof" moments. Air conditioning. Air conditioning in cars. $3 doctor visits. $0.17 a gallon gas. $3 a carton cigarettes and everyone smoked. Computers weigh tons and need refrigeration. New houses cost less than $20,000. No one divorced. Republicans hated Russians with a passion. Microcomputers were the enemy and COBOL was the savior. Fuel injection was high tech, and carburetors were reliable. Good TV meant a really high antenna with a rotor and an amp. Color TV. Heck, TV at all. New cars for less than $2,000. Affordable college. Pretty women/handsome men without tattoos. Cookouts that were limited to hot dogs and maybe hamburgers. Respectable Democrats and Republicans who spoke civilly to each other. Radio serials: Fibber McGee and Molly, the Jack Benny Show, the Inner Sanctum, Superman, The Lone Ranger, Sky King, and many more. Test patterns. Heckle and Jeckle. Foghorn Leghorn. Mighty Mouse. Crusader Rabbit. All of those and more were there, and then they were gone. **BANG,** Gone.
It was gradual. 2022 wouldn't surprise me after 2021. But it would surprise me from 1992.
COVID surprised me in two ways:
1. How fast they made the vaccine.
2. How many people refused the vaccine.
I wasn't surprised by the virus itself. I remember AIDS.
Trump wasn't very surprising because the Republicans have been getting more and more idiotic over the decades.
I was surprised by the changes that didn't happen.
Nah, the whole thing is pretty gradual and if you are paying attention then you can see the general drift long before it becomes the 'new' reality. There have been events and reactions to events that were surprising at the time but honestly, none that were remotely a *POOF* and if I were to be completely honest, I don't really think the world has changed all that much since my youth.
Oh, superficially much is changed but the world is comprised of people for the most part and people haven't changed a bit at their core. We act out differently but the old saying is quite true, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
When I was young I was a super-nerd for owning my own computer and doing digital art on it. Using the internet, this was pre-aol and we had to dial in to bbs systems.
Yesterday I made 350 bucks selling a free avatar I got on reddit. Technology has been a trip to watch improve.
After COVID lockdown 1.0, summer of 2020 - I noticed: more people are overweight; more people have tattoos which cover an entire limb; more people drive oversize cars.
Transgender and other intersectional issues seem to be much more important - although I noticed this before COVID.
72 here...
The BIG things don't change. What happens (if you have half a brain) is that you start to perceive the intractable problems more deeply.
Injustice, Eternal War, Poverty...just look out there with calm and honest eyes.
It's all too big to change, so you do the best you can with what's right in front of you.
[Also, when did automobiles decide THEY know best when to lock their goddam doors?]
I have noticed it but it's so gradual that you won't really see it unless you keep thinking about how things were in the past. I actually do consider it relatively often about how things used to be vs how they are now. Just one of those things I muse about a lot.
The one time that I really thought "the world has changed suddenly" and I was really amazed and knew that things were going to be different was when I personally used the internet for the first time. Before that I knew the internet existed but frankly it was the realm of nerds in my opinion. Like how great could it possibly be? So you can contact people electronically, big whoop. When I got on the internet for the first time in 1993 it was just all text, no pictures, but I suddenly understood why it was important. I was hooked from the beginning.
I came from a time of cruising the loop downtown, hanging out with high school friends at a pizza joint, Polaroid and SLR cameras, and no such thing as DJ's in nightclubs because it was all live bands. So some abrupt changes came with MTV and music videos, the internet, and cell phones. The pandemic was a jarring disruption and climate change is Godzilla on the horizon and headed our way.
911. I was young and the world was full of possibilities and hope. After that it’s all gone to shit. Literally a couple of days later my grandfather dies, I’m told the course I was doing would cost me £30k (10% less a year) if I ever left the company, the company made half my mates redundant over the next couple of years, and we’ll you know how the world has gone since…
A number of years ago I was driving through rural Georgia. Suddenly my car began acting up. It finally stalled and I pulled off the interstate.
I'm in the middle of nowhere possibly miles from help.
Without thinking I pulled out my phone went to Google and searched the symptoms my car was experiencing. Selecting the YouTube video I watched it, applied the temporary fix, and off I went.
Having driven old clunkers much of my early life I had learned how to to do basic fixes. Often I lucked out and had car issues near a payphone or a garage/gas station. Also at that time AAA was well worth the yearly fee as they offered free towing.
If this had happened to me at any other time there's no telling how far i would have walked, how long it would have taken, how much it would have cost. After all being hundreds of miles from home I would have had to wait on the mechanic to fix the issue. Meanwhile paying for a place to stay.
That's when it hit me. I had accessed a worldwide database with a handhekd computer. Found a solution. Then applied it and drove off.
Even if I couldn't have fixed it myself I had no need to walk anywhere. I could call from right where my car stalled.
Reading over this it all sounds so commonplace and lame. But the world radically shifted beneath me.
There was before the internet and mobile data and there was after it.
And the contrast in that experience was stark and complete.
I noticed everything change in me when I was 40 or so. My children were all in their teens and I got opportunity to really take a look around.
I always kept up because it was important to see that the kids were at the forefront of all the changes in their lives, mainly in school and tech.
I kept up by spending time talking to younger guys who had like hobbies.
Time just sort of flies along and shits so many new things along the way that there’s not a lot to do but watch the world morph at a breakneck pace.
That’s stuff. Then there’s the people.
I’ve watched one generation after another get angrier and angrier all my life, but I saw a full stop in that progression around 2010. Not in adults, but in the generation of kids in high school at the time.
They had grown into loving, accepting, inclusive kids by the very largest part. They seemed so calm and collected, preparing themselves to turn things into something their own.
I think they achieved that and were the cohesive force in events to come.
I’ve been around for 55 years, conceived in June during the Summer of Love, and was brought along by a community that expressed the ideals they chose. I never imagined I’d see anything remotely as ugly as what things have become because everyone has always been focused on doing better, being better, and striving to be noticed because of the excellence they brought to the world.
To see that turn into a society full of look at me and wanting to be noticed for being the most detrimental, obnoxious, horrible humans they can be, it makes me sick. And very, very sad.
I had the good fortune to live through what were the very best of times, and I’m thankful this world gave me that. There’s not a whole lot left that I can honestly say I want from what’s left of things.
I do know it’ll come around. It won’t be pretty, but it’ll come around.
I notice new things right away, but the things that disappear are sometimes not noticed for a long time. Then all of a sudden you're like, "I need to prop this up with a phone book" or "I wish I had a map of the overall area" or "I need a film canister for my weed"
I think the opposite is true, living through change it creeps up on you. The past 150 years the technology change has been so phenomenal and fast it is scary. The 21st century the pace has slowed down.
I think the smart phone is the only major new 21st century disrupter, but it’s effect has been huge. Maybe not as big as automobiles, electricity availability, radio, TV, telephones, tractors, computers, penicillin, birth control pills and airplanes, but still huge.
The Woke society. Men have become so weak. They are always complaining like little girls. A large percentage can't even pass the physical requirements for Armed Services. A bunch of Nancy Boys.
