10 ms·

I grew up in the 80's and saw the original Back to the Future in a theater. When I was a kid, I remember thinking 1955 was ancient history. It's pretty wild tha

by japhyr 12y ago

I grew up in the 80's and saw the original Back to the Future in a theater. When I was a kid, I remember thinking 1955 was ancient history. It's pretty wild that young people today, like the high school students I teach, feel the same about 1985 as I felt about 1955. I wonder if there's something different though? I knew little about the 50's when I was in high school. None of my peers were "into" the 50's, and nobody was listening to music from the 50's. But my current students still love 80's metal bands like Metallica and Slayer, and 80's hip hop like NWA and others. They like 80's movies, and will have quote battles about 80's movies. Maybe 1985 doesn't feel as far away to them, or as irrelevant, as 1955 felt to me.

mr_wobbly 12y ago
I'm 25, I think of the 80s as the beginning of the "modern" world. I guess it's the same for your students. Plus a lot of cool movies were made back then, and I imagine that's part of the reason why the 80s are considered cool. I think you're 100% right, 1985 doesn't feel like ancient history at all.
- marcosdumay 12y ago
  > I think of the 80s as the beginning of the "modern" world. I was born at 1980, and that's exactly how I felt by the 90's time (that the 80's were the beginning of the "modern" world). Maybe it's because it's true. There was a cultural transformation at the 70's, so that the 80's were completely different from the 60's. We didn't have any other such transformatio after that.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- peapicker 12y ago
  In a lot of ways, it was - popularization of home computers and home video playback/recording, the first commercial mobile phones, popularization of synthesizers, etc. So much stuff that was the first generation (in significant numbers in homes) of almost all the ubiquitous technology we now use.
- ashark 12y ago
  Politically, in the US at least, we're still very much under the sway of the 80s. The rightward shift is ongoing, and it seems to me that most of our modern mainstream political spectrum would fit pretty well under the tent of the 80s and early 90s right. S&L and the housing crash could be seen as defining the pattern that the boom/bust cycle has followed since then.
  - toyg 12y ago
    This is the real elephant in the room. With the end of the Cold War, pretty much all systemic critiques of the American Way of Life were swept away, and any request of change was shut down for ever. America (as depicted in Hollywood movies in 1985) was crowned "best society ever" and social mores were frozen in place. As globalisation started to hit harder and harder, generating a timid backlash in Seattle etc, 9/11 happened... and again any critical point of view was banished. Even "western" foreign policy is basically still the same. No wonder Reagan was all but beatified when he died.
- delecti 12y ago
  I think it might just be hard for many of the people on HN to have an objective opinion about it. We might just think of the 80s as the beginning of the modern world because it's when we were born.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > I think it might just be hard for many of the people on HN to have an objective opinion about it. Opinions are, by definition, subjective, and the issue here is a subjective question of feeling, not an objective question of fact, so, yes, its impossible for anyone to have an "objective opinion" about it, for a few fairly fundamental reasons. (And its not just limited to people on HN.)
    - delecti 12y ago
      Well, my point was more that "of course we think the 80s were significant because that's when so many of us were born", and less a discussion on the meaning of "opinion". If some of the older posters (40-60 rather than 20-30) were to post a similar sentiment about the 80s then it would say more. Edit: Alternatively, I'm very likely just projecting my age range on some posters who are in that age range, but them chiming up to confirm that fact would be helpful.
      - mordechai9000 12y ago
        I was born in the 70s, and I feel my whole decade was left out of your age range.
      - randallsquared 12y ago
        People who are in their 40s now were teens and young adults in the 80s, and are therefore likely to agree that that decade was significant, and I can understand that (I'm 41). Let me try to give a different perspective, though: Modern times seems to me to have started about when The Matrix came out and Google came along. It's truly amazing to me that we managed to get along without immediate and virtually unlimited access to any information about anything. Being able to just look things up completely changed my life. The internet was qualitatively enormously different when the best search engine was Altavista and most of my time was spent on IRC and Usenet.
gmarx 12y ago
I too saw it in a theater when it came out and I recall thinking "who the fuck orders a tab? Have a Diet Coke" and that it was a pretty awkward way to make the gag. We knew about the 1950s from "Happy Days" which, in retrospect was analogous to "Freaks and Geeks" for my generation. The difference was that the media was obsessed with the baby boomers in a way that they never were about Gen X. The baby boomer history and progress was in our face all the time and I couldn't wait to be old and have them mostly be dead so I could stop getting media progress reports on them. I think the modern media goes back to the early 1970s. Some movies and some music from then seems pretty current still. Earlier than that things seem increasingly weird and foreign.
