In the morning, I often use a microwave oven to reheat leftovers or cook breakfast. Microwave ovens existed in 1965 but they were expensive. Few ordinary people had one at home, much less two of them.
If I want something not incredibly exotic, I can pick up my phone and have it delivered usually next day.
Oh yes, that phone. I can call anywhere in America as part of ordinary monthly phone service. My first local phone service bill in the 1970s was i think about $30/month (inflation-adjusted about the same or less than my unlimited cell phone for the phones my wife and I carry). I do not need to hunt for a phone booth anywhere.
There are almost no places without cell service. I have T-Mobile, so Stsrlink handles those.
By the 1970s, almost everyone had answering machines. On my phone I can check my email and receive text messages and check voicemail. Does anyone miss those clumsy beasts?
Oh yes, my wife is putting finishing touches on a novel that she has put together entirely at home and will soon be available for purchase worldwide.
Computers. Internet. I can search 16 million pages of newspapers covering several centuries and I have no idea how many pages of books from my home. Even as late as the 1990s, the closest equivalent would involve going to a couple dozen university libraries and laboriously reading microfilm.
My first car was a 1964 Chevrolet Malibu station wagon. I seldom saw better than 13 mpg. 0-60 was about 12 seconds. If it pulled. .65g lateral acceleration, I would be surprised. I have no idea what its top speed was but likely no more than 120 (assuming the bias ply tires did not fail before I got there). It had an AM radio.
I now drive a car that regularly exceeds 20 mpg. It does 0-60 in 5.1 seconds, corners at 1g lateral acceleration. It has sensors and cameras that render most of that Malibu's high risk accidents unlikely. Most of the features that were controlled by buttons on the Malibu are under voice control on my car. I have more choices of vastly higher sound quality than any 1965 car anywhere.
Medical care? Procedures that would have been high risk and often not even possible back then are almost routine (angioplasty, double bypass).
In 1965, I was a kid growing up in a barely middle class family. My mother's goal was for all her kids to go to college (first generation) i have an MA, my daughter has a doctorate and is a university professor. My son has a BA.
I lived in a two bedroom apartment of perhaps 800 square feet with my mother and two sisters. Now I own a 3100 square foot house on a forested acre.
I have not even touched travel.
We are living in 1965's Tomorrowland.
UPDATE: Compare to this 1960s program The 21st Century narrated by Walter Cronkite. I remember watching this series.
Except that it is turning into a dystopian version of Tomorrowland.
ReplyDeleteI also live in the country, but I don't venture into the cities. The crime. The homelessness. Chicago is either becoming Gotham City from the DC comics or The Alley from Spawn (Dark Horse?)
The cities are becoming John Brunner's The Jagged Orbit. A dark, often hysterically funny depiction of a technologically advanced but increasingly racially divided America. The President is black and lives in The Black House.
DeleteExcellent perspective.
ReplyDeleteI marvel at the large number of choices in products and services, for quite trivial things sometimes.
ReplyDeleteBreakfast cereal. When I was a kid in a rural area, the only grocery store for 20 mileshad maybe a half-dozen choices. Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies, Chex, Shredded Wheat. Then Cap’n Crunch, Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes, Frosted Mini- Wheats started the sugar invasion.
Now at our local marvelous HEB there is an entire ginormous aisle of cereals, each basic type available in a dozen variations.
One of, and maybe the only, good thing to come out of the CovidCoup was being able to order online and either have it delivered (a throwback to the late 1800s) or drive to the store but not have to get out of the car while some youngster puts it all in the trunk.
In 1965 Tomorrowland in Disneyland had a TV telephone. Everyone agreed that it would never catch on, particularly if your hair wasn't combed or you were hung over from the night before. It was tied to a land line. Portable? Not in the least. I have an app on my telephone to do that. Easily pocket sized, Portable, I have the internet at my fingertips. None of the famous Science Fiction authors when I was born even dreamed of that
ReplyDeleteI loved Monsanto's House of Tomorrow. All plastic. when it came time to demolish it, a wrecking ball would not do the job. It was too strong. They eventually strapped steel cables over it and tightened them down until it crushed.
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