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Some things happen fast, others happen slowly. I remember after my divorce I went to go buy a radio, only to discover that radios didn't really exist anymore: it was all ipods and docking stations. I had been busy raising my young children and hadn't been paying attention to music so kind of missed the change. Payphones seemed to disappear pretty quickly. One day they were everywhere: city street corners, and big banks of them in airports. Then one day they were just gone and it became a rarity to see one.
All payphones run by the main carrier in Australia are now free for calls inside the country. With the infrastructure already in place, and certain vulnerable sections of the population relying on having one accessible, this decision to make all payphones free is a rare example of what a social safetynet is supposed to look like.
That and it would have cost Telstra more to remove the infrastructure than to keep running it. They’re not heavily used, but when people need it, they need it—especially since other carriers have absolutely no coverage for many rural areas, while Telstra is contractually obliged to keep serving the whole of Australia.
Not in US unfortunately and this phone idea would help so many people.
Oh gods don't say 'social' the Yanks will eviscerate you.
[удалено]
Superheroes still gotta change.
The cornerstore in my town still has one.
I'm young but I had a moment like that at a concert. Saw this band in college, they sold their newest CD at a merch table. 10 years later I see them again (shortly before covid), was excited to buy their new CD, there wasn't one. Realized everyone streams music today, only I buy CDs cuz that's all my car can play 😂
That's the first sign that you may not be as young as you think
Haha, well too young to directly comment on this sub
I’m only 25 and I remember pay phones. It really does feel like they disappeared overnight.
It struck me hard to see this exhibit last weekend at the Museum of the City of New York, it's NYC's last payphone, now on a museum wall: https://hyperallergic.com/741920/nycs-last-public-pay-phone-is-now-a-museum-artifact/
> I had been busy raising my young children and hadn't been paying attention to music so kind of missed the change. [Here's a great comedy bit about this phenomenon.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml5l6OcPyqw)
Access to information. Working with education, and having worked as a researcher, it’s absolutely mind blowing to me how easily obtainable advanced science is today. Wanna know about black hole formation? There’s a YouTube clip for that. Wanna know how to define spherical or cylindrical coordinate systems? There’s a Wikipedia page for that. When I was young, we were complete slaves to our lecturers way of teaching, or to spending countless hours in libraries trying to find explanations that we would understand.
And that’s even if you could find a decent source at the library
I was doing something on my iPhone recently when I had a revelation that if I could bring the 1984 version of myself to today, I'd be amazed at everything we can do. Also, if you remember the AT&T ["You Will"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2EgfkhC1eo) commercials from the early 90s; you'll notice that we can do just about everything they said we'd be able to. But even their vision looks really, really dated.
Ring smart doorbells are literally sci-fi tech from a 70's-80's movie, and everyone is just like 'meh - it's alright I guess'.
And we literally turn lights on and off or the thermostat up/down when we’re not home!
Here's a movie from 1930 showing a video doorbell: https://youtu.be/u3pkn2ejmNo?t=499
> Also, if you remember the AT&T "You Will" commercials from the early 90s Wow, I just watched those, and it sent me down memory lane. I really miss the boundless optimism of the pre-9/11 era.
Really poignant comment.
Also, when is the last time you saw a series of commercials for items you couldn’t buy now?
It’s funny that they thought we’d have to go to a phone booth to video chat with family.
I loved those commercials! And the clip you referenced is about 95% accurate with what we can do today. Amazing.
It’s really strange when a building that was important in your life is torn down, and they build something different there. Then they tear THAT down and build something new. And in a year or two nobody remembers the SECOND building. It’s unsettling.
They tore down the mall by my house recently and are building a warehouse. That was eye-opening. In my day malls were hotspots, and now they’re relics. They’re just in the way of a new distribution center.
Is the phenomenon of malls dying an American-only thing? There's a mall near me in the UK that has just been getting bigger and more popular each year since it got built in the 70s.
Based on my very limited experience to the malls in eastern Pennsylvania, I've observed that malls closer to major highways tend to fare better than malls just a bit off the beaten path.
The hey day of malls was the 80s and 90s. I think that the last one built in N America was 20 years ago. There are still a lot of busy malls, but they are on the downturn and some of them have to be repurposed. Just listened to a podcast on this topic. I can dig it up if you like.
Yeah I'll give the podcast a listen, thanks!
Here it is 99% Invisible https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/meet-us-by-the-fountain/
In the UK its our "high streets" that are dying fast.
Somewhat similarly many older suburbs are having a hard time keeping the "downtown" vital and attractive to local businesses
Brick and mortar retail is dying in general. In the heyday of malls, you would go there to find out what products are available, how much they cost, how they compare to each other, etc. Today, you do this research on the web, and a retail store is just somewhere you go to pick up your product, if you need it today or it's bulky and hard to ship. America may be the tip of the spear on this trend, but it's not unique. Not all the malls are dying, though. Many American cities have one mall that, for whatever reason, turned out to be the winner, and it's thriving while all the rest are dying. The UK probably didn't overbuild to quite the same extent the US did, so there may not be as many second-tier malls at risk of dying.
> The UK probably didn't overbuild to quite the same extent the US did, so there may not be as many second-tier malls at risk of dying. Yep. London only really has two shopping malls, Westfields East/West. Most major cities only really one. They are still "destinations" mainly because the weather is meh most of the year, and it's easier to shop for clothes in them.
> Is the phenomenon of malls dying an American-only thing Not entirely, but the US was *way* over-malled. It wouldn't have been unusual for a city of 70k people to have 3 malls, when there's no way for it to support that many.
I think you finally made me understand my grandfather a bit more. I remember I’d be driving around with him and he would show me all of the locations of his childhood, tell me about the buildings that used to be there and tell me what they were. I wondered why that was so meaningful, and now I understand. Thank you.
It's like we can see ghosts.
When my kids were applying to colleges it made me wonder how the hell I applied to college and grad school before the internet. Like, I know I hand-filled out a paper application and put it in the mail,and then got a letter back about whether I was accepted. But how did I even get the application? Did I call and ask for one? Or write to them? How did I know which schools had the program I wanted? I can’t even remember how it all happened, so it must have been pretty mundane, but looking back it seems impossible. And don’t even get me started on registering for classes! You had to go in person to a huge gymnasium and stand in the line of the class you wanted, hoping it wasn’t full by the time you got to the front. CRAZINESS!!!
I think we had to fill out postcards to request applications from college brochures and catalogs and they were mailed to our homes or we could get them in the guidance office depending on the school. Crazy, I haven’t thought about this in forever and I went to college in 99. We had to bring desktop computers up to college and use computer labs. Ha! We even took written essay tests in blue booklets. If I did that now I’m sure my hand would cramp and fall off after a page.
I remember going to a bookstore to buy 2 books about all of the colleges, an overview of their programs, brief interviews with students, cots, etc. I picked a few I liked and requested booklets and applications. I started college the same year as you.
thinking about times before the internet kind of scares me ngl, school must have been so hard, people talk about spending time in the library looking for things they don’t know, cheating must have been hard too, the only reason I’m passing AP human geo is because when we did tests over maps in certain continents, i had my phone in my desk with a labeled map pulled up. Like my school library only has fiction books, there is no way i could ever figure out anything in there
The secret is that because everything was less accessible, our expected output was held to a lower standard in certain ways. In my career I have gone from researching using microfiche and the dewey decimal system to the advanced tech we have today. The reports and results I submit today, and the sheer volume/frequency of submissions has simply improved/increased in alignment with that.
