How things have changed

"things" change, every ten years. some things more often then that.
even in my 20s there were things called pay phones. they started dissapearing when i was in my 30s.
politics goes back and forth between wanting people to become interested in science, and wanting them to not be.
when i was 7 years old in 1955, there was something called the international geophysical year.
when most countries agreed to not kill their scientists for working together with those in other countries.
(for a period of two years, though i've been told it was only intended to be for a year)

things that are 40 years old in 2020: 43 years to be more accurate: being able to buy a computer in a store instead of having to build one from a kit.
physical printed mail order catalogs, before websites.
and those pre-paid post cards in the backs of magazenes,
that you could mark different factories or dealers you were interested in and they would send their catalogues to you.

post office boxes that you rented for six months or a year at a time, that were really really cheap, that had a key or combo.

non-reserved seat intercity public transportation. this was an integral part of what made a free nation free.
which the u.s. no longer is, and its mind boggling how many people still haven't noticed.

cash puchases of more then a hundred dollars were not cause of suspicion of criminal involvement.

nor were deliveries of anything to big to carry on the bus if you lived in a weekly unit instead of a contracted condo.

coins having actual silver or gold content.

how things have changed. perhaps i have misread the question. changing is what things do.

 

in the 60s, 70s and 80s, except for television and movies, science fiction meant fiction about science.
that didn't have to mean just physics and chem though, or mechanical engineering, it could include psyc and soc, but if it wasn't about actually science and engineering, not wars and dynasites, then it wasn't really science fiction. but it didn't have to be about future or urban, just science itself, in any and all settings, though of course the more alien the better.

 

ah yes, the lurid covers of zenes in the 50s. but if you actually read the stories, it would take quite a streatch to make the cover scene out of most of them. and anyway those kind of covers changed in the 60s and 70s when artists like frank kelly freas and chensney bonestal started painting them. "shock" always sells, but there were a couple of decades, when people stated thinking forward and the hatred of logic was less universally popular, which just happened to coincide with a kind of golden age in the u.s. and perhaps other advanced and maybe even some not so advanced countries as well. there were still horrible inhumanities going on in the world. and so called conservatives are always trying to bring back more. but another big thing is that total human population was still, if only just, small enough, to cut a lot of slack, for any kind of technology, as long as it was fun or made life easier. and we can still have technologies that are fun and make life easier, just not some of the same ones we are most familiar with, if we want a planet it is still possible for our species to live on.

(please don't confuse the 50s with the 60s. note the date.)

on a seperate note, for most of my life, the 21st century was the future, more then 50 years in the future when i was born. now its old enough to vote. and i'm fine with being 'ancient', always wanted to be even when i was a kid. the only problem with being ancient is it doesn't last long enough, and when its over its over for one life, until you're born into another, or whatever else happens or doesn't.

 

the 1960s was a good decade for me because of the aesthetic of the technology and architecture, and also because of young people realizing there was something not quite right about the culture surrounding them in the u.s. of course the big down side, which was segrigation, mccarthyism/cold war, and the war viet nam, is what helped my generation realize this. and that is what made it the decade of woodstock too. and of realizing how much civilization might be more dependent on the natural environment then the economic one.

but really, odd as it might sound, it was the aesthetic of the technology more then anything else, that stood out for me.
the making a god of the automobile was the big mistake, but even that didn't rain that heavily on the rest of the pirade.

at least not obviously yet at that time. because there was still a lot of public transportation left over for earlier eras that had more enthusiasm for it.
and the newer technologies being applied to it were still interesting and exciting to me. and i still have that interest and not just as or for nostelgia.
but as a way of having our environment and push buttons too. of course we do have to compromise and cut down on a lot of things,
but we don't have to throw away everything, and if people didn't think population was a good thing and actually really lowered the birth rate a lot,
we'd be able to have a lot more of both and be that much healthier for it too.