- kbutler 12y ago
  "I think the modern media goes back to the early 1970s. Some movies and some music from then seems pretty current still. Earlier than that things seem increasingly weird and foreign." That is purely a result of your experience. You were probably a teenager in the early 80s, so you began paying attention to popular culture when the 70s music was still frequently played on pop stations.
  - gmarx 12y ago
    I saw a study online that showed music hadn't changed much since then. I suppose the test would be to ask the same question of a group of people in their 20s, 30s, 40s,50s, 60s etc. In contrast BTW, I think television from back then seems bizarre and old.
    - ghaff 12y ago
      You can certainly find TV shows for the 80s that would seem pretty normal today. http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2014/11/the-80-best-tv-shows-of-the-1980s.html?a=1 http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2014/11/the-80-best... There was a lot of crap but then there always is. But you go back to the 70s and with a few exceptions, e.g. MAS*H, they start to look considerably different and less watchable by a modern audience except as cultural artifacts.
mgkimsal 12y ago
In 1985, much of what we could look back on of 1955 was in black and white. Much of what we look back on in 1985 is in color. Personally, I think that plays a pretty big role in how we look back at stuff. Even much of the 60s is still in color, but the 50s - TV shows, movies, etc - the artifacts we have are largely B&W.
- bsdpython 12y ago
  Standard definition video is the new black and white. At this point when I see sub-HD video it looks like an old artifact of history.
  - jedsomers 12y ago
    I really think the medium for recording/displaying history has a lot to do with how 'current' recent history feels. And I think b/w to color is a much bigger jump than SD -> HD. e.g. 'WWII in color' films make things feel remarkably more relatable than B/W footage Wouldn't be surprised if we see a similar change, if not more dramatic, if/when VR becomes a more prevalent form of media
  - Houshalter 12y ago
    Standard definition isn't too bad, it's that old analog video has degraded. Older videos have weird VCR artifacts from being stored on tapes for years. Older movies have the color washed out and sound distorted. Even older pictures often have weird color. 30 years from now kids will occasionally stumble upon youtube videos made today, and they will look exactly the same as when they were made. Possibly better if upscaling algorithms improve and are more common.
    - gmarx 12y ago
      I hated the sampling rate far more than the low resolution. Old TV, over an antenna was maddening. On the other hand, analog movie resolution was noticeably superior in resolution until recently. The only serious artifact I recall was the jitter of text in the credits
- 12y ago
japhyr 12y ago
I wonder if the cultural shifts - the pivotal moments in history - were more significant between 1955-1985, than 1985-2015. Between 1955-1985 we had the civil rights movement, the moon landing, the Vietnam War, and the final decades of the Cold War. Between 1985-2015 we've had the fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall, the Gulf Wars and Afghanistan, and 9/11. I'm obviously missing some other significant events. We also had technological shifts - 1955-1985 saw records -> tapes, but CDs and PCs were not quite massively adopted yet. 1985-2015 has seen CDs -> flash storage, mass adoption of PCs -> laptops -> smartphones, and social media apps. Much of the advances in technology have connected us geographically and temporally. I feel like the significant events between 1955-1985 separated the youth of the 80's from the youth of the 50's, more than the significant events from 1985-2015 have. I also feel that many changes between 1985-2015 actually connected today's youth to people and events of the last 30 years.
- wtbob 12y ago
  > I wonder if the cultural shifts - the pivotal moments in history - were more significant between 1955-1985, than 1985-2015. That might be part of it, but I think a lot of it is just that the Baby Boomers are the worst generation in history, while today's younger folks are…just younger folks.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    > I think a lot of it is just that the Baby Boomers are the worst generation in history Why do you think so?
    - marincounty 12y ago
      I don't think they were the worst generation. My parents were baby boomers, and I guess I am too. A lot of Boomers grew up feeling like there was a good chance they would die, and not by natural causes. As a child I used to think what's the point to it all if Russia fires those missiles. My father used to worry about the Vietnam draft. I know both my parents tried to rebel against the strict conformist values of the 50's. Even though they didn't have access to the Internet--they did care about the environment. As to money; they knew after the hippie phase they needed it. I don't know if they will pass that money on to good causes, anymore than rich millennials? I do know this--my parents and their frends were honest, and kept their word. A handshake was substituted instead of a Lawyer when I was growing up. Neighbors would never consider suing their neighbor. They might puch said neighbr on nose after a few drinks though? So no, they weren't perfect, but they wern't the worst generation either.
rayiner 12y ago
Interesting to note that the first Die Hard movie is 1988. Just watched it the other day, and it doesn't feel stale at all. Lethal Weapon is 1987, and I bet a lot of kids would recognize "I'm getting too old for this shit."