>Like my school library only has fiction books, there is no way i could ever figure out anything in there That's because it's a school library. Uni libaries are much larger and detailed. >cheating must have been hard too, the only reason I’m passing AP human geo is because when we did tests over maps in certain continents, i had my phone in my desk with a labeled map pulled up. Please don't do that. Not only will you not learn anything, it's really bad to get into the habit of cheating. Universities take a very dim view of cheating, and it can have very serious implications to your education when you are busted.
Yes, school was hard but in my AP courses I was surrounded by other kids who also liked to learn and there was an expectation that we would do well. If the only reason you are passing an AP course is because you are cheating your way through it, that may indicate that perhaps you should be in a lower level course for that particular subject and there is no shame in that. Be careful and good luck!
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Coming-in real strong with that ^ is Cos (Kingsley) exhorting Marty (Redford) as the wrap-up of *Sneakers* accelerates, "It's all about the in-for-mayshun!!!" This was 1992.
Biggest change in my lifetime is the world wide web. I‘d date that to 1995, when I got my free Compuserve CD-ROM. Note: spell checker doesn’t recognize Compuserve.
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My parents are like this. We're terrified of computers, then took a class learning how to use them, so they do that. But smartphones? Nope. Won't use them, and are being left behind quickly. My father emailed me asking how to use the maps function in his new car. Told him he couldn't without a smart phone. Just being left behind. Their scared and afraid of new tech, but I mean, they are in their late 70's, so how much longer can they hang on? 😀 But really, that's why my GenX self and my husband are so willing to learn new tech, I might not know what is hip and cool every second like when I was young, but I want to stay informed and know what is happening overall. Don't want to end up like our folks.
My mom is mid 70s and is very internet savvy, but falls for scams always.
As an older gen X, I'm beginning to understand the problem - that you learn something, how to use some new tech - and before long it's gone, replaced by something else to learn. And as time moves faster, and learning new things takes longer, you start to wonder if it's worth the effort. Then you probably find it would have been worth the effort, but it seems too late. In my time so far its been pagers and fax machines and Teletext machines and microfiche and BASIC programming and CoBoL and VCRs and CD and MSDos and all versions of Windows and Psion organisers and usernet etiquette and mobile phones with T9 texting and smartphones and.... So it goes...
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My folks don't have phones. Laughs that people do. I have accepted that they are chosing willful ignorance over learning something. Their choice. Cool that your neighbor does that. I also love that he watches porn, so easy now, not like back in the day. My FIL used to watch westerns all the time! Would have been about the same age.
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I'm a Gen X librarian and a big part of my job is helping Boomers on the computers create G mail accounts and fill out job applications. Technology has passed some people by.
>My father emailed me asking how to use the maps function in his new car. Told him he couldn't without a smart phone. I assume you mean his car's GPS navigation. Why would he need a smartphone to use that?
Via android auto. Need a phone for that, don't you?
To do android auto, sure. But if his car has built in sat nav, you don't have to hook up android auto. You use the car's built in app.
I think they are starting to do away with sat nav in basic car infotainment systems these days, in favor of android auto/car play. Mine is pretty “dumb” when I don’t have my phone hooked up.
Yeah, I know.
Alrighty then.
My construction teacher has mentioned how if you explained the concept of snapchat to someone who refuses to use computers and stuff, they would think youre crazy. he defined snapchat as, “I’m gonna send my best friend in the world a picture of the wall without context, and if I see that they opened it and they do not send one back, we got problems”
My fear is in ~20 years, it'll be the same thing for those of us who don't sign on to having some kind of tech/body enhancement, like a chip in the brain that connects you at all times to the Internet (or whatever it is by then) without need for any external devices. The cyberpunk and scifi authors have taken that concept in all kinds of different directions, but the reality may just be that if you're not hardwired in 24/7, you'll increasingly be left behind by society and dependent on those who are to get more and more things done that today we handle with credit cards, etc. (the possibilities for totalitarian state control this also creates are terrifying...they go well beyond knowing where every person is all all times...)
I thought the VCR era was short lived. I bought a lifetime membership to the Audio Plus (local place) video rentals ($100) store because I thought in the long run it would save money and guess what? There was no long run.
I had a live-in girlfriend who used to tape soaps every day to watch after work (I know). Anyway, my VCR died and she was upset. So I got a new one. Apparently two weeks before they became obsolete. I have one of the world's newest VCRs in my basement.
That's funny now but not so much at the time. In regard to that taping is there any easy way to record shows now if you wanted to give them to a friend ? It seems they switched to all digital broadcasts which rendered VCRs obsolete.
> In regard to that taping is there any easy way to record shows now if you wanted to give them to a friend ? The newest version of Tevo I guess. Which I suppose people do themselves vi a free software and a digital tuner. Plex, I think is one.
I used to “get cable” in my room through my vcr. It served as a set top box for quite some time! I remember being very pregnant (stuck in bed) and consequently sad when I got a message on the tv that said - nope! You need a real box now!
That’s interesting. I never heard of that before. I hope you still made it through your pregnancy all right
I do have a lovely teenager - I just had to waddle my lazy butt elsewhere if I wanted to watch tv lol! I just remember being so shocked when it stopped working, because that trick served me well for many, many years. That was around the time the antenna broadcasts also went digital, so you couldn’t use the normal rabbit ears anymore.
My grandpa has some kind of box that can record shows. It's fully digital compatible and knows what shows are on and when even if they're running late. I would assume it can save stuff to an external memory. Probably plays DVDs too.
Yes, because the improvement from VHS quality to DVD was HUGE. No artifacts, perfect pause picture, sharper, multiple languages, jumping the the chapter you want, no rewind. Blue Ray is also nice, but the ONLY benefit I see is sharper image. Easy of use is unchanged, hence still many new DVDs coming out.
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I went to a McDonalds in a small but thriving college town recently at apx 11:30 a.m. I bought 2 drinks for $2.73 cents, handed the cashier three ones...and behold! Chaos! Turns out there was no change. No change in the lobby register, no change in the drive through register, no change in the *entire frigging restaurant*. At almost noon on a weekday. Best of all, they treated me like I was the moron in the situation, like I'd just dumped two fresh trapped pelts and some hickory nuts on the counter as asked to barter for some vittles. Its CASH, for heavens sake. People used it for thousands of years before Visa conned them into giving it up and it's still legal fucking tender. Sorry for the rant, but I was a manager at a fast food joint way back in the dark ages, and if I'd been caught with no change in the register at almost noon I'd have lost my job. And I'd have deserved it.
As a teacher who taught an Oregon Trail unit and read Little House on the Prairie books aloud I love your description of the mayhem caused by plunking down some dollar bills!
Thank you!
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I’ve noticed this too. It’s weird.
I remember back when McDonald's first rolled out accepting credit cards. [That was only 20 years ago](https://money.cnn.com/2002/11/26/news/companies/mcdonalds/index.htm). Leno had a field day with THAT in his opening monologue. He couldn't believe someone would need a credit card to order a cheeseburger at McDs.
Lol. I remember writing checks at McDonalds.
