Stuck in the 21st Century

[BruceMGF]

I was reading the introduction to Francis Wheen's book "Strange Days Indeed", a historical commentary on the 1970s, and I saw something that I'd been noticing a lot lately.

Wheen mentioned that he had written the script for a docudrama about British PM Harold Wilson.  In one scene, historically and technologically accurate, Wilson contacts an aide or cabinet minister by calling him from a public phone.

The producer of the docudrama told Wheen that scene could not be included.  Why?  Because young people would never believe that a Prime Minister didn't have a mobile phone.

Like I said, I'd been noticing things like that.  On another sports board, one young man mentioned that he'd seen a college basketball game from the 1980s and he found it incomprehensible.  No 3-point line.  No shot clock.  Short shorts on men.

I've seen similar comments on movies posted to youtube.  The fact that hairstyles, or clothing, or technology, or movie cliches, or ... just about anything, is any different that it is in the spring of 2011, is just too much to comprehend.

This is weird.

I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s.  We had far fewer ways to actually see what the old days were like.  No youtube (take a look at how much old stuff there is there; old newsreel clips, movies, sports.  I don't mean late 20th century, I mean pre-WW2, back to the beginning of recorded speech and pictures, almost), no ESPN Classic, no wikipedia.

Yet we knew things were different in the past.  We didn't freak out because the sheriff in a Western rode a horse and not a squad car.  We could watch reruns of Spanky and Our Gang (produced in the 1920s with actors born before our parents) without disorientation.  We knew football was once played with leather helmets, baseball without batting helmets, golf with wooden shafts (woods still had wooden heads then).  Fair from being weirded out by it all, we thought the days of leather helmets were the days when real men played real football.  Single platoon too.

Fashion?  We knew there were flappers in the 1920s.   Movies?  We'd seen The Wizard of Oz (the 1939 one) on TV.   It wasn't like the movies they made in our day.  But we could still understand it.

But not now, apparently.

Anyone else noticed this?

[sean_miller]

Originally Posted by BruceMGF

Anyone else noticed this?

Did anyone notice that modern pop culture in general is a watered down, mp3 friendly, bunch of $&^$*?

[Mattplusness]

I'm 22 and I'm probably not in the norm, but I cannot stand modern pop culture. It's all about image - I hate it.

[MiniBlueDragon]

Originally Posted by Mattplusness

I'm 22 and I'm probably not in the norm, but I cannot stand modern pop culture. It's all about image - I hate it.

A quick Google Images search for "Lady Gaga", "Jessie J", "Rihanna" and "Akon" confirm this. Style > Substance ?

Originally Posted by sean_miller

Did anyone notice that modern pop culture in general is a watered down, mp3 friendly, bunch of $&^$*?

At the risk of being a pedant ALL music is mp3 friendly. ;)

I do however agree that the vast majority of popular music is tosh.

[BruceMGF]

The question isn't about liking modern pop culture or not.  It's about the phenomenon that people under a certain age (30?  40?) largely seem to be one or more of the following:

1)  They don't know that there ever was a past in which anything was different than it is now (no cellphones, e.g.)

2)  If they DO discover something about the past that was different in any way, they find it incomprehensible or mind-bogglingly strange.

[Uber$winG]

I find it incomprehensible that people could survive an Arizona summer before the advent of either air-conditioners or swamp-coolers.

[sean_miller]

Originally Posted by MiniBlueDragon

At the risk of being a pedant ALL music is mp3 friendly. ;)

I do however agree that the vast majority of popular music is tosh.

I'd say it's time you go immerse yourself in a good album. The average MP3 listener will not be listening to their music on a stereo hi fi system. A lot of the current schlock is produced to sound exactly the same on decent sound system as a pair of $2 ear buds, a laptop speaker, or a dancing dog mini-speaker. It's mostly garbage - there's some good stuff still being made, but it's not being purchased by the people who can't comprehend an age before text messaging and Twilight.

[MiniBlueDragon]

Originally Posted by sean_miller

I'd say it's time you go immerse yourself in a good album. The average MP3 listener will not be listening to their music on a stereo hi fi system. A lot of the current schlock is produced to sound exactly the same on decent sound system as a pair of $2 ear buds, a laptop speaker, or a dancing dog mini-speaker. It's mostly garbage - there's some good stuff still being made, but it's not being purchased by the people who can't comprehend an age before text messaging and Twilight.

Ah see my comment was in reference to high quality CD or .flac files being used to create .mp3's. Any music that's of a higher standard than .mp3 can be turned into a good .mp3. Didn't realise new stuff was made to sound the same across the board; I just figured it was a bi-product of the want to make more money for less production. I think that for most people "into" music nowadays it's all about MMOOARRR BBBAAASSSS!

[newtogolf]

Originally Posted by sean_miller

I'd say it's time you go immerse yourself in a good album. The average MP3 listener will not be listening to their music on a stereo hi fi system. A lot of the current schlock is produced to sound exactly the same on decent sound system as a pair of $2 ear buds, a laptop speaker, or a dancing dog mini-speaker. It's mostly garbage - there's some good stuff still being made, but it's not being purchased by the people who can't comprehend an age before text messaging and Twilight.

You're really dating yourself using the word "album".  My kids and their friends don't even buy CD's anymore, no less understand what albums are.  They tell me "why would they want to purchase an entire CD from a band when they can just buy their good songs on iTunes, or better yet, save their money and listen to them on YouTube when they want to."  It has to be tough to make it in the music industry these days, with piracy, YouTube, and the seeming lack of band loyalty that exists today.  Some of my favorite songs from bands in the 70's and 80's never got any airplay, and today are most likely to go unheard.