- Morgawr 12y ago
  >"I'm getting too old for this shit." This is actually a pretty good point, indirectly. The rise of widespread internet culture and meme might have something to do with this feeling. Kids are brought up with international internet lingo and jokes that are ubiquitous and timeless. You don't need to know that joke X comes from old movie Y, you just know joke X and you know it's funny. It permeates your culture regardless of your age, and that creates connection between past and present generations.
  - rmc 12y ago
    This can backfire, because if you see the original source, it looks like it's just full of pop culture references, and isn't as funny or original. (cf. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny ) As the quote goes: "Hamlet is just one famous saying after another"
    - kaybe 12y ago
      Linking to tvtropes is evil.
    - coldtea 12y ago
      No, Seinfield was unfunny to me even when it first aired, and it's not because of what it says. I can watch 20 other sitcoms from 10 and 15 years before Seinfield (from MASH to Mork and Mindy to Taxi), that I wasn't even adult when they first run, and they are still funny, even when their styles and jokes have been copied....
      - rmc 12y ago
lotharbot 12y ago
Just yesterday I played a DooM game [0] with four friends who were born in 1990, 91, 92, and 93. Another friend who was born in 94 wanted to join the game, but we'd set it to 5 max. I was born in 1980 and had played DooM when it first came out. These guys got me back into it. This seems like a bit of a pattern with high school and college aged kids nowadays -- being interested in some of the 80s subculture stuff. [0] using the mod http://zandronum.com/ http://zandronum.com/ and the campaign http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?file=levels/doom2/Ports/megawads/wos.zip http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?file=levels/doom2/Ports/me...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
pawn 12y ago
When I talk to teenagers, they view the 80s and 90s as ancient history. They talk about the N64 and the Playstation 2 as if those are classics. It's really weird. I was recently a chaperone for a teenager weekend event which included several concerts and public speakers. I brought my 3DS with me because I figured I'd get a lot of street passes (for those unfamiliar, a street pass means that if anyone else walks by you with a 3DS in their pocket, you'll share avatars with one another automatically, which can be used in minigames). I was extremely surprised that I didn't get a single street pass. It turns out that their generation is largely gaming on their phone and doesn't care about handheld consoles too much. Music may be more timeless than other media. I don't think the quality of the music has changed as drastically as that of other technological changes. Videogames have more processing power. TV shows feature characters who dress differently and who show certain quirks of the era.
WalterBright 12y ago
Perhaps part of that is music changed a lot from the 1950's to 1980, but 1980's music hasn't changed that much since. It could also be that, before the internet, music from earlier times simply wasn't that available. It wasn't played on the radio, and you had to work fairly hard to find an older album to buy. These days, older music is just a click away, though I find that pre-CD music is still often hard to find.
zephjc 12y ago
Recording fidelity was much better by 1985 - sound was much richer, production values better, video was almost exclusively in color, and of course there was a lot more of it all, and in a much wider variety than in the 1950s, so there is more to choose from for later generations. Movies became more sophisticated too, both technically and artistically.
vitd 12y ago
I think it's an illusion. If you look at culture today, there are a bunch of influences from the 80s. (For example, Taylor Swift's latest album is titled '1989' and has an 80s-influenced feel to many of the songs.) In the 80s, there was a bunch of 50s influence. Billy Joel had released "Uptown Girl" and the rest of an album of almost doo-wop pop hits. Grease was a hit movie in 1978, just a few years earlier. You could still catch shows like Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, and Hee-Haw on TV. So I think it's just a matter of what you remember. I watched and listened to all that stuff and the 50s still seemed like ancient history to me. (My parents were barely teenagers in the 50s!)
kbenson 12y ago
I think it has a lot to do with cultural taboos and media whitewashing. In the 80's there was lots of media from the 50's on TV, like Donna Reed, Leave it to Beaver, The Andy Griffith show, etc. The popular media of the time is mostly about rich white people dealing with simple family problems that result in teaching situations. In the 80's we had Married with Children and Hard Copy, which I can't imagine being accepted on television in the 50s. In the 80s, the 50s seemed so different, a gentler and easier time, without the same strife (which is untrue, mind you). The 80's are relatable because we recognize the same problems in them that we see in ourselves today. In short, it's not that the society of previous time period was more different during these ranges, it's that our perception of that previous period through their surviving media was more or less relatable to our current experiences.
noonespecial 12y ago
I blame youtube. Today Buddy Holly is just as accessible as Iggy Azalea. Just type it in. In '85 it was easier to get Marcus Aurelius than Buddy Holly. The "generation gap" was a function of market forces and media. Its gone now. The past is present.

