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If there's one thing I enjoy from music (and music videos) from the 1980s, it is the unbounded optimism and bubbly nature. We were going to change the world, "w

If there's one thing I enjoy from music (and music videos) from the 1980s, it is the unbounded optimism and bubbly nature. We were going to change the world, "with _science_!" And I often think of the early-to-mid 1990s Internet as a hangover of this mentality. We laughed off the Clinton Administration's Clipper chip, even as rumors abounded of the NSA peering at every NAP. We were, after all, unstoppable. We were going to change the world with science. I don't want to sound too negative, because it's never too late for a comeback, but for the moment at least, this thing has been turned against us by corporate interests and the NSA. Were I a pessimist, I'd quote Easy Rider and say, "You know, man, we blew it." That is, if I were a pessimist. I'm still pretty sure we can put this thing together like it was supposed to be.

sehugg 12y ago
The relevant Easy Rider quote I had in mind is: "You know, this used to be a helluva good country. I can't understand what's gone wrong with it."
- malka 12y ago
  Well, first, you started the war on drugs. It brougth more drugs. Then you started the war on terror.Guess what the result were? You should start a war on jobs. Maybe it'll work.
  - ANTSANTS 12y ago
    >You should start a war on jobs. Maybe it'll work. Could this be the missing puzzle piece to implementing universal income???
mwfunk 12y ago
Looking back at media from that time, there was what looks like a quaint optimism now. But from what I remember from living in the '80s, there was also a darkness that is just not really a thing anymore. I graduated from high school in 1989, so this is biased by the fact that I was a kid or a teenager throughout the '80s, so I'm not sure to what degree this was just me. But I remember just taking the inevitability of nuclear war almost as a given. It felt like for my whole life the world was trapped in a Mexican standoff, and the inevitable result was the annihilation of all life on the planet. It's still a possibility, of course, but I just remembered spending a lot of time in the '80s thinking it was inevitable. When I remember the goofy '80s stuff, it was always in stark contrast to the apocalyptic stuff. The goofiness and bubbliness of '80s media felt like a reaction to the darkness of the reality. I don't know how much of that undertone of darkness was a shared sentiment vs. my own bias because I was a moody dramatic teenager at the time. The '80s were also the heyday of the global disaster movies, that were about the extinction of the human race. I just remember a steady stream of movies about human extinction from nuclear war, disease, climate change, comets, zombies (of course), aliens, apes, etc. People still make apocalyptic movies, of course, but it just felt like fear of extinction was more in the collective subconscious then than it is now. Or maybe that was just the kind of kid that I was? I'd be interested to hear how others experienced the same years.
- Cowicide 12y ago
  >I remember just taking the inevitability of nuclear war almost as a given. It was damn closer than most people realize. That nutball Reagan nearly killed all of us: http://www.alternet.org/story/149821/how_reagan_brought_the_world_to_the_brink_of_nuclear_destruction http://www.alternet.org/story/149821/how_reagan_brought_the_... And, we're not out of the woods yet. If we end up with another madman Republican perhaps like McCain, we'll probably get sent over the edge with Russia since we already know that Putin is also a nut. Not to mention Russia was perhaps (arguably) on its way to launching nukes on a false alarm if it wasn't for one guy who didn't follow orders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov#The_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov#The_incident Maybe if he hadn't disobeyed orders someone else would've stopped the launch, maybe not. But, considering the incredible stakes, I think it was all just a bit too close for comfort either way. Moral of the story? Live every day like it's your last day on Earth, because someday it'll be true.
  - lupin_sansei 12y ago
    You might find this interesting to balance some of that out a bit: "Think Again: Ronald Reagan - The Gipper wasn't the warhound his conservative followers would have you think." http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/07/think_again_ronald_reagan http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/07/think_again...
    - Cowicide 12y ago
