Twerking.
Multi-megabyte internet connections to homes is the norm.
WTH! I can virtually drive around any neighborhood in Google Maps.
Video games are nearly photorealistic at 60 frames per second.
Smart phones are way to damn smart.
Maybe this is just because I’m a white person over the age of 30, but as far as I can tell “twerking” is just a different name for “booty popping” and THAT was around back in the late '90s/early 2000s.
I agree, this is the main thing people would notice. Smartphones really have changed a lot of daily life.
The only other societal change they might notice if they happened to get in a conversation about it is that gay marriage support has increased more quickly than one might have expected in only 8 years.
A black president would not be such a surprise and hasn’t really changed much about daily life.
No way. It’s about the same, or possibly less. There’ve been headlines recently about more and more young Americans’ drift away from religious affiliation.
“What do you mean, I can’t buy a Newsweek?” (Okay, this would have worked last month. Apparently IBT brought back the print edition on March 7? Why didn’t I hear about that? Probably because I haven’t been reading Newsweek since it went online-only.)
If I woke up pregnant, it would be instantly in my awareness than an abortion is harder to get today in many states.
Wow, we’re talking about [del]trannies[/del] [del]transexual[/del] transgendered people openly now? Wait, there are transgendered kids?! And parents and doctors and schools who support that?!
And people are talking about Creationism seriously? In public? Why isn’t that in Church where it belongs?
And, and this really cannot be emphasized enough, black President. I voted for him, and even I was shocked he was elected. It’s very nice that we’ve gotten over the shock so quickly, but yeah, it was a huge frickin’ deal.
Pretty much what I came up with.
I think the first mention on these forums of Barack Obama as a potential president was not until 2007!
I remember seeing a story about transgendered kids on 20/20 in right around 2006. There were elementary school children whose parents and schools supported them. Of course a lot more progress has been made since then, but I wouldn’t have been shocked to see how it’s gone from then to now.
I don’t think in my daily life I would notice much difference. Conservative nutjobs have become more extreme but thankfully I live in a very blue state. We have SSM in my state now but we had domestic partnership in 2006, so that’s not an unexpected progression. We have legal weed now which would be surprising, because I don’t think that would have come anywhere near passing in 2006, and I’m *still *surprised the feds decided to leave us alone about it too.
April 27, 2007. My Secret Self: A Story of Transgender Children. Amazing report, to be sure. (And Jazz appears to be doing well, by the way.
)
Huh? I’m in my early 30s and creationism (e.g. whether/how it should be taught in public schools) has been debated outside the church for my entire life. What has changed in the last 8 years?
No one in 2006 should have been shocked by the prospect of a black president. Jesse Jackson had already been a pretty serious presidential contender back in '84; polls in the '90s showed that Colin Powell could have won had he decided to run. There had been African-American governors, senators, mayors, Supreme Court justices; African-Americans had been Secretaries of State, Labor, Commerce, and so on. Dozens of movies and TV shows had depicted fictional black presidents. The willingness of the broader American public to accept black people in very high positions of power was well established by then.
I’m not saying it wasn’t exciting or historical, but surprising? No, or it shouldn’t have been. For similar reasons, no one who slips into a coma today and wakes up eight years from now should be gobsmacked to find the first female president is in her second term!
That’s nice, and she’s pretty too.
I made my Facebook account in April 2006. It may have still been a university thing then.
The vinyl record revival is a post-2006 phenomenon (900,000 records sold in the US in 2006 vs. 4,600,000 in 2012).
When did wireless internet become mainstream? I didn’t use it until I bought my current laptop in 2009. Complimentary WiFi at coffee shops, fast food places, malls, museums, etc. isn’t something I recall existing in 2006.
Where were you raised? In the Chicagoland area, no, it wasn’t. Creationism was taken out of the public schools with The Scopes Monkey Trial, and that was the end of it. It was taught in history class, it was not part of current events and definitely not in science class. It was not part of our curriculum debates. A google search for teach creationism in school 2006 gets me “About 340,000 results”. A google search for teach creationism in school 2014 gets me “About 1,480,000 results”. While I’m sure there’s a better tool out there for measuring public discourse, that at least tells me I’m not entirely misremembering the timeline. The OP asks what I would notice, and that’s a big change in my personal experience.
Let’s see:
[ol]
[li]What do you mean I can’t go to Blockbuster anymore?[/li][li]What’s a “RedBox?”[/li][li]Who are these Kardashian girls?[/li][li]What do you mean I can’t go to Borders anymore?[/li][li]If she lived in New York : What happened to Shea Stadium?[/li][li]If she lived in the US; Why won’t my television work? (if it’s not a digital one or doesn’t have a converter)[/li][li]What’s a “Facebook?”[/li][/ol]
Smartphones, tablets, Facebook, Twitter. Hell, I notice these changes from 2006 more or less continuously, since 2006 seems to be when I more or less gave up on keeping up with all the new tech stuff.
Newspapers are much smaller, many magazines have abandoned print editions if they haven’t died off altogether, video rental places have bitten the dust.
Rental cars now include those screens in the dashboard that show what’s behind you as you’re backing up.
Barack Obama gave a rousing keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention. After that speech, he was being talked about as a potential future President. If you followed politics during the 2004 election, you wouldn’t be absolutely shocked to see him as President. I’d be more interested to see if the Republicans had won in 2008 and then lost in 2012 to Obama.
I’d certainly note that the blah blah blah of hearing other people’s cell phone conversations has been replaced with people staring at the screen.
A few more:
[ol]
[li]A laptop only costs what???[/li][li]What’s all this “streaming” about?[/li][li]What’s the deal with this “dancing show” stuff?[/li][li]Umm…why would I “unfriend” someone again?[/li][li]There’s app for what? What’s an “app?”[/li][li]The Pope…resigned?[/li][li]You can get a good paying job in…North Dakota???[/li][li]Ohhh…Michael Jackson died. How did it happen?[/li][li]Hmmm…the tallest building in the world is in Abu Dhabi? Hmm…that’s nice. Where’s “Abu Dhabi?”[/li][/ol]
Whaddaya mean, people are still playing World of Warcraft when Diablo III is out???
plays Diablo III
oh.
Good lord, all my SCA friends gained a lot of weight…
Damn that’s a big flatscreen. And it only costs how much?
Sparkly vampires? Really? Put me back in the frickin coma.
(I know the first book came out in 2005, but how many people actually knew about it before the movies?)
Some others…
Drones
US Mexican border fence
3D TV
DNA genealogy tests
I moved around as a kid, mostly in the south, midwest, and overseas. I never was taught creationism in school but I remember hearing about the debate at various points in the news for ever. The last big court case about it (that I’m aware of) was in 2005.
Oh, I know that some people were surprised, I just don’t think anyone really should have been. As the piece itself says, the indicators were all there that the public was ready for a black president but some people just couldn’t or wouldn’t believe it. Some still won’t - not too long ago on these boards someone claimed that the US was STILL too racist to accept a black president, and that Obama’s election was just a fluke. This, in the middle of his 2nd term!
I get that people can get stuck in the thought patterns of how the world was when they were younger. But anyone who fairly assessed the situation in 2006 and did not have huge blinders on should not have been anything more than mildly surprised that a black person could be elected president in just a few years. To do otherwise would be like, say, being completely and utterly blown away if tomorrow a non-Bible Belt state legalized gay marriage, or, again, if in 2016 a woman is elected president. Both are exciting and surprising in the grand sweep of history, but from the current vantage point they’re pretty clearly within not-too-distant reach.