To the OP, I think this current generation is the first true digital generation, that never saw the world without computers, video games, the internet, cell phones, facebook, etc.  They live 24/7 with constant digital interaction, and as a result, their imaginations, and ability to think outside of the world they know have been pretty much lost.

[sean_miller]

Originally Posted by newtogolf

You're really dating yourself using the word "album".  My kids and their friends don't even buy CD's anymore, no less understand what albums are.  They tell me "why would they want to purchase an entire CD from a band when they can just buy their good songs on iTunes, or better yet, save their money and listen to them on YouTube when they want to."  It has to be tough to make it in the music industry these days, with piracy, YouTube, and the seeming lack of band loyalty that exists today.  Some of my favorite songs from bands in the 70's and 80's never got any airplay, and today are most likely to go unheard.

To the OP, I think this current generation is the first true digital generation, that never saw the world without computers, video games, the internet, cell phones, facebook, etc.  They live 24/7 with constant digital interaction, and as a result, their imaginations, and ability to think outside of the world they know have been pretty much lost.

Yeah, I grew with analog, but I still remember people who had a decent FM station in their area, but chose to listen to their music on AM radio. Some people are tone deaf and they just need something humming in the background. There are plenty of people who don't even notice when a singer has to rely on a digital tuner (talking to you Katie (sp?) Perry!). Anyway, that's off topic.

[Kieran123]

People now have far more reliable and faster ways to connect with the world around them. I can video chat with my family in NZ in real time. I can keep in contact with friends much easier. I can keep up with news as it comes to light.

I think parents need to give their kids a balance. There is nothing wrong with computer gaming or console gaming, as long as you mix it with being outside and keeping active.

I play computer.console games daily, I fix computers for a living, but I also skateboard, golf and play other sports too....as well as hunt and fish.

People need to embrace the digital way of life we now have, otherwise you get left behind.

I think now, access to how the world was 50 years ago, is much easier to study and in a way easier to understand with things like Wikipedia etc

Easier than hearing a story from someone of that time, because now you can actually see it and read about it in detail and watch video - which is why it seems weird for some - because you see it directly, rather than by imagining it through listening or reading

[sean_miller]

Originally Posted by Kieran123

People need to embrace the digital way of life we now have, otherwise you get left behind.

I think now, access to how the world was 50 years ago, is much easier to study and in a way easier to understand with things like Wikipedia etc

Easier than hearing a story from someone of that time, because now you can actually see it and read about it in detail and watch video - which is why it seems weird for some - because you see it directly, rather than by imagining it through listening or reading

You've captured the problem perfectly. I can't say people who get their history lessons from Wikipedia are necessarily less informed than people who learned from bound textbooks, but I feel confident in my assessment of a person who lacks the ability to imagine a scene in a play or a historical event without the "benefit" of video. The people producing the technology are smarter, but the people using it seem to have taken a step backward on the evolutionary scale.

[Stretch]

Everything sucks. Well known fact.

PS: What's a swamp-cooler?

[max power]

Not sure about Phoenix, but Tucson had way, way more trees (for natural shading) before the advent of air conditioning.

Originally Posted by Uber$winG

I find it incomprehensible that people could survive an Arizona summer before the advent of either air-conditioners or swamp-coolers.

[uttexas]

Music, books, art; much like our appliances/electronics, have become disposable, easily digitized/copied/transferred/replaced.  There is little sustainability of culture and it's memory when music, books, television, and movies are consumed off a hard drive, considering the hard drive itself is disposable.

[Kieran123]

Originally Posted by sean_miller

You've captured the problem perfectly. I can't say people who get their history lessons from Wikipedia are necessarily less informed than people who learned from bound textbooks, but I feel confident in my assessment of a person who lacks the ability to imagine a scene in a play or a historical event without the "benefit" of video. The people producing the technology are smarter, but the people using it seem to have taken a step backward on the evolutionary scale.

This is part of the problem too.

People rely on imagination rather than fact. If you want to know history, why imagine it when you can actually see it? Nothing wrong with imagination at all, but often it gives a blurry and completely wrong picture.

Again, a mix is good, because you can imagine it, then actually see and realize how wrong you are.

When kids of today's imagination kicks in, it's probably referencing itself to something they've already seen/studied, and adapted, but closer to the real thing than a kid in the 30's or 40's who was probably 90% imagination and little of what they can reference it too.

I would rather know things than imagine them. Solely because you understand history better when you know it, than when you imagine it ( because its generally way wrong )

[Kieran123]

Originally Posted by uttexas

Music, books, art; much like our appliances/electronics, have become disposable, easily digitized/copied/transferred/replaced.  There is little sustainability of culture and it's memory when music, books, television, and movies are consumed off a hard drive, considering the hard drive itself is disposable.

Technology has also rid the need of countless wasted resources creating stuff that is now digital and can technically last forever, and has let us document and create huge depositories of older music, video and books that will also technically last for ever for future generations.

[sean_miller]

Originally Posted by Kieran123

People rely on imagination rather than fact. If you want to know history, why imagine it when you can actually see it? Nothing wrong with imagination at all, but often it gives a blurry and completely wrong picture.

I see your point, but we're probably gonna have to agree to disagree on this one. Video and photos can be scripted, or simply doctored, and most importantly taken out of context to prove whatever the photographer or videographer wants. They're imporant tools, but you still need an unbiased journalist (or historian) to validate them and ensurre they're in the proper context. Look at the video of Webb Simpson bumping his ball last Sunday. I know he did it, because I saw it in the grainy aerial video.