      Thank you for your article. Keep in mind, the FP article really doesn't do much to discount the piece I linked to and, as a matter of fact, reinforces just how close Reagan brought us to the brink of nuclear destruction. From the FP article you linked to: "His dread only grew by year's end when he learned that his nuclear buildup and anti-Soviet speeches had so terrified Kremlin leaders that they interpreted a nato war game as preparation for a real attack and put their military on high alert." If it wasn't for reforms in the USSR (see Gorbachev), things might have very well ended in a nuclear holocaust due to Reagan's initial war mongering. > to balance some of that out a bit I'm not sure you read the article I linked to fully. It mentions Reagan's efforts to bring us back from the brink after he first disparaged and dismissed the nuclear freeze movement. The article actually mentions the fact that Reagan even went further than activists had asked for: From the article I linked to: " ... by the time of Reagan’s second term, the nuclear weapons policies of his administration actually went far beyond what the organizers of the freeze campaign had advocated. The Reagan Administration did not just halt the nuclear arms race, it actually began to reverse it." But, for FP to try to polish Reagan up as a man of peace terrified of war is a bit delusional once we consider what it took to finally get him to cool his heels and desperately kick in massive damage control in the nick of time before nuclear armageddon. It's also interesting that FP didn't mention activists and their effect on the issue. And, again, if it wasn't for the dumb luck of Gorbachev taking power, I have sincere doubts that Reagan could have rectified his previous war mongering in time. As I said, we came much closer than most realize and Reagan nearly sent us all off the nuclear rails.
bowlofpetunias 12y ago
Which 80's are you talking about? What I remember is dark music, "no future" graffiti, riots, heroine junkies in the alley and the ever-present "reality" that some day soon they were gonna use the nukes and it would all be over anyway.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Where was this, if I might ask? The junkies part in particular didn't seem as mainstream / widespread as it is now. Perhaps in certain areas, but it seems pretty uniform today.
  - sanoli 12y ago
    hmm... New York?
yodsanklai 12y ago
> We were going to change the world, "with _science_!" This is not only a hippie thing. Many conservatives have faith that global warming or pollution will be eventually solved by science.
- Negitivefrags 12y ago
  And why cant they be? If there is a breakthrough in energy a lot of things become possible to fix with brute force approaches.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    "If". That's assuming a lot. Also: Leibig's law of the minimum. Plenty of other constraints waiting to hook us.
- dasil003 12y ago
  Certainly the oil company execs whisper themselves to sleep with this each night.
dredmorbius 12y ago
As one who was there, I'd argue it was a time that was fairly optimistic (there's some truth to the whole John Hughes movie archetype), but not without some shades of darkness as well. Some of that's reflected in The Breakfast Club come to think of it: wealth disparities (Claire, the rich kid), blue-collar uncertainties (Andrew), future pysch case (Allison), genius (Brian), and budding criminal (John). The country had come out of Vietnam, the Oil Crises of the 1970s, Watergate, and a lot of distrust over the CIA, FBI, and COINTELPRO (some things never change). The Challenger explosion (January, 1986) and Chernobyl disaster (April, 1986) both suggested profound limits to technology. There was the threat of nuclear war, the Soviets were The Enemy (or was it Eastasia?), Japan was eating everyone's lunch, and the rustbelt was really starting to show its weaknesses. At the same time, oil (eventually) got cheap again, the economy began was was a 20 year sustained period of growth, with two minor burps (the 1989 stock market crash, and the early 1990s recession). The Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union fell, both almost completely unimaginable even just a few years earlier. You had your bubbly pop, but there was also the punk movement. Bands like Timbuk3 put out cynical songs like "Futures So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades": http://fixyt.com/watch?v=gRh4-czxbT0 http://fixyt.com/watch?v=gRh4-czxbT0 The uptempo performance is often mistake for optimism, the lyrics say otherwise, as Pat MacDonald clarified in an interview. From Wikipedia: Pat somewhat clarified the meaning by stating that it was, contrary to popular belief, a "grim" outlook. While not saying so directly, he hinted at the idea that the bright future was in fact due to impending nuclear holocaust. The "job waiting" after graduation signified the demand for nuclear scientists to facilitate such events. Pat drew upon the multitude of past predictions which transcend several cultures that foreshadow the world ending in the 1980s, along with the nuclear tension at the height of the cold war to compile the song. Dire Straits, "Money for Nothing" also reflected on the contrast between moving refrigerators vs. "See the little faggot with the earring and the makeup" (it was a different age) "got his own jet airplane". Probably moving into the Mission and ruining the neighborhood as well. And the computer animations were state-of-the-art. http://fixyt.com/watch?v=lAD6Obi7Cag http://fixyt.com/watch?v=lAD6Obi7Cag There was a sense of possible future problems (energy, oil, we were just starting to hear about CO2), but nothing imminent (other than nuclear annihilation). I'd say that's probably the biggest change now: the global economy has been dragging for 10-15 years now, and there's a distinct sense that the trajectory has changed.
lkrubner 12y ago
About naive optimism: I have a friend who lead the team at AOL, back in 1991, that built the chat client for AOL. At the time, he and his team sincerely believed that they were ending war forever, for surely, they thought, once there was an easy to use GUI chat client that allowed all the people of the world to chat, then there could never be war again.