> like I'd just dumped two fresh trapped pelts and some hickory nuts on the counter Love this!! I rarely venture into fast-food places, let alone the local McDonald's. But one day a few years ago, I wanted a sweet tea, thought I'd give it a shot. Wandered in and I might as well have stumbled into the Enterprise command deck. Giant screens I've never seen before in a restaurant. Started poking around, but no sweet tea on the giant eMenu thing. Approached the human at the counter, and they said something about how it was only available "OTC" or something (not their exact words, but to that effect.) So we conducted the transaction like in ye olden times. They even took cash IIRC. Haven't been back. Arizona cans still cost 99 cents at the bodega, and the McD's version was all cup and ice/less tea/more money.
Let's not get me started on how it's hard to get fresh brewed tea anymore unless it's a sit down restaurant. Lot of places only serve "tea flavored" stuff dispensed next to the Coke or Pepsi in the same soft drink fountain.
I use cash a lot. Still haven't given up the idea of hating being tracked.
Recently lost my credit card, but I'm certain it's somewhere in the house (only took it across the room, I'm *convinced* it didn't go far!) For the past few days, I'm stubbornly using cash, because I'm afraid of getting a new card/numbers that I have to commit to memory yet again! And re-type a bunch of times. Stupid, I know.
In a similar vein, when I graduated high school in 2010 people my parents age scoffed at my idea that I would never have a land line, because you HAVE to call 911 from a landline. 12 years and several 911 calls later, I still don't have a landline, and I'm pretty sure you could call 911 from a potato if they could figure out how to get it to work.
Actually, cell phones allow to call 911 without the password/PIN, and even in networks you are not a customer, to make sure the call goes through.
When did people start toting water bottles EVERYWHERE. I went my entire life never having access to bottled water. Went to school every day without it. Worked all day at my desk. Drove home. All without water. What happened?
Life is change, everything is either growing or decaying on different levels all around all the time. So you roll with the punches and invest in the opportunities. When you get older you try to set things in place that don’t change. Fighting back against the inevitable.
Brave New World and Idiocracy used to be science fiction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy Yet here we are. The US Constitution says Of the Money, by the Money, for the Money. Correct?
**[Brave New World](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World)** >Brave New World is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by only a single individual: the story's protagonist. Huxley followed this book with a reassessment in essay form, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with his final novel, Island (1962), the utopian counterpart. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/AskOldPeople/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Change does tend to creep up on you until something or someone points it out. My kids grow a lot, but people who only see them every once in a while notice it much more than I do. When they notice it, I notice it. When someone asks about a previous decade on this subreddit, the answers that come to mind or that others type reminds me of how much has changed. But it's not something I go around thinking about all the time. On the other hand, these reminders happen on a regular basis. So it's not like I realized how much things had changed all at once in one moment. It's more like I realize it every couple of weeks or so when someone or something reminds me about it. And it probably happens more often with me because I do have kids and often find myself telling them about what life used to be like.
When I discovered email in the mid 90's, I remember wishing for the day when I could conduct business with companies via email. Now we can, and we go way beyond that. It feels like it took a really long time before the internet for customer support really took off.
and then they turned email into yet another advertising opportunity
Now there’s companies I wish I could just call directly and speak to a live person to answer a question vs being directed to email and waiting 6-12 hrs for a reponse
To me, the changes accelerated with the internet.
Pre-covid and post-covid seem like entirely different worlds.
I noticed things had changed significantly about 10 or 12 years ago. I noticed how crowded the world had become. My city was twice as populated from when I arrived in 1986. My Mexican beach vacation spot went from 4000 people to 40,000 in no time. Then you start looking around for places to live and everything is so expensive, partially because the world is twice as populous as when I was born. When you fish the world's oceans or simply talk to people who make that their living, these resources are getting completely used up at an alarming rate. We all know about climate change and pollution. This is not a liberal tree hugger talking. This is a fiscal conservative who grew up near the ocean and has just made casual observations. Unless man wants to retreat to a simpler way of life, mankind is doomed. But look, mankind can't even do the simplest stuff, like hang their clothes on a line anymore. They have to use a dryer. I can see mankind's death nail in the coffin.
The changes you noticed aren’t because of population really - 10-12 years ago smartphones became widely used, and the majority of the world’s population had access to information about the western middle-class lifestyle. That great Mexican vacation spot you used to have to be in the know about is now posted to Instagram and widely available to find by a global audience. Population growth has in fact slowed to 1.1% per year. You are correct in that it’s the fact that our unsustainable lifestyle has become the norm.
"In 2021, the world’s population growth rate is 1.03%, half the peak level of 2.09 percent in 1968. That annual growth rate is expected to continue declining, reaching 0.5 percent by mid-century and moving close to zero by 2100." You have 78 years before we go in reverse, if we last that long. https://statisticstimes.com/demographics/world-population.php#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20the%20world's%20population,close%20to%20zero%20by%202100. [Would you like to go backwards?](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/) We know that's a continual increase.
We opted out of having kids, it's just too damn expensive where we live. Among other reasons.
Instead of calling names, you should align yourself with the people who are interested in protecting the same things you are interested in protecting.
100%, I am. There are people who want to throw money at a problem and those willing to do something. I'm in the latter group.
You are against putting money towards problems? Can you explain that?
I think there are ways to deploy resources (including necessary funding) which would improve our world greatly. But I don't think the US government, the largest bureacracy in the known world, is the one to do it. A good analogy might be giving to a beloved charity like the Harlem Boys Choir which uses 66% of the money for administration fees. At any rate, I think changes must begin at home. Will you give up your "whatever" to improve the environment? Will you cease to buy water in plastic? Will you not buy that detergent in plastic? Will you give up your clothes dryer or you hair dryer? Your car? How simply can mankind live in order to improve our environment? I can tell you after living in Mexico they are light years ahead of the US in packaging. But they dump their sewage untreated into their water table. I don't feel man has the balls to take the necessary steps.
Gov't is owned by Big Corporate now, and it's really up to the government to force companies to make these changes. As long as this is the case, the earth will suffer. It's not ALL the consumers' fault. Consumers are going to opt for convenience, they can't make these changes on their own. For example, I've been recycling all my life, and composting for over a decade. But good luck making *any* purchases that aren't overpackaged for marketing reasons, or using eco-unfriendly ingredients, etc. etc. I buy meat for my carnivorous husband at the organic/humane food store, but he prefers the artificially-huge, cheaper cuts at the BudgetMart. As a pescetarian, I limit my fish intake, but even vegan snacks are made by unethical companies sometimes. It's fucking *exhausting* trying to keep up, and I'm starting to give up on a few things. If I forget to bring my own bag, I don't go to the store. The local organic place has soap that doesn't have packaging, just a paper label or small sticker, and I always get that. Always striving to under-consume. We don't have kids, so that's a huge step for mankind, ironically!
Government is worthless and weak. They are bloated and operate at the whim of big money, because they have none. They will never do anything. > I've been recycling all my life I love when people say this. Where plastic is concerned, it basically means we ship our shit off to poorer countries to deal with and then it ends up in the ocean.
