Increasing lifespans also make a difference, I would think. We’ve still got people around who remember WWII. It makes it hard to think of something as “history” when you know somebody who was there and saw it.
The day I had to explain to my boyfriend’s little brother what Chernobyl was, I died inside a little bit.
More importantly, we’ve now reached a period of time, (assuming there’s no Zombie apocalypse) where ALL music of any popularity will always be available. They won’t wear out, won’t be destroyed by fire, won’t be lost when the musician dies.
From about 1988 (popular acceptance of DVDs and digital reproduction) hearing Jimi Hendrix play the national Anthem will be available as long as society is.
My Grandfather grew up in a town in Scotland. His sister sat at a pegboard and manually completed phone calls. Indoor plumbing and electricity was just coming to his town. This guy saw power, electricity, the Man on the Moon, the rise of computers. About the only thing he couldn’t wrap his head around was e-mail. Just couldn’t grok it.
My OTHER grandfather was employed cutting ICE out of Lake Superior.
I wouldn’t place any bets on the expected lifespan of my kids. It could be well over 100.
I wonder why, as kids in the 80s, we didn’t have that same sense about things that had happened in the late 60s. Landing on the moon, Woodstock, MLK’s death…all of those things have always had the feeling about them that they happened a long time ago - and they all happened less than 10 years before I was born.
I was going to mention this- World War II always felt more “recent” for me when I was growing up in the '80s and '90s than the Vietnam War (which concluded not all that long before I was born)- despite the fact WWII was over before my Dad was born.
It’s interesting when you pause to realise that World War I was nearly a century ago, too. When I was a little kid, WWI was as far in the past as WWII is today. The younger generation must think of WWI as being as long ago as older people think of the US Civil War as being.
I work with some kids in their 20s. The oldest just turned 30. He had to explain to one of the 20-somethings last week what “nom nom nom” meant.
I think you over-estimate the degree to which those events seemed remote to your father, and under-estimate the degree to which the newer events seem remote to college students today.
The Russo-Japanese War might be a footnote in history books today. But if your father went to college during the 1950’s, he probably remembers WWII, when Japan was a deadly enemy. The Russo-Japanese War was the beginning of Japan’s emergence as a world power. It was more relevant to the world of the 1950’s then the CMC is to us today, since the end of the Cold War.
Likewise, to us, Theodore Roosevelt is just another face on Mount Rushmore. But your father would remember Franklin Roosevelt, who got his start in politics mostly by carrying Theodore’s name–a direct connection between Theodore and your father’s world.
But remember, Tuchman was an American writing for a mostly American audience, and most of the book was about Europe. So there was a geographic as well as temporal remoteness.
A historian writing today about events in Europe between 1945 and 1960 (comparable remoteness in the past) would probably have to do a lot of scene-setting, for Americans, as well.
Interesting thread. The way we perceive the past always fascinated me. I think we are in for a bit of a slowdown-technalogical progress will continue, but not in the way it affected our grandparents. (My late granfather was born in Ireland, in the reighn of Queen Victoria-he lived to see automobiles replace horses, the moon landings, and jet aircraft) I see the future as having advances in health, information, and raising the 3rd world from poverty.
If and when we achive immortality, will history end?
How about this: when I was a child/early teenager in the 1970s, it was very unusual to see cars from the 1950s on the roads where I lived. Those that were out there were seen as “classics” that weren’t used as daily drivers, but as show cars or hobbyist collector cars.
Today, the sight of 1980s-era vehicles on the road isn’t that unusual, and most of what’s out there from the decade are daily drivers, excepting a few sports cars and hooptied-up “box Chevys”. Even vehicles from the late 1970s are still seen from time to time, again as daily drivers. Such vehicles are far from viewed as “classics” or “vintage”.
Also, in the 1970s, if one heard music from the 1950s in a public place, it was usually at a novelty themed diner or party. Today, it’s commonplace to hear music from the 1970s and 1980s as background music in stores, restaurants, shopping centers, and the like. Music from the 1970s and 1980s is as relevant to today’s teenagers as Buddy Holly or Glenn Miller was to me in the 1970s and 1980s, but malls weren’t filled with the sounds of big bands and doo-wop back then.
Well, back then, if you heard piped-in music, it was crappy Muzak. When I bagged groceries at a chain grocery store in 1985, I got to listen to renditions of “Java” and “Spanish Flea” over the speakers. Fast forward to today … a couple months ago I was shopping at this same store and heard Black Sabbath.
Oh, good lord.
ETA: unless it was this cover, I suppose.
Nope, it was the original version of Paranoid.