
Back to the Future, Time Travel, and the Secret History of the 1980s - samclemens
https://medium.com/message/back-to-the-future-time-travel-and-the-secret-history-of-the-1980s-80bf3c6347cf
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japhyr
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.

~~~
japhyr
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
> 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.

~~~
nostromo
I think economically the Boomers were a disaster (cashing checks that future
generations now must cover).

Socially and culturally however I think they achieved many great things we
take for granted (birth control access, environmentalism, civil rights
advances, multiculturalism, the sexual revolution, etc).

~~~
coldtea
I think this idea that the Boomers were somehow special or more damaging that
newer generations is BS.

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jacquesm
Only 10 years later we had cell phones and browsers.

> Let’s stop checklisting and complaining and start opening things up and
> bolting them together again.

Good luck with that. Electronics made in the 80's were a lot more friendly to
open up and repurpose (to the individual part level) than what you buy today.

~~~
Cthulhu_
On the one side, you're right.

On the other, as a popular internet image says, you've got everything listed
on a full-page Radio Shack - and more - in a package smaller than a walkman in
your pocket nowadays, with the possibility to write any kind of software (or
indeed attach any kind of accessory to) for it, which far exceeds anything
anyone with an old radio and a soldering iron could ever do - and in a
fraction of the time. And share that same thing instantly with a potential
audience of tens of millions with the press of a button.

So maybe you can't open something up and bolt it together again - but you
shouldn't marginalize what you can do instead either.

~~~
Houshalter
True but technology is becoming increasingly restrictive as time goes on. A
kid today can't write software on a phone like you could with old computers.
And just like hardware, software is growing in complexity and buried from the
user.

~~~
dragonwriter
> A kid today can't write software on a phone like you could with old
> computers.

On Android, at least, to the extent that that's a problem, its a convenience-
of-the-form-factor problem (with tablets even this isn't really a big problem,
especially with keyboard cases), rather than a lack-of-support problem (iOS,
out of the box, is somewhat more locked down, but even there I think there are
some options.)

There are quite a lot of on-device programming environments, largely free-of-
charge, in the Google Play Store.

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coldcode
I loved the trilogy when it came out, and then met Tom Wilson (who payed Biff)
a number of times. He's really funny and has an amazing tenor voice. It was
hard to put that voice with his character. Everyone always asks him to record
a voicemail message "Hey Butthead".

~~~
soylentcola
Have you heard his standup/music bit where he sings about fans always asking
him the same things?

On the off chance:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwY5o2fsG7Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwY5o2fsG7Y)

~~~
coldcode
Yes, he's actually pretty nice about it in person.

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CurtMonash
Rather than respond to a lot of different comments, I'll just note (and these
comments are US-centric):

1\. Because of the internet, recording technologies, etc., we have a much more
accurate view of the relatively recent past than one had in the 1980s.

2\. From the 50s to the 80s there was a huge change in societal attitudes vs.
authority, order, etc. Nothing as dramatic has happened since. Cynicism has
changed in its specifics, been put aside occasionally, etc., but since the
stock market crash of 1987 and Iran/Contra took some of the bloom off the
Reagan rose, there hasn't been a huge societal consensus, so there in
particular hasn't been a huge societal consensus that was later shattered.

3\. Sexual mores had a much bigger shift from the 50s to the 80s than from the
80s to the present; the 80s are when the view was adopted that sex was
permissible but dangerous, and that's been the general societal attitude ever
since.

4\. I agree that modern filmmaking techniques emerged in the 1970s. Hollywood
then regressed to the more commercial action blockbusters, but eventually
technology evolved to the point that the same or even greater quality of
storytelling was possible on television. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was like a
series of 1970s auteur movies of 22 * 47 minute duration. The same is true of
Babylon 5, except that the dialogue (usually stolid at best, Londo & G'kar
excepted) and special effects were more in the George Lucas vein. TV may have
progressed even further since.

5\. The internet brought tremendous changes to day-to-day life, especially if
you include the rest of computing (PCs, video games, mobile phones) as well. I
don't have a good answer for why that alone doesn't make the 1980s feel more
distant than they do.

6\. People never know many details of era before their own. This was brought
home to me when my stepdaugher, who is a Middle East expert (e.g. relevant
Master's degree from Harvard), couldn't get a Trivial Pursuit question whose
correct answer was Gamal Abdel Nasser.

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mohap
I saw an interview once with the producers saying that 1955 was not that much
in the past had changed. So for some of the things (like the gas station
attendant scene and some of the cars) they had to go back into the 40s to make
it look 'older'.

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circa
Great Scott!!