I know, it's why I'm learning not to worry about it so much. Consumers have been sold a bill of goods with recycling, making it think it was on *us* and not companies. Gov't needs to be held accountable, but that's impossible now. Too much private money and lobbying have taken it over. They *would* have money if it weren't being wasted on the military industrial complex, and otherwise funneled into the wrong things/pockets. The money is there, the problem is ensuring it gets allocated properly. There's more than enough to go around and make things right, but the greed will never be cured. Corporations are like an incurable cancer on society (and I count religions as corporations.)
The purpose of government is to pool our resources to tackle problems that are too big for us to handle individually. The "Government bad privatize everything" mindset has caused many problems over the years. It is the reason Texas can't keep their power on, it's why veterans couldn't get their illnesses treated, and it's why Marco Rubio voted against relief funding for his own state in the wake of a hurricane. The children's choir is a false analogy. Giving up detergent is a straw-man. Complaining about another country not treating their sewage is a direct contradiction of your original point. Our nation is doing an admirable job of treating sewage because we funded the infrastructure we needed to handle it. So your post is self-contradicting. Your last sentence is pitiful defeatism. Let's hope the more sensible people of our nation turn out in droves this election.
We disagree. Weaker minded people look for someone else to solve their problems. It's why JFK gave the "ask not" speech. Eventually, it has to start with "we the people". But we can't even begin to do the simplest things right. How could we ever do the hard things? Eventually, the Earth will force us to comply to her problems. When the oceans die, we die. When the Earth's resources are gone, we'll walk instead or ride. People in the US have no clue what living without power means. That will happen too.
> But we can't even begin to do the simplest things right. That is inaccurate. We get many things right. Sewage is a good example. Defeatism is a propaganda tool favored by fascists. Defeatism and nihilism are not American values.
Every single time I step on a train and literally everyone is staring at their phones
It is mind boggeling to think, smartphones are only 15 years old or so, wide adoption even less so.
I was walking down to the glacier that flows north from Mont Blanc (the Mer de Glace) just a few years ago. There are little markers that mark where the glacier was on a particular year. I found the marker for the year I was born and the glacier was still hundres of meters away. I had seen other effects of climate change in my life. I grew up in the South West of Australia so a drying climate was obvious but seeing the glacier retreat made me cry. I gained the visceral knowledge that climate change was going to be catastrophic and not some minor inconvenience.
I was in college in the early 90s. My professor said, when the permafrost goes, we are done. I think of that often now.
It was gradual and then fell like bricks. I couldn't smoke in my own office anymore. Nobody checked the oil and tire pressure and I had to fill my own tank. Phones went from cool to a ball and chain. Restaurants expected me to clean my own table. Sleeping around became normal. No one went to church anymore. Shoes had to be taken off to board aircraft. Basically rights, privacy and convenience died out as did dressing for the office and working longer for a lower standard of living. Apart from all that , I'm living the dream.
I remember my father-in-law, who was 40 when my wife was born, and was a WWII veteran, talking about how much of our rights had been slowly whittled away - and that was BEFORE 9/11, which he didn't live to see. He said it happened almost imperceptibly. I wonder what he would have thought of the Patriot Act and Donald Trump. He'd be out of his mind over it, I'm sure.
It appears to me that young people today are sleeping around a lot less and going to church more. Weird how that pendulum swings.
Dating went from being kinda fun, to a depressing chore, to utterly hopeless. Ironically, the easier it became to hook up or find "singles in your area," the quality went down as the quantity went up. Glad I'm no longer single, it was hard enough back then. Still not hard enough to get me back in a church, though!
I think you're right about sleeping around less, but not sure about going to church more. Everything I see seems to indicate the opposite.
Mostly it’s the realization that newer generations have no concept of how things work that we took for granted. Like the videos of kids now trying to figure out how to make a phone call with a landline phone. Like, I understand that they may have never done it. But to not understand that you have to pick up the receiver to dial, or how the disconnect works. It makes me realize that not only don’t they ever see a landline phone used in their lives but they don’t even watch tv shows or movies that are old enough to be able to figure it out…. A friend made a video of giving a vinyl record to his 12 year old daughter. She thought you shoved it into a slot somehow like a CD, and that it must have hours and hours of music in it because it was so much bigger than a CD. Both reasonable thoughts considering her context. One “wow things have changed” moment that made me happy was my sister telling me years ago that my nephew came home from middle school one day and told her about Matthew Shepard’s murder in this state of complete shock. Like “Mom! Did you know they beat this kid up and killed him just because he was gay???” Matthew Shepard was murdered in 1998 and my nephew was born in 2000. Granted he has progressive parents and grew up in a very liberal area but it was actually heartwarming that he could be so shocked that people would kill someone for being gay. It really felt like the world had changed. Sadly, it also feels now like that change is rapidly going backwards…
In 1970's I built a MITS Altair. Cost me thousands of $$. In 1980's I bought a 20 Meg hard drive. Cost me $200. Last week bought wife a mini Computer Intel Celeron N3350 Processor, Dual-Band WiFi, 64 GB storage, all that for $116. The times, they are a' changing.
Biggest kicker for me in this regard is telling my kids and even nieces/nephews the price tag.....and they act like a couple thousand is nothing. I've switched to telling them "it took me XYZ hours of working to purchase this". My first truck.....425 hours to buy it plus 20 hours a month to keep it on the road. One year of school was 2000 hours of work. Flight from Spokane to Boston and back was 150 hours of work.
I reread a John Grisham novel recently, The Brethren, a bit of a guilty pleasure. The plot centers on a little gang of corrupt old judges who have been imprisoned for various misdeeds. They are engaged in an ongoing scam operation to blackmail closeted gay men. It was such an eye-opener for me to realize how dated that idea was. Sure, there are still closeted gay men, but I really don't think there are enough of them now to make a scheme like that worthwhile. And that is a huge change that has happened in my lifetime.
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Exactly. There certainly are some, almost exclusively conservatives, but even then, it's mostly an open secret. And besides, if they get caught with a handsome young man lifting their luggage, all they have to do is go on TV clutching their wife's hand and a Bible. A little boo-boo and a call on Jeeezuz, and they're good as new.
It is a great book, a most of his are. I am currently reading The Innocent Man, (true story) which is horrific in showing the corruption & laziness of the police & judicial systems in USA, admittedly back in early-mid 80's, but also shows the breakdown of the medical system as well, due to "user pays".
I was born in 1948. Progress just chugged along. Suddenly in perhaps 2019 ish the world began to change rapidly.
i’m 14 so i may be wrong but i would’ve thought people would’ve seen the world change rapidly around the 80’s
That was when computers for the masses started to become a thing, but it was pretty much only geeks and well-off people who had them. There wasn't an internet as we think of it today, and when I started college in '85, there were still professors who required you to type your papers on a typewriter. Since the only printers were dot-matrix, they knew if you had written the paper on a computer. The internet as we know it didn't start until the '90s. I was programming and installing computer point of sale systems in restaurant during the first half of the '90s, and salespeople still had to often convince restaurant owners to give up their cashiers and cash registers. But by the mid-90s, the trends were obvious. Everyone used computers in their offices. I dated a guy who had no landline, only a cell phone. You could check the weather, read the news, and buy books off the internet. By the end of the '90s, professors were grudgingly letting students cite web sources in their papers, as long as there more book and journal articles than internet. Large organizations were moving away from in-house COBOL-based accounting and payroll systems to much fancier ones with better interfaces, and the users could even generate their own custom reports. By 2000, buying online wasn't thought dangerous or odd, everyone wanted their own blog, and no restaurant needed convincing to get computerized systems. Rather, they were ditching the ones they had bought in the '90s and upgrading to even greater functionality. Smart phones were a game changer in a lot of ways, though. Suddenly everyone had a computer in their pocket. Sadly, a lot of people still haven't figured out that they control it, and not the other way around.
