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> It's wild to know the movie Apollo 13 is closer now to the events than to the present. In hindsight, it seems like the middle of the 20th century was right i

> It's wild to know the movie Apollo 13 is closer now to the events than to the present. In hindsight, it seems like the middle of the 20th century was right in the middle of an "S-curve" for societal change and technology advancement. Anyone who grew up in the 2nd half of the century thought it was completely normal. But now that we're somewhat removed from that era, it's more like completely bizarre to consider how much things changed in how little time. The 90s when Apollo 13 came out were an interesting time in their own right because that's right around when the societal change started slowing down. Anyone who grew up in the late 80s and early 90s in particular probably doesn't even think of the 90s as being particularly "old". A lot of the same fashions and music styles that we have today had already emerged, at least in primitive forms. Cell phones and computers and the Internet were becoming mainstream. In a lot of ways, the late 90s and early 00s seem more familiar and similar to today than they do to the 1960s. It's weird to imagine a world where major life-altering advancements aren't happening every decade (no, AI is not one of them, at least not yet). That's been the norm for over a century now, but it's come to some kind of an end. We are entering new cultural territory.

mulmen 3y ago
The smart phone and social media were both transformative. But I get your point. It’s not like being born before the refrigerator and then seeing men walk on the moon as you eat a microwaved TV dinner.
- 10729287 3y ago
  I'm in my early 40s for reference, and it's always amaze me when i'm listening to an album that I really loved when I was an early adult (so not that far away) and making a comparaison like : "damn, that records is the equivalent of a Led Zeppelin album to me for a young adult of 2024". Suddendly, it appears a million years away as I put myself in the boots of a kid. I'm that old, to them.
eru 3y ago
The 1970s were when change started slowing down, and coincidentally, it's also when we stopped growing yearly per capita energy usage by the customary 2%. (I can dig up the sources on that.) Remember the 1970s oil shocks, for example. All the stuff we were 'promised' that we didn't get, like personal jet packs, flying cars etc, would cost a lot of energy to run. All the computing advances we did see were possible in the stagnant energy budget. Nuclear energy would have helped keep the energy budget growing, but for a variety of reasons, it was never really widely enough adopted. I'm very optimistic about photovoltaic, because thanks to it being a semi-conductor technology its costs have been falling along a similar curve as other electronic products. I expect that to keep going until installation and land rent will be the predominant cost factors. So per capita energy budget might go up again for a while, and with them labour productivity improvements might return for a while.
- nicoburns 3y ago
  That time period also happens to be when the top rates of income tax started to be cut dramatically.
  - eru 3y ago
    In some countries, yes. But they only had been raised to those crazy levels not too long before. (And people didn't actually pay those crazy top rates in practice, they used tax optimisations.)
Dalewyn 3y ago
>Anyone who grew up in the late 80s and early 90s in particular probably doesn't even think of the 90s as being particularly "old". Born in '89, the 90s was my childhood. I will tell you today holds none of the magic the 90s had, it's ancient history. I pity the children of today. Also, what was that old saying?: Everything you grow up with is magic, everything you see in adulthood is mundane, and everything in your senior years is fucking blasphemy?
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unethical_ban 3y ago
I see your point about how many individual, large changes came around in the world between 1930 and 1990. Indoor plumbing, air conditioning, radio, TV, transistor, commercial air flight, space travel, helicopters, nuclear energy, cell phones. But the Internet and social media have truly shifted society. Social media has entirely transformed how people interact with the world and discover new things, for good and very much for bad. People born past 2000 never knew a world without computers in every classroom (or in front of every student). Most never experienced having to be at home to receive messages from people, unless you went to their house. Needing to plan ahead with people when to meet. Everyone in society watching the same shows (mostly). I think AI will fundamentally alter the world, like the Internet did. We're in the infant stages.

mulmen 3y ago

The smart phone and social media were both transformative. But I get your point. It’s not like being born before the refrigerator and then seeing men walk on the moon as you eat a microwaved TV dinner.

10729287 3y ago
I'm in my early 40s for reference, and it's always amaze me when i'm listening to an album that I really loved when I was an early adult (so not that far away) and making a comparaison like : "damn, that records is the equivalent of a Led Zeppelin album to me for a young adult of 2024". Suddendly, it appears a million years away as I put myself in the boots of a kid. I'm that old, to them.

eru 3y ago

The 1970s were when change started slowing down, and coincidentally, it's also when we stopped growing yearly per capita energy usage by the customary 2%. (I can dig up the sources on that.) Remember the 1970s oil shocks, for example. All the stuff we were 'promised' that we didn't get, like personal jet packs, flying cars etc, would cost a lot of energy to run. All the computing advances we did see were possible in the stagnant energy budget. Nuclear energy would have helped keep the energy budget growing, but for a variety of reasons, it was never really widely enough adopted. I'm very optimistic about photovoltaic, because thanks to it being a semi-conductor technology its costs have been falling along a similar curve as other electronic products. I expect that to keep going until installation and land rent will be the predominant cost factors. So per capita energy budget might go up again for a while, and with them labour productivity improvements might return for a while.

nicoburns 3y ago
That time period also happens to be when the top rates of income tax started to be cut dramatically.
- eru 3y ago
  In some countries, yes. But they only had been raised to those crazy levels not too long before. (And people didn't actually pay those crazy top rates in practice, they used tax optimisations.)

Dalewyn 3y ago

>Anyone who grew up in the late 80s and early 90s in particular probably doesn't even think of the 90s as being particularly "old". Born in '89, the 90s was my childhood. I will tell you today holds none of the magic the 90s had, it's ancient history. I pity the children of today. Also, what was that old saying?: Everything you grow up with is magic, everything you see in adulthood is mundane, and everything in your senior years is fucking blasphemy?

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unethical_ban 3y ago

I see your point about how many individual, large changes came around in the world between 1930 and 1990. Indoor plumbing, air conditioning, radio, TV, transistor, commercial air flight, space travel, helicopters, nuclear energy, cell phones. But the Internet and social media have truly shifted society. Social media has entirely transformed how people interact with the world and discover new things, for good and very much for bad. People born past 2000 never knew a world without computers in every classroom (or in front of every student). Most never experienced having to be at home to receive messages from people, unless you went to their house. Needing to plan ahead with people when to meet. Everyone in society watching the same shows (mostly). I think AI will fundamentally alter the world, like the Internet did. We're in the infant stages.