by japhyr 12y ago

mr_wobbly 12y ago

I'm 25, I think of the 80s as the beginning of the "modern" world. I guess it's the same for your students. Plus a lot of cool movies were made back then, and I imagine that's part of the reason why the 80s are considered cool. I think you're 100% right, 1985 doesn't feel like ancient history at all.

marcosdumay 12y ago
> I think of the 80s as the beginning of the "modern" world. I was born at 1980, and that's exactly how I felt by the 90's time (that the 80's were the beginning of the "modern" world). Maybe it's because it's true. There was a cultural transformation at the 70's, so that the 80's were completely different from the 60's. We didn't have any other such transformatio after that.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
peapicker 12y ago
In a lot of ways, it was - popularization of home computers and home video playback/recording, the first commercial mobile phones, popularization of synthesizers, etc. So much stuff that was the first generation (in significant numbers in homes) of almost all the ubiquitous technology we now use.
ashark 12y ago
Politically, in the US at least, we're still very much under the sway of the 80s. The rightward shift is ongoing, and it seems to me that most of our modern mainstream political spectrum would fit pretty well under the tent of the 80s and early 90s right. S&L and the housing crash could be seen as defining the pattern that the boom/bust cycle has followed since then.
- toyg 12y ago
  This is the real elephant in the room. With the end of the Cold War, pretty much all systemic critiques of the American Way of Life were swept away, and any request of change was shut down for ever. America (as depicted in Hollywood movies in 1985) was crowned "best society ever" and social mores were frozen in place. As globalisation started to hit harder and harder, generating a timid backlash in Seattle etc, 9/11 happened... and again any critical point of view was banished. Even "western" foreign policy is basically still the same. No wonder Reagan was all but beatified when he died.
delecti 12y ago
I think it might just be hard for many of the people on HN to have an objective opinion about it. We might just think of the 80s as the beginning of the modern world because it's when we were born.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > I think it might just be hard for many of the people on HN to have an objective opinion about it. Opinions are, by definition, subjective, and the issue here is a subjective question of feeling, not an objective question of fact, so, yes, its impossible for anyone to have an "objective opinion" about it, for a few fairly fundamental reasons. (And its not just limited to people on HN.)
  - delecti 12y ago
    Well, my point was more that "of course we think the 80s were significant because that's when so many of us were born", and less a discussion on the meaning of "opinion". If some of the older posters (40-60 rather than 20-30) were to post a similar sentiment about the 80s then it would say more. Edit: Alternatively, I'm very likely just projecting my age range on some posters who are in that age range, but them chiming up to confirm that fact would be helpful.
    - mordechai9000 12y ago
      I was born in the 70s, and I feel my whole decade was left out of your age range.
    - randallsquared 12y ago
      People who are in their 40s now were teens and young adults in the 80s, and are therefore likely to agree that that decade was significant, and I can understand that (I'm 41). Let me try to give a different perspective, though: Modern times seems to me to have started about when The Matrix came out and Google came along. It's truly amazing to me that we managed to get along without immediate and virtually unlimited access to any information about anything. Being able to just look things up completely changed my life. The internet was qualitatively enormously different when the best search engine was Altavista and most of my time was spent on IRC and Usenet.

gmarx 12y ago

I too saw it in a theater when it came out and I recall thinking "who the fuck orders a tab? Have a Diet Coke" and that it was a pretty awkward way to make the gag. We knew about the 1950s from "Happy Days" which, in retrospect was analogous to "Freaks and Geeks" for my generation. The difference was that the media was obsessed with the baby boomers in a way that they never were about Gen X. The baby boomer history and progress was in our face all the time and I couldn't wait to be old and have them mostly be dead so I could stop getting media progress reports on them. I think the modern media goes back to the early 1970s. Some movies and some music from then seems pretty current still. Earlier than that things seem increasingly weird and foreign.