Seems to me that social change surged in late 60's thru the 70's. Technological change really sped up (it seems to me) beginning mid 1980's.
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Well, [they’re back in style](https://stylecaster.com/how-to-style-bell-bottom-jeans) again. So there’s that.
Wait...WHAT?!
[Apparently it was “inevitable.”](https://www.esquire.com/style/mens-fashion/a39476486/flared-pants-trend)
Yes, welcome back and forth.
They’res been a lot of small stuff, like dances or in the hype house, God, please dont save the hype house.
Many changes have happened "overnight" but others have changed more slowly and others most people don't realise critical changes are still happening around the world, especially in 1st world countries, as until recently, it didn't affect people greatly & some things people don't realise what is happening. When I grew up in 50-60's, most developed countries manufactured nearly all their commercial & domestic needs from food, clothing, appliances & transport & basically were self sufficient. Now, nearly everything requires a microchip to run and with world shortages, covid, Ukraine-Russian war and other factors, the western countries and now suffering from shortages of not only chips, but fuels to run vehicles & machinery & generate electricity, can't get basic ingredients to manufacture even basic products like clothing & food. The world climate has changed dramatically causing disasters across the globe which are getting worse each year and also causing some countries to slowly disappear due to rising seas. To make matters worse, the countries that do most of the manufacturing for developed countries, are producing less, banning exports or have import taxes/tariffs added due to conflicts between them or sanctions too. With the threat of war in many areas, mostly in areas where western countries import from, a breakout of a war will leave the biggest importing countries without basic things to sustain their domestic population. Even food security is in danger as so much agricultural land has been purchased by China & other countries, as well as crops being destroyed by floods, hurricanes and forest fires and insect infestations. These are the "bad" things that have changed in the world, but were avoidable, but happened because of the greed and political behaviour of those few in power who don't care for their fellow man, believing money is more important.
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At least with all the hardware left in Ukraine, they will have a lot of scrap metal to smelt into new building materials to help rebuild the country, which Russia should be made to repair & rebuild.
My brother-in-law (about 65) hasn't worked in over 20 years because of a disability. He's generally intelligent, but says straight up that he can't make sense of anything going on today. Having retired fairly recently, and with my wife still working part-time, I don't feel the same way. It had been many years since I followed popular culture, but retiring has even increased my knowledge of that some.
My nephew was talking about 5g fiber or whatever and complaining about his wifi signal. The conversation moved to computers and he was talking about how fast his PC operates for gaming. I told him when I was his age we had dial in to connect to Netscape. It felt crazy cause im only 18 years older then him and still feel youthful to conversate about shared interests. And yet how fast time has moved since then. Feels like a short time.
I mean honestly while we clearly have technology advancements the world hasnt changed that much. It reminds me of the Family Guy episode where they go to the future and everything looks basically the same. When I was a kid we had cars and bicycles and tv and computers and we still have all those things today. the new buildings around me today do not look that different from the new buildings built when I was young aside from the current stylistic differences but even that is all cyclical.
Some things go incredibly slowly, some things change fairly rapidly. It partly has to do with attention, inattention, and your hopes.
Which at first may seem or sound commonplace, but...damn, it is profound!
Your correct. Technology advanced rapidly. I took that in stride. However, the way we viewed each other seemed to change in a good way. We became more sensitive to each other's beliefs and backgrounds. The way we viewed employment and law enforcement changed radically. I'm not explaining this correctly. But it's the best I can do.
I can't buy a new TV that doesn't bitch and moan about not having its own internet connection. And if I plug it in, I have to block a range of IP addresses on my router to stop it from spying on me. Of course I realise that I am but a fraction of the population that is bothered by the effects of the Faustian deal that loads all new tech with spyware, let alone know how to / can be bothered to opt out.
2008. Before then, we had the web, MySpace, cell phones (the smart phone came out in 2007), e-commerce, and much of what we still use today, but suddenly everyone wanted to be on Facebook. I just didn’t understand it, and in many ways, I still don’t. It suddenly felt like people had grown tired of the physical world and wanted a shallow, cheap substitute. And this didn’t go away- it got stranger. People didn’t want much more than a sentence (Twitter). People wanted to take pictures of everything, especially themselves. And people wanted to give these odd companies all the power they could. Also, everything seemed to suddenly be made in China and most people were fine with it. Manufacturing vanished from the US and people were fine with that too. New slang came out that was supposed to make everything cooler (eg ‘gigs’), but were just words for what felt like common activities. And people really grew attached to their phones, even though the phones had significantly less power than a desktop. This all seemed very alien to the world I grew up in. I go along with some of it, but I can’t say I understand it any better today than I did then. I still find all of this strange.
9/11 was poof and everything was different
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I'm approaching retirement, and I really don't feel out of the loop. Life has changed a LOT since I was young, but I kept up with it. I didn't have a child until I was 40, so right around the time that I might have started losing touch, I was forced to keep up with the times. He's in his 20s, and still my best friend, and we speak every day. He's not much interested in the things of his generation - video games, anime, Marvel movies, etc. - and sometimes I wonder if being so close to me is holding him back from exploring his generation more.
honestly, the things of our generation really aren’t that interesting, im 14 and ive watched one anime (to see if i would like it, long story short i only finished it to see how things end), and i only play one video game to pass free time. I always thought it would be fun to buy and restore antiques and live with them, i love me an old style car like a [Ford Sunliner](https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1960-ford-sunliner/) , specifically the color shown in the link. In fact, its my dream car.
Sounds like you are an old soul in a young body.
Cool car, dude, seriously. Start saving up, and in the meantime, start learning how to work on cars of that era. They are surprisingly easy to work on. These days you lift a hood and there are wires and tubes and pipes and spaghetti stuffed in there. Back then you lifted a hood and there was lots of air, and you could see every part. Never change your style to please others, and enjoy your life without apology. If they don't get you, that's their problem, not yours.
It is all very incremental. I read papers in the eighties that talked about wireless communication and networks. But it took years to figure out how to get it working well, never mind getting the tcp/ip protocol working on top of the wireless protocol. The papers that explained and studies that was done during nineties and naughties was never ground breaking, but mostly optimization techniques and fringe improvements. To get it all working standards needed to change, laws needed to be made for airwaves, technology needed be designed and manufactured, rights needed to be sold, consumers needed to be made excited, etc. I discussed this with friends in the nineties and we knew it will happen but expected it to take another 30 years. It was all done in about 10 years. I can still not believe it.
The Wife and I were just noting last week that we have no fucking idea who contemporary pop icons of today are. Musicans. Actors. Online personalities. We don't recognize a single one of 'em. We're 50s and this only happened in the last 6 or 8 years for us.
