I am enjoying the first season of Mad Men on DVD - a dramatic television series that revolves around a Madison Avenue advertising firm in 1960. The writing and character development are great, but a truely extrodinary thing for this TV series is the attention to the smallest 1960 details. The cars, hair, clothes, architecture, music and cultural attitudes are just right, as you might expect, but even when someone turns off a (black-and-white) TV the picture doesn't just go off, it contracts to a little white dot that lingers on the screen for several seconds. I remember TVs doing that.
The show is set half-a-century ago, and many of life's ordinary details have changed, but then I began to appreciate how familiar every thing was. A modern, 2008 American can easily relate to the environment and issues of America in 1960. The only truely significant "new thing" since 1960 is the personal computer and the internet; but of course, there were computers in 1960 so even the PC is not entirely new. One might add the downfall of the Soviet Union as a second significant "new thing." PCs and Soviet collapse completes the list of truely "new things" since 1960.
I imagined my father at age of 52 (in 1975) watching a TV show set 48 years earlier (in 1927). Could he have related to the broad outline of things (except in his earliest memories)? In 1927 there was essentially no commercial passenger air service, no jets, no space flight or satellites, no interstate highways (autobahn), no television, no electronic computers (however big or small), no trans-oceanic telephone service, no atomic power or bombs, essentially no regulation of stock markets or banks, no antibiotics, no vaccines (except for smallpox), no synthetic fibers (except for rayon) and almost all farms were running on horse power in 1927. A very long list of truely "new things" came into common existance between 1927 and 1960.
Today, the pace of life seems to be ever-increasing. But what has really changed in the last 50 years? We are running faster, but are we getting anywhere? Or are we really just running in place? Is real innovation dead?
EDIT:
Reading my own post and thinking...
The Civil Rights movement for African Americans, "Women's Liberation," and the Gay Rights movement are truely new things since 1960 (although Brown vs, Board of Education pre-dates 1960). There have been real cultural changes. Am I missing something??
The show is set half-a-century ago, and many of life's ordinary details have changed, but then I began to appreciate how familiar every thing was. A modern, 2008 American can easily relate to the environment and issues of America in 1960. The only truely significant "new thing" since 1960 is the personal computer and the internet; but of course, there were computers in 1960 so even the PC is not entirely new. One might add the downfall of the Soviet Union as a second significant "new thing." PCs and Soviet collapse completes the list of truely "new things" since 1960.
I imagined my father at age of 52 (in 1975) watching a TV show set 48 years earlier (in 1927). Could he have related to the broad outline of things (except in his earliest memories)? In 1927 there was essentially no commercial passenger air service, no jets, no space flight or satellites, no interstate highways (autobahn), no television, no electronic computers (however big or small), no trans-oceanic telephone service, no atomic power or bombs, essentially no regulation of stock markets or banks, no antibiotics, no vaccines (except for smallpox), no synthetic fibers (except for rayon) and almost all farms were running on horse power in 1927. A very long list of truely "new things" came into common existance between 1927 and 1960.
Today, the pace of life seems to be ever-increasing. But what has really changed in the last 50 years? We are running faster, but are we getting anywhere? Or are we really just running in place? Is real innovation dead?
EDIT:
Reading my own post and thinking...
The Civil Rights movement for African Americans, "Women's Liberation," and the Gay Rights movement are truely new things since 1960 (although Brown vs, Board of Education pre-dates 1960). There have been real cultural changes. Am I missing something??