.
They spent how much on defense? ...and how much on education?
Well, here's what I think of the 1980's (I was born in 1992): What the hell? The music is terrible, the fashion is atrocious, the hair is so stupid (and some people haven't given it up), and the movies and tv shows were silly. I imagine that in 30 years I'll look back and say the same thing. (This was meant to disarm everything I just said.)
Dear Person Born in 1992: An amazing thing happened a few years before you were born that you've likely read about but never fully understood. After nearly eighty years, the world was no longer divided in half, with both sides swearing total annihilation of the other side. After nearly fifty years, there was no longer a prevailing sentiment that the world would end in a thermonuclear fireball. After nearly thirty years, five billion people no longer considered - every day - the fact that armageddon was half an hour away, 24/7/365. It's easy to say "oh, but people didn't think about it all the time" but it's also accurate to say that if people didn't think about it all the time, they were reminded of it regularly. One cannot frame the Cold War in the same terms as the Global War on Terror. The Soviet Union was not Russia, was not China, was not North Korea - it was a monolithic, totalitarian presence with four times as many nuclear weapons as we had that our president called "The Evil Empire." '80s culture, more than any other, reflects a fatalistic optimism - "enjoy yourself while you can because you'll be dead soon." Whereas the 60s and 70s were an era of "free love" the 80s brought us AIDS, which still killed you back then. It was an era where the computers that you have lived with your entire life were just starting to penetrate into the collective conscious (but certainly not the collective living room). It was an era where the thousand channels you take for granted were busily blossoming from four. They 80s were an era that started out with marketing to children through television being illegal and ended with Transformers, GI Joe, He Man and Rainbow Bright. It was an era of banking dergulation that swept us from austerity and inflation to massive tax cuts and a rebirth of the new Oligarchy. It is the period that followed the Long Boom and ended Monetarism. Back in the '80s, the future founders of Google and the dot-com era were not visionary wunderkinds, they were future listless slackers distrusted by the Baby Boomers because they didn't do a good enough job babysitting their children. There are certain periods of culture that, even through the long lens of history, remain unique and relevant. Which is not to say they are beyond reproach - there is much that was tragic about the 80s, not just historically speaking but also culturally. My recommendation to you is to look on the 80s not as a descendent of the era too comfortable in your own trappings to truly understand and empathize, but as a visitor from a distant culture absorbing and reflecting on the downfall of Communism and the twilight of Capitalism from a privileged vantage. You might see a thing or two of beauty. Have a video. it's four minutes of your life and, in my opinion, is a nice capsule of the cultural mores that nobody is talking about (but everyone has on the back of their minds) throughout all the horrible culture you mention. If you have the patience, here's two hours of horror. Quite simply, we had other things on our minds and lots of us, when we look back on it, consider ourselves fortunate to still be here in this unimaginable era of 2013. It was a foregone conclusion where I grew up that if we were around in 1998, we'd be eating dog food and polishing The Great Humungous' boots. Patrick Nagel says hello from an era when coke addicts died from heart attacks because they did "aerobithons" for charity.
Random Wikipedia fact: The song was a hit in France, where it peaked at #2 for three weeks and remained on the top 50 for 19 weeks. It is currently the 636th best-selling single of all time in France.
> After nearly eighty years, the world was no longer divided in half, with both sides swearing total annihilation of the other side. This is a bigger deal than a lot of young people know. I was born in '63. This was recorded in 1959 - some gallows humour expressing very real fears.
I can see people not really getting hair metal. It's a - you had to be there - sort of thing. But I WAS there. And it was awesome.
>and the movies and tv shows were silly. You take that back! 80s movies are the best movies! But yeah the hair and music.... oh god the hair and music was awful.
Weird Science (1985) Back to the Future (1985) Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) Platoon (1986) Poltergeist (1982) The Abyss (1989) The list goes on ... http://www.imdb.com/list/-Kt5UvjvcVk/
THIS is what I'm talking about. Plus, Ghost Busters, Top Gun, the first three Indiana Jones movies, Star Wars Empire Strikes back and Return of the Jedi, Risky Business, Beetlejuice, Die Hard, Raising Arizona, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, BIG, Beverly Hills Cop, Caddy Shack... and those are just ones I could name off the top of my head. Sure, most of them are just action or comedies, but 80s was like the king for movies of that nature. 80s was honestly the best decade for movies that I've been on this planet for.
It's an interesting question because we can only piece together the somewhat distant past through black and white photos, writings and other artifacts. Ancient history is based on eyewitness accounts that have to be translated and deciphered or whatever physical evidence was left behind. Now everything is so well-documented, but almost completely not curated, except for by media outlets which have their own presentation styles or biases. In the more recent past, we learn about and form opinions based on the mediated past. I cannot type the following without you hearing them in your head: Hindenberg: "OH! THE HUMANITY!"