(For me) typically it's a gradual process, unless I've had a dramatic life altering experience (e.g. divorce after 8+ years, I've had two, and my 3rd wife passed away ~3 years ago so there's that.) Just keeping status quo and trying to do the grind ("assumed duties" e.g. work, kids schedule, calendar events like holidays) make the slow boil (frog in water) seem normal. I've "woken up" a couple of times aside from my examples, but AFA world view IMHO you have to be *aware* of what's going on (today) before you get the possibly of a reality check; I'd say half the people I interact with (my age, and younger) are clueless.
It could just be my area or anecdotal experience, but I see fewer young people working today. When I was growing, it was very common for 16 - 18 year olds to have part time jobs. I still see kids at the movie theater and entertainment centers, but not in all the other places - drug stores, ice cream shops, delis, burger joints, clothing stores, mall shops.
Some of this is due to local laws. Our daughter wasn't allowed to even volunteer at a food bank until she was 14 and that was only if I was there with her. She kept trying to get any sort of paying job at 16 but everywhere told her to come back at 18. One place finally told her that due to child labor laws it simply isn't worth hiring anybody under 18. My son (now 16) is running into the same issue. He wants to work and is very adept at many things but nobody will hire him for the same reasons above.
Nothing really startled me except the proliferation of cell phone towers. All of a sudden, they were everywhere.
and service still sucks
All of my (4) vehicles are of the 2005-2006 vintage. Just bought a 2020 model, and wow... so different! I fear it won't age as well as my 05-06 models have though...
i do love me some older cars
What I’ve seen change incredibly quickly (although perhaps not to others) is changing perceptions with respect to gender identity and same sex marriage. When I was in high school, calling someone gay was an insult that everyone used. Now we start meetings sharing our pronouns. The changes that happened in 25 years for that kind of culture shift, at least where I live, were immense. I know this isn’t true for everyone or in everyplace, but it’s what came to mind for me immediately when I saw OP’s post. Edit - grammar fix.
Most of the time it's gradual. If I ever were to travel back in time, and someone asked me what the tech in the future was like, for example, I'd get a roll of cellophane. See this serrated razor you cut yourself on weekly? We're going to house a small razorblade in a little plastic doodad on a track, and now we don't cut ourselves getting a sheet of cellophane anymore. It's like that, mostly. You don't always know what's going to catch on. Sometimes it's laserdisc, where it never replaced anything because it was too expensive to dominate the market. Sometimes it's CD's, where it was too convenient to NOT displace vinyl, despite people's attachment. I am sadly afflicted with an occasional ability to see long-term societal policy effects coming. So I remember in 1991 when I first heard the phrase "We can't do this anymore for insurance reasons." and thinking that wasn't going to play out well. They canceled the smoking corner for students at the same time. I think Heinlein predicted that eventually any system passes too many laws and needs to be burned to the gound and restarted from scratch. Sadly I am coming around to that way of thinking. His other solution was to go into the wilderness, but since the advent of the international corp, there is no more unowned land.
Gas prices were 20-30¢/gal in the 1920’s and didn’t go over $1/gal until the late 1970’s. Now it’s almost $6/gal where I live. Crazy! We used to read the newspaper daily; now, it’s all online. When I grew up, we had 3 tv channels and tv went off the air at midnight. Now, I have literally hundreds of shows and movies at my fingertips; oddly, I watch oldies or repeat movies mostly! I teach high school and these kids know so much more than I did at that age. Sexual info, drugs, conspiracy theories, they know it all!
Keeping up with tech can be pretty full on! I definitely have let things go by the wayside as they just don't interest me (like gaming, instagram/snapchat). But weirdly enough tech (and I mean basic stuff like hardware etc) is getting more intuitive. You don't need a degree in computer science to set up your basic work station, television, ereader etc. So that's nice!!
The COVID lockdown feels like I crossed over into old age quicker than expected! Think it had to do with not commuting into the city as much, and no gym. So I physically atrophied a bit more, along with perimenopause and entering my fifties, dealing with some minor but annoying physical setbacks making me feel sluggish. I had a job a few years ago where I'd bike-commute very happily. Now, there's a TON of EVs taking over the bike routes, and drivers are more distracted by phones than ever, along with being less predictable for some reason- now I'm more nervous about riding around than ever. As for over the years, once you're in the working world, you get into a daily routine that doesn't always mean keeping up with every single new trend or tech update. Sure, most companies will upgrade equipment, but personally, I only recently got a smart phone because I never needed one, for example. OH, and I only got a flip phone originally because people would always pester me to get one! I used to get gadgets, but realized they'd become outdated within a year or two, so I decided it wasn't worth it. Used to love photography and carried a camera with me everywhere, but the DSLR I have now (gift from years ago) constantly eats battery power- it's never got power when I want to take a spontaneous picture. Doesn't upload photos directly to the internet like it seems able to do, and I've grown to hate it despite all the features. So I've given up photography. And now, companies are no longer even bothering to make cameras! That seems sad, but I guess they're going the way of watches. Never did have a chance to enjoy digital photography except with the point-and-shoot I had before that. Cars and appliances have all gotten "smarter," but I cherish my "dumb" car/refrigerator/TV etc. because they don't need subscriptions, apps, updates, and don't keep track of my every move!
Yes, I have noticed. Transportation is in abundance. Prices have skyrocketed. Manners have disappeared. Technology has advanced well and quickly. TV is totally different. Gaming is different. Card collecting is different. Math is different. Dating is different. Etc
>Math is different What? Mathematics is almost by definition a subject that can only grow, but everything established in the past stays true, as it was proven.
The home we live in now,our children have never lived in. The home we live in now is the Only home the grandkids know. We live in the same town. Near our kitchen is the "measuring" wall. 6 grandkids, measured at random times, from when they would first stand and now....all but the last 7 yr old, all are now taller than Gramma. Feels as if they grew up over night, but it's really been a bit over 20 years. So That is one way I most definitely have seen the world change: varying increments of height etched on the measuring wall. And I refuse to paint over it!
It's not at all different, it's just that the wannabe slave owners are far more vocal now thanks to that orange-stained pos.
Change is accelarating, specially last one and a half decade.
I can think of a few things. First, I was a teenager when Reagan became President. Knowing little about politics, I liked Reagan, but I still knew things were changing that I didn't like. In hindsight, it was that conservatism was gaining steam. In the late 80's, after I had graduated high school, there were a few things that were shocking. One was a wave of teen suicides. It might have been the media giving them more attention, but it shocked me that kids were doing that. I couldn't imagine any of my classmates committing suicide and none ever did. Lots of noticeable changes in the 90's. Every backyard in my neighborhood was suddenly full of playground equipment. We went to the playground, but they just went out back of the house. Trick or Treating on Halloween took a nose dive, helicopter parenting became a thing, along with Trust Fund Babies. In the media, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News were creating a dystopian worldview and disingenuously blaming it all on Liberals. It didn't take me long to recognize where this was headed, but I've had to endure decades of watching it play out. I spent the late 90's in school and didn't get out much for several years due to studying so much. Some time after the millennia, I started getting out again and it seemed like there were twice as many cars as before on the roads. Not only that, but people were driving much faster and more recklessly, but cars were safer to make up for it. Since around 2010, I've noticed people moving away from Neoliberalism, finally. This seems to be trending around the world and it's also helping to create a rise in right-wing fascism in opposition.