sehugg 12y ago

The relevant Easy Rider quote I had in mind is: "You know, this used to be a helluva good country. I can't understand what's gone wrong with it."

malka 12y ago
Well, first, you started the war on drugs. It brougth more drugs. Then you started the war on terror.Guess what the result were? You should start a war on jobs. Maybe it'll work.
- ANTSANTS 12y ago
  >You should start a war on jobs. Maybe it'll work. Could this be the missing puzzle piece to implementing universal income???

mwfunk 12y ago

Looking back at media from that time, there was what looks like a quaint optimism now. But from what I remember from living in the '80s, there was also a darkness that is just not really a thing anymore. I graduated from high school in 1989, so this is biased by the fact that I was a kid or a teenager throughout the '80s, so I'm not sure to what degree this was just me. But I remember just taking the inevitability of nuclear war almost as a given. It felt like for my whole life the world was trapped in a Mexican standoff, and the inevitable result was the annihilation of all life on the planet. It's still a possibility, of course, but I just remembered spending a lot of time in the '80s thinking it was inevitable. When I remember the goofy '80s stuff, it was always in stark contrast to the apocalyptic stuff. The goofiness and bubbliness of '80s media felt like a reaction to the darkness of the reality. I don't know how much of that undertone of darkness was a shared sentiment vs. my own bias because I was a moody dramatic teenager at the time. The '80s were also the heyday of the global disaster movies, that were about the extinction of the human race. I just remember a steady stream of movies about human extinction from nuclear war, disease, climate change, comets, zombies (of course), aliens, apes, etc. People still make apocalyptic movies, of course, but it just felt like fear of extinction was more in the collective subconscious then than it is now. Or maybe that was just the kind of kid that I was? I'd be interested to hear how others experienced the same years.

Cowicide 12y ago
>I remember just taking the inevitability of nuclear war almost as a given. It was damn closer than most people realize. That nutball Reagan nearly killed all of us: http://www.alternet.org/story/149821/how_reagan_brought_the_world_to_the_brink_of_nuclear_destruction http://www.alternet.org/story/149821/how_reagan_brought_the_... And, we're not out of the woods yet. If we end up with another madman Republican perhaps like McCain, we'll probably get sent over the edge with Russia since we already know that Putin is also a nut. Not to mention Russia was perhaps (arguably) on its way to launching nukes on a false alarm if it wasn't for one guy who didn't follow orders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov#The_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov#The_incident Maybe if he hadn't disobeyed orders someone else would've stopped the launch, maybe not. But, considering the incredible stakes, I think it was all just a bit too close for comfort either way. Moral of the story? Live every day like it's your last day on Earth, because someday it'll be true.
- lupin_sansei 12y ago
  You might find this interesting to balance some of that out a bit: "Think Again: Ronald Reagan - The Gipper wasn't the warhound his conservative followers would have you think." http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/07/think_again_ronald_reagan http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/07/think_again...
  - Cowicide 12y ago
    Thank you for your article. Keep in mind, the FP article really doesn't do much to discount the piece I linked to and, as a matter of fact, reinforces just how close Reagan brought us to the brink of nuclear destruction. From the FP article you linked to: "His dread only grew by year's end when he learned that his nuclear buildup and anti-Soviet speeches had so terrified Kremlin leaders that they interpreted a nato war game as preparation for a real attack and put their military on high alert." If it wasn't for reforms in the USSR (see Gorbachev), things might have very well ended in a nuclear holocaust due to Reagan's initial war mongering. > to balance some of that out a bit I'm not sure you read the article I linked to fully. It mentions Reagan's efforts to bring us back from the brink after he first disparaged and dismissed the nuclear freeze movement. The article actually mentions the fact that Reagan even went further than activists had asked for: From the article I linked to: " ... by the time of Reagan’s second term, the nuclear weapons policies of his administration actually went far beyond what the organizers of the freeze campaign had advocated. The Reagan Administration did not just halt the nuclear arms race, it actually began to reverse it." But, for FP to try to polish Reagan up as a man of peace terrified of war is a bit delusional once we consider what it took to finally get him to cool his heels and desperately kick in massive damage control in the nick of time before nuclear armageddon. It's also interesting that FP didn't mention activists and their effect on the issue. And, again, if it wasn't for the dumb luck of Gorbachev taking power, I have sincere doubts that Reagan could have rectified his previous war mongering in time. As I said, we came much closer than most realize and Reagan nearly sent us all off the nuclear rails.