kbutler 12y ago
"I think the modern media goes back to the early 1970s. Some movies and some music from then seems pretty current still. Earlier than that things seem increasingly weird and foreign." That is purely a result of your experience. You were probably a teenager in the early 80s, so you began paying attention to popular culture when the 70s music was still frequently played on pop stations.
- gmarx 12y ago
  I saw a study online that showed music hadn't changed much since then. I suppose the test would be to ask the same question of a group of people in their 20s, 30s, 40s,50s, 60s etc. In contrast BTW, I think television from back then seems bizarre and old.
  - ghaff 12y ago
    You can certainly find TV shows for the 80s that would seem pretty normal today. http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2014/11/the-80-best-tv-shows-of-the-1980s.html?a=1 http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2014/11/the-80-best... There was a lot of crap but then there always is. But you go back to the 70s and with a few exceptions, e.g. MAS*H, they start to look considerably different and less watchable by a modern audience except as cultural artifacts.

mgkimsal 12y ago

In 1985, much of what we could look back on of 1955 was in black and white. Much of what we look back on in 1985 is in color. Personally, I think that plays a pretty big role in how we look back at stuff. Even much of the 60s is still in color, but the 50s - TV shows, movies, etc - the artifacts we have are largely B&W.

bsdpython 12y ago
Standard definition video is the new black and white. At this point when I see sub-HD video it looks like an old artifact of history.
- jedsomers 12y ago
  I really think the medium for recording/displaying history has a lot to do with how 'current' recent history feels. And I think b/w to color is a much bigger jump than SD -> HD. e.g. 'WWII in color' films make things feel remarkably more relatable than B/W footage Wouldn't be surprised if we see a similar change, if not more dramatic, if/when VR becomes a more prevalent form of media
- Houshalter 12y ago
  Standard definition isn't too bad, it's that old analog video has degraded. Older videos have weird VCR artifacts from being stored on tapes for years. Older movies have the color washed out and sound distorted. Even older pictures often have weird color. 30 years from now kids will occasionally stumble upon youtube videos made today, and they will look exactly the same as when they were made. Possibly better if upscaling algorithms improve and are more common.
  - gmarx 12y ago
    I hated the sampling rate far more than the low resolution. Old TV, over an antenna was maddening. On the other hand, analog movie resolution was noticeably superior in resolution until recently. The only serious artifact I recall was the jitter of text in the credits
12y ago

japhyr 12y ago

I wonder if the cultural shifts - the pivotal moments in history - were more significant between 1955-1985, than 1985-2015. Between 1955-1985 we had the civil rights movement, the moon landing, the Vietnam War, and the final decades of the Cold War. Between 1985-2015 we've had the fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall, the Gulf Wars and Afghanistan, and 9/11. I'm obviously missing some other significant events. We also had technological shifts - 1955-1985 saw records -> tapes, but CDs and PCs were not quite massively adopted yet. 1985-2015 has seen CDs -> flash storage, mass adoption of PCs -> laptops -> smartphones, and social media apps. Much of the advances in technology have connected us geographically and temporally. I feel like the significant events between 1955-1985 separated the youth of the 80's from the youth of the 50's, more than the significant events from 1985-2015 have. I also feel that many changes between 1985-2015 actually connected today's youth to people and events of the last 30 years.

wtbob 12y ago
> I wonder if the cultural shifts - the pivotal moments in history - were more significant between 1955-1985, than 1985-2015. That might be part of it, but I think a lot of it is just that the Baby Boomers are the worst generation in history, while today's younger folks are…just younger folks.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  > I think a lot of it is just that the Baby Boomers are the worst generation in history Why do you think so?
  - marincounty 12y ago
    I don't think they were the worst generation. My parents were baby boomers, and I guess I am too. A lot of Boomers grew up feeling like there was a good chance they would die, and not by natural causes. As a child I used to think what's the point to it all if Russia fires those missiles. My father used to worry about the Vietnam draft. I know both my parents tried to rebel against the strict conformist values of the 50's. Even though they didn't have access to the Internet--they did care about the environment. As to money; they knew after the hippie phase they needed it. I don't know if they will pass that money on to good causes, anymore than rich millennials? I do know this--my parents and their frends were honest, and kept their word. A handshake was substituted instead of a Lawyer when I was growing up. Neighbors would never consider suing their neighbor. They might puch said neighbr on nose after a few drinks though? So no, they weren't perfect, but they wern't the worst generation either.

rayiner 12y ago

Interesting to note that the first Die Hard movie is 1988. Just watched it the other day, and it doesn't feel stale at all. Lethal Weapon is 1987, and I bet a lot of kids would recognize "I'm getting too old for this shit."