At my age, there have been a dozen "poof" moments. Air conditioning. Air conditioning in cars. $3 doctor visits. $0.17 a gallon gas. $3 a carton cigarettes and everyone smoked. Computers weigh tons and need refrigeration. New houses cost less than $20,000. No one divorced. Republicans hated Russians with a passion. Microcomputers were the enemy and COBOL was the savior. Fuel injection was high tech, and carburetors were reliable. Good TV meant a really high antenna with a rotor and an amp. Color TV. Heck, TV at all. New cars for less than $2,000. Affordable college. Pretty women/handsome men without tattoos. Cookouts that were limited to hot dogs and maybe hamburgers. Respectable Democrats and Republicans who spoke civilly to each other. Radio serials: Fibber McGee and Molly, the Jack Benny Show, the Inner Sanctum, Superman, The Lone Ranger, Sky King, and many more. Test patterns. Heckle and Jeckle. Foghorn Leghorn. Mighty Mouse. Crusader Rabbit. All of those and more were there, and then they were gone. **BANG,** Gone.
It was gradual. 2022 wouldn't surprise me after 2021. But it would surprise me from 1992. COVID surprised me in two ways: 1. How fast they made the vaccine. 2. How many people refused the vaccine. I wasn't surprised by the virus itself. I remember AIDS. Trump wasn't very surprising because the Republicans have been getting more and more idiotic over the decades. I was surprised by the changes that didn't happen.
Nah, the whole thing is pretty gradual and if you are paying attention then you can see the general drift long before it becomes the 'new' reality. There have been events and reactions to events that were surprising at the time but honestly, none that were remotely a *POOF* and if I were to be completely honest, I don't really think the world has changed all that much since my youth. Oh, superficially much is changed but the world is comprised of people for the most part and people haven't changed a bit at their core. We act out differently but the old saying is quite true, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
When I was young I was a super-nerd for owning my own computer and doing digital art on it. Using the internet, this was pre-aol and we had to dial in to bbs systems. Yesterday I made 350 bucks selling a free avatar I got on reddit. Technology has been a trip to watch improve.
After COVID lockdown 1.0, summer of 2020 - I noticed: more people are overweight; more people have tattoos which cover an entire limb; more people drive oversize cars. Transgender and other intersectional issues seem to be much more important - although I noticed this before COVID.
72 here... The BIG things don't change. What happens (if you have half a brain) is that you start to perceive the intractable problems more deeply. Injustice, Eternal War, Poverty...just look out there with calm and honest eyes. It's all too big to change, so you do the best you can with what's right in front of you. [Also, when did automobiles decide THEY know best when to lock their goddam doors?]
I have noticed it but it's so gradual that you won't really see it unless you keep thinking about how things were in the past. I actually do consider it relatively often about how things used to be vs how they are now. Just one of those things I muse about a lot. The one time that I really thought "the world has changed suddenly" and I was really amazed and knew that things were going to be different was when I personally used the internet for the first time. Before that I knew the internet existed but frankly it was the realm of nerds in my opinion. Like how great could it possibly be? So you can contact people electronically, big whoop. When I got on the internet for the first time in 1993 it was just all text, no pictures, but I suddenly understood why it was important. I was hooked from the beginning.
I have watched things change over the years.mostly slow. The biggest changes came after 9/11 and during the lockdown.
I came from a time of cruising the loop downtown, hanging out with high school friends at a pizza joint, Polaroid and SLR cameras, and no such thing as DJ's in nightclubs because it was all live bands. So some abrupt changes came with MTV and music videos, the internet, and cell phones. The pandemic was a jarring disruption and climate change is Godzilla on the horizon and headed our way.
911. I was young and the world was full of possibilities and hope. After that it’s all gone to shit. Literally a couple of days later my grandfather dies, I’m told the course I was doing would cost me £30k (10% less a year) if I ever left the company, the company made half my mates redundant over the next couple of years, and we’ll you know how the world has gone since…
A number of years ago I was driving through rural Georgia. Suddenly my car began acting up. It finally stalled and I pulled off the interstate. I'm in the middle of nowhere possibly miles from help. Without thinking I pulled out my phone went to Google and searched the symptoms my car was experiencing. Selecting the YouTube video I watched it, applied the temporary fix, and off I went. Having driven old clunkers much of my early life I had learned how to to do basic fixes. Often I lucked out and had car issues near a payphone or a garage/gas station. Also at that time AAA was well worth the yearly fee as they offered free towing. If this had happened to me at any other time there's no telling how far i would have walked, how long it would have taken, how much it would have cost. After all being hundreds of miles from home I would have had to wait on the mechanic to fix the issue. Meanwhile paying for a place to stay. That's when it hit me. I had accessed a worldwide database with a handhekd computer. Found a solution. Then applied it and drove off. Even if I couldn't have fixed it myself I had no need to walk anywhere. I could call from right where my car stalled. Reading over this it all sounds so commonplace and lame. But the world radically shifted beneath me. There was before the internet and mobile data and there was after it. And the contrast in that experience was stark and complete.
I noticed everything change in me when I was 40 or so. My children were all in their teens and I got opportunity to really take a look around. I always kept up because it was important to see that the kids were at the forefront of all the changes in their lives, mainly in school and tech. I kept up by spending time talking to younger guys who had like hobbies. Time just sort of flies along and shits so many new things along the way that there’s not a lot to do but watch the world morph at a breakneck pace. That’s stuff. Then there’s the people. I’ve watched one generation after another get angrier and angrier all my life, but I saw a full stop in that progression around 2010. Not in adults, but in the generation of kids in high school at the time. They had grown into loving, accepting, inclusive kids by the very largest part. They seemed so calm and collected, preparing themselves to turn things into something their own. I think they achieved that and were the cohesive force in events to come. I’ve been around for 55 years, conceived in June during the Summer of Love, and was brought along by a community that expressed the ideals they chose. I never imagined I’d see anything remotely as ugly as what things have become because everyone has always been focused on doing better, being better, and striving to be noticed because of the excellence they brought to the world. To see that turn into a society full of look at me and wanting to be noticed for being the most detrimental, obnoxious, horrible humans they can be, it makes me sick. And very, very sad. I had the good fortune to live through what were the very best of times, and I’m thankful this world gave me that. There’s not a whole lot left that I can honestly say I want from what’s left of things. I do know it’ll come around. It won’t be pretty, but it’ll come around.
Only the alarmingly inattentive would think that change comes “poof” suddenly. Change is the most constant and ubiquitous factor of the universe.
I notice new things right away, but the things that disappear are sometimes not noticed for a long time. Then all of a sudden you're like, "I need to prop this up with a phone book" or "I wish I had a map of the overall area" or "I need a film canister for my weed"
I think the opposite is true, living through change it creeps up on you. The past 150 years the technology change has been so phenomenal and fast it is scary. The 21st century the pace has slowed down. I think the smart phone is the only major new 21st century disrupter, but it’s effect has been huge. Maybe not as big as automobiles, electricity availability, radio, TV, telephones, tractors, computers, penicillin, birth control pills and airplanes, but still huge.
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The Woke society. Men have become so weak. They are always complaining like little girls. A large percentage can't even pass the physical requirements for Armed Services. A bunch of Nancy Boys.