bowlofpetunias 12y ago

Which 80's are you talking about? What I remember is dark music, "no future" graffiti, riots, heroine junkies in the alley and the ever-present "reality" that some day soon they were gonna use the nukes and it would all be over anyway.

dredmorbius 12y ago
Where was this, if I might ask? The junkies part in particular didn't seem as mainstream / widespread as it is now. Perhaps in certain areas, but it seems pretty uniform today.
- sanoli 12y ago
  hmm... New York?

yodsanklai 12y ago

> We were going to change the world, "with _science_!" This is not only a hippie thing. Many conservatives have faith that global warming or pollution will be eventually solved by science.

Negitivefrags 12y ago
And why cant they be? If there is a breakthrough in energy a lot of things become possible to fix with brute force approaches.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  "If". That's assuming a lot. Also: Leibig's law of the minimum. Plenty of other constraints waiting to hook us.
dasil003 12y ago
Certainly the oil company execs whisper themselves to sleep with this each night.

dredmorbius 12y ago

As one who was there, I'd argue it was a time that was fairly optimistic (there's some truth to the whole John Hughes movie archetype), but not without some shades of darkness as well. Some of that's reflected in The Breakfast Club come to think of it: wealth disparities (Claire, the rich kid), blue-collar uncertainties (Andrew), future pysch case (Allison), genius (Brian), and budding criminal (John). The country had come out of Vietnam, the Oil Crises of the 1970s, Watergate, and a lot of distrust over the CIA, FBI, and COINTELPRO (some things never change). The Challenger explosion (January, 1986) and Chernobyl disaster (April, 1986) both suggested profound limits to technology. There was the threat of nuclear war, the Soviets were The Enemy (or was it Eastasia?), Japan was eating everyone's lunch, and the rustbelt was really starting to show its weaknesses. At the same time, oil (eventually) got cheap again, the economy began was was a 20 year sustained period of growth, with two minor burps (the 1989 stock market crash, and the early 1990s recession). The Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union fell, both almost completely unimaginable even just a few years earlier. You had your bubbly pop, but there was also the punk movement. Bands like Timbuk3 put out cynical songs like "Futures So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades": http://fixyt.com/watch?v=gRh4-czxbT0 http://fixyt.com/watch?v=gRh4-czxbT0 The uptempo performance is often mistake for optimism, the lyrics say otherwise, as Pat MacDonald clarified in an interview. From Wikipedia: Pat somewhat clarified the meaning by stating that it was, contrary to popular belief, a "grim" outlook. While not saying so directly, he hinted at the idea that the bright future was in fact due to impending nuclear holocaust. The "job waiting" after graduation signified the demand for nuclear scientists to facilitate such events. Pat drew upon the multitude of past predictions which transcend several cultures that foreshadow the world ending in the 1980s, along with the nuclear tension at the height of the cold war to compile the song. Dire Straits, "Money for Nothing" also reflected on the contrast between moving refrigerators vs. "See the little faggot with the earring and the makeup" (it was a different age) "got his own jet airplane". Probably moving into the Mission and ruining the neighborhood as well. And the computer animations were state-of-the-art. http://fixyt.com/watch?v=lAD6Obi7Cag http://fixyt.com/watch?v=lAD6Obi7Cag There was a sense of possible future problems (energy, oil, we were just starting to hear about CO2), but nothing imminent (other than nuclear annihilation). I'd say that's probably the biggest change now: the global economy has been dragging for 10-15 years now, and there's a distinct sense that the trajectory has changed.

lkrubner 12y ago

About naive optimism: I have a friend who lead the team at AOL, back in 1991, that built the chat client for AOL. At the time, he and his team sincerely believed that they were ending war forever, for surely, they thought, once there was an easy to use GUI chat client that allowed all the people of the world to chat, then there could never be war again.