Post by The Cap'n on Feb 4, 2019 13:40:29 GMT -5
This weekend something occurred to me that I thought might make a good topic—and if I’m not mistaken, it hasn’t been used before. (No offense to those fans of recurring topics, but for me sometimes something fresh is fun to discuss.) A combination of the milk (and other product) delivery services discussion, rewatching a movie from the ‘80s (“Rain Man,” one of my all-time favorites), and a conversation I was having at home got me thinking about major changes in our lives, and how we seem to grow accustomed to some of them almost immediately to the point of forgetting how different things used to be.
What do you think have been the three biggest changes that occurred during your lifetime? They could be technological or cultural, whatever you think has changed your life and life around you.
These are three that occur to me as maybe the biggest:
1. General acceptance of equal rights across groups. I’m not that old, but when I was a kid, you still heard people openly questioning what was then called “women’s lib.” Some people still vocally opposed the kind of equality that nearly everyone now agrees to in principle: it’s a rare thing for anyone to question whether a woman should have a high position in the corporate world, for example, to say nothing of the more basic right to hold a job outside the home at all.
LGBTQ rights have come even further, and faster. They weren’t even really discussed much when I was a kid. I recall the 2004 presidential campaign and the GOP’s tactic of scaring voters that the “radical gay agenda” was to legalize gay marriage … and Democrats were quick to cry that no, they had no such thing in mind (that they were only looking for civil unions, or some corrections to lack of benefits and rights to longtime partners). In 2008, all of the major candidates rejected gay marriage. It was seen as insane to talk about gay marriage … until it happened what seemed like overnight. Now even most mainstream conservatives who used to threaten that society would collapse mostly accept it as normal.
There are always ways to improve these things, but I think it’s worth reflecting on how far society has come in these respects.
2. The internet. Those of you who don’t remember a pre-internet world have no idea how different life is. It’s even crazier once you combine it with the latter (so I’ll discuss them together).
3. Mobile phones. Like chocolate to the internet’s peanut butter, combined eventually into smartphones.
I don’t think it’s even possible to fully address the changes to society caused by the internet and mobile phones. Whether we’re talking about making and keeping social plans; about finding and using books, music, movies, and other media; about finding your way around from place to place; about the number of people you could or would keep in touch with at least superficially; about the speed of trends; about the tenor of news coverage; about the ability to spread rumors (or to fact-check them); about celebrity culture, I truly don’t think it’s understandable to someone who doesn’t remember the days of landlines and no internet. Even to try to describe it probably comes out sounding like “back in my day, we walked to school, uphill, in the snow…”
Honorable mention: the decline of the importance of instruments in popular music as they are superseded by software-generated or –edited sounds. If you’d told me when I was 12—by which time hip hop was already a major force, mind you—that guitars weren’t going to be the centerpiece of popular music, I’d have said you’re out of your mind.
Anyone else feel like chiming in on major changes of your lifetimes?
What do you think have been the three biggest changes that occurred during your lifetime? They could be technological or cultural, whatever you think has changed your life and life around you.
These are three that occur to me as maybe the biggest:
1. General acceptance of equal rights across groups. I’m not that old, but when I was a kid, you still heard people openly questioning what was then called “women’s lib.” Some people still vocally opposed the kind of equality that nearly everyone now agrees to in principle: it’s a rare thing for anyone to question whether a woman should have a high position in the corporate world, for example, to say nothing of the more basic right to hold a job outside the home at all.
LGBTQ rights have come even further, and faster. They weren’t even really discussed much when I was a kid. I recall the 2004 presidential campaign and the GOP’s tactic of scaring voters that the “radical gay agenda” was to legalize gay marriage … and Democrats were quick to cry that no, they had no such thing in mind (that they were only looking for civil unions, or some corrections to lack of benefits and rights to longtime partners). In 2008, all of the major candidates rejected gay marriage. It was seen as insane to talk about gay marriage … until it happened what seemed like overnight. Now even most mainstream conservatives who used to threaten that society would collapse mostly accept it as normal.
There are always ways to improve these things, but I think it’s worth reflecting on how far society has come in these respects.
2. The internet. Those of you who don’t remember a pre-internet world have no idea how different life is. It’s even crazier once you combine it with the latter (so I’ll discuss them together).
3. Mobile phones. Like chocolate to the internet’s peanut butter, combined eventually into smartphones.
I don’t think it’s even possible to fully address the changes to society caused by the internet and mobile phones. Whether we’re talking about making and keeping social plans; about finding and using books, music, movies, and other media; about finding your way around from place to place; about the number of people you could or would keep in touch with at least superficially; about the speed of trends; about the tenor of news coverage; about the ability to spread rumors (or to fact-check them); about celebrity culture, I truly don’t think it’s understandable to someone who doesn’t remember the days of landlines and no internet. Even to try to describe it probably comes out sounding like “back in my day, we walked to school, uphill, in the snow…”
Honorable mention: the decline of the importance of instruments in popular music as they are superseded by software-generated or –edited sounds. If you’d told me when I was 12—by which time hip hop was already a major force, mind you—that guitars weren’t going to be the centerpiece of popular music, I’d have said you’re out of your mind.
Anyone else feel like chiming in on major changes of your lifetimes?