Morgawr 12y ago
>"I'm getting too old for this shit." This is actually a pretty good point, indirectly. The rise of widespread internet culture and meme might have something to do with this feeling. Kids are brought up with international internet lingo and jokes that are ubiquitous and timeless. You don't need to know that joke X comes from old movie Y, you just know joke X and you know it's funny. It permeates your culture regardless of your age, and that creates connection between past and present generations.
- rmc 12y ago
  This can backfire, because if you see the original source, it looks like it's just full of pop culture references, and isn't as funny or original. (cf. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny ) As the quote goes: "Hamlet is just one famous saying after another"
  - kaybe 12y ago
    Linking to tvtropes is evil.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    No, Seinfield was unfunny to me even when it first aired, and it's not because of what it says. I can watch 20 other sitcoms from 10 and 15 years before Seinfield (from MASH to Mork and Mindy to Taxi), that I wasn't even adult when they first run, and they are still funny, even when their styles and jokes have been copied....
    - rmc 12y ago

lotharbot 12y ago

Just yesterday I played a DooM game [0] with four friends who were born in 1990, 91, 92, and 93. Another friend who was born in 94 wanted to join the game, but we'd set it to 5 max. I was born in 1980 and had played DooM when it first came out. These guys got me back into it. This seems like a bit of a pattern with high school and college aged kids nowadays -- being interested in some of the 80s subculture stuff. [0] using the mod http://zandronum.com/ http://zandronum.com/ and the campaign http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?file=levels/doom2/Ports/megawads/wos.zip http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?file=levels/doom2/Ports/me...

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

pawn 12y ago

When I talk to teenagers, they view the 80s and 90s as ancient history. They talk about the N64 and the Playstation 2 as if those are classics. It's really weird. I was recently a chaperone for a teenager weekend event which included several concerts and public speakers. I brought my 3DS with me because I figured I'd get a lot of street passes (for those unfamiliar, a street pass means that if anyone else walks by you with a 3DS in their pocket, you'll share avatars with one another automatically, which can be used in minigames). I was extremely surprised that I didn't get a single street pass. It turns out that their generation is largely gaming on their phone and doesn't care about handheld consoles too much. Music may be more timeless than other media. I don't think the quality of the music has changed as drastically as that of other technological changes. Videogames have more processing power. TV shows feature characters who dress differently and who show certain quirks of the era.

WalterBright 12y ago

Perhaps part of that is music changed a lot from the 1950's to 1980, but 1980's music hasn't changed that much since. It could also be that, before the internet, music from earlier times simply wasn't that available. It wasn't played on the radio, and you had to work fairly hard to find an older album to buy. These days, older music is just a click away, though I find that pre-CD music is still often hard to find.

zephjc 12y ago

Recording fidelity was much better by 1985 - sound was much richer, production values better, video was almost exclusively in color, and of course there was a lot more of it all, and in a much wider variety than in the 1950s, so there is more to choose from for later generations. Movies became more sophisticated too, both technically and artistically.

vitd 12y ago

I think it's an illusion. If you look at culture today, there are a bunch of influences from the 80s. (For example, Taylor Swift's latest album is titled '1989' and has an 80s-influenced feel to many of the songs.) In the 80s, there was a bunch of 50s influence. Billy Joel had released "Uptown Girl" and the rest of an album of almost doo-wop pop hits. Grease was a hit movie in 1978, just a few years earlier. You could still catch shows like Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, and Hee-Haw on TV. So I think it's just a matter of what you remember. I watched and listened to all that stuff and the 50s still seemed like ancient history to me. (My parents were barely teenagers in the 50s!)

kbenson 12y ago

I think it has a lot to do with cultural taboos and media whitewashing. In the 80's there was lots of media from the 50's on TV, like Donna Reed, Leave it to Beaver, The Andy Griffith show, etc. The popular media of the time is mostly about rich white people dealing with simple family problems that result in teaching situations. In the 80's we had Married with Children and Hard Copy, which I can't imagine being accepted on television in the 50s. In the 80s, the 50s seemed so different, a gentler and easier time, without the same strife (which is untrue, mind you). The 80's are relatable because we recognize the same problems in them that we see in ourselves today. In short, it's not that the society of previous time period was more different during these ranges, it's that our perception of that previous period through their surviving media was more or less relatable to our current experiences.

noonespecial 12y ago

I blame youtube. Today Buddy Holly is just as accessible as Iggy Azalea. Just type it in. In '85 it was easier to get Marcus Aurelius than Buddy Holly. The "generation gap" was a function of market forces and media. Its gone now. The past is present.