MLK: "I have a dream!"
Moon Landing: "That's one small step..." The future will generally ignore many of the mundane details of our daily lives and think of our past in terms of generalizations and major mediated events. They will simplify our current reality in the way that we simplify the complexity of the past. Very clear heroes and villains will be written about in textbooks. Difficult issues will be divided into two basic stances in spite of the myriad opinions. The general public will know about Michael Jackson, Titanic, and American Idol, much like we know about Louis Armstrong, The Three Stooges, and Casablanca. Things like Arrested Development, My Bloody Valentine, and Punch Drunk Love which have cult followings today will mean as much to most people in the future as Memphis Minnie, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, and Metropolis mean to people today. They will be curiosities that may be mentioned or considered, but our major cultural products will serve as our representations. As far as events in American history go, they will see images of the burning twin towers, first responders running into danger, and America briefly putting aside our petty disagreements to mourn together. They will wonder how we could have been so negligent before and after Hurricane Katrina as they see helicopter shots of debris and destruction throughout New Orleans mixed with shots of families wearing tattered clothes. They will remember Barack Obama telling us that there is no red America or blue America. They will likely see the Nasa scientists jumping for joy before seeing a cutaway of "Mohawk guy" as they observed Curiosity's progress. At some point I imagine they will see our first female president swearing in. I imagine they will hear audio of a ceremonial speech following the signing of laws that guarantee civil rights to LGBTQ Americans. Unfortunately, they will also see more tragedies and senseless battles over ideologies, opinions, land, and other trivialities that are extremely insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Overall, I think they will view us favorably as we generally view our ancestors. We are products of our time that make the best of what we're given. We utilize the knowledge gained by those before us and try to leave something more for the next generation. They have to view us favorably at some level because they will be a product of us. Products of our genes, our ideas, our stories, and our ambitions.
We care too much about things we shouldn't care about at all.
They will think. What the hell were computers? How did they grow enough crops in to feed the cities? Did they really think they could live forever?
We get it. Pretty sure no matter what percentage of humanity gets absolutely decimated by whatever decayed future you care to imagine (environmental, financial, moral), as long as there are some modern humans alive, computers will be fine. They'll be known about, they'll be used.
Really why? I don't see it as a dystopia just a future without cities and computers.
What is the time scale on this thing?
It's your future prediction- when do you think people won't have computers?
100 years ago folks had wax cylinder phonographs.
Now you might say "Jake but you still have one"
but that would be missing my point entirely. They exist now as oddities.
so I put it 100 years at the longest.
If obsolescence follows a exponential pattern 15 years. If you define computer as tool that helps you do math then we have had them for
as long as we have had fingers and the conversation becomes absurd.
I think you'd do better to equate computers with systems of writing. I'm biased, and I see where you're coming from, but computers are a fundamental shift in how humans understand and interact with the world around them. So if you mean "phonographs" as any kind of recorded sound, then I think you're makin an apt comparison. If you mean the actual object itself, I think you're wrong. But I would also count smartphones, most microwaves, tablets- anything with a processor, basically. Maybe you mean desktops?
Agreed. I think computers are here for the long haul. The really, obscenely long haul.
I don't see why. History is not as directional as it appears there are corrections to upward trends. Also the new tech is fragile and dependent on specialization that may not always be there.
Reply not sufficient I fear you are un-convinced.
Civilizations fail usually not in a Mad Max way but in a decay of the roman empire way. But all of them fail. I am not convinced that western techno culture is magic and immune to regression.
Cultures and tools are different things. The roman empire declined- roman style of government did not. Grecian culture declined, philosophy did not. Wester culture will decline, the computer will not. There has never been an abandonment of a tool as widespread as the computer now is.
government stagnated.
The transition from the republic into the empire was certainly a decline in style of government.
Philosophy declined it decayed into scholasticism.
That is why there was a renaissance. how often do you use a napper or a fire drill?
What about greek fire?
concrete was forgotten until 1756 but was used by the Romans. Technology does not only move in one direction the ratchet is imperfect and prone to slipping.
I don't, really. I think the computer is a fundamentally new part of humanity, like agriculture was, or writing. It is exceptionally versatile and exceptionally useful. One of the best things you could do in a world that's forgotten about computers is figure one out and make it. Because that shit is powerful. But honestly, I do not care that much. Maybe it goes away. Maybe it doesn't. I'm sure you're very smart about this kind of stuff, but I think your prediction is melodramatic at best.