led me to wonder about the question in the title. Is there anything you can think of that is exactly the same as when you were a kid?
From my former professional career, up until about 2006 or so I could have said movie theaters were still projecting 35mm film, the same as they had for over 100 years, but that all changed with the switch to digital that was nearly compete by the end of the decade.
A handful of repertory houses are still capable of projecting film in various formats, and an even smaller handful can project IMAX 70mm film every couple of years when Chris Nolan releases a new film (The Odyssey is coming out in July). Otherwise, every movie theater in the world uses digital projection, which in most ways is an improvement, since there are no more scratched, jittery prints with spices from previous breaks.
But off the top of my head, I can’t think of another thing that is the same as when I grew up in the 1960s (I’m 70).
Buses and public transit in general are still terrible (in the US). Traffic still sucks. Healthcare still sucks. Nobody is doing anything about climate change. We’re still in a pointless war in the Middle East.
On the brighter side, daily life doesn’t really seem that different than it did in the 80s and 90s. You get up, make breakfast, get ready to go to school/work, come home and go to the gym and then eat dinner and watch some TV or play some games or something. For all that’s changed and all that’s in crisis, the daily cycle of life is still marked by relative peace and abundance, at least for some lucky few of us. For that I’m grateful, I suppose.
The SDMB is still here. It’s been almost a daily or weekly fixture since I was a kid. I’m in my 40s.
On a small scale, lots of stuff is still the same as when I was a kid. I still push around a lawn mower to cut the grass, still wash my dishes by hand in the sink, vacuuming still involves pulling the vacuum cleaner out of the closet and pushing it around. Sitting on the couch with a book hasn’t changed. There’s ways where all these might change for other people (Roombas, Kindles, etc) but none so dramatically where I’m some sort of weird relic for pull-staring my Toro and pushing it around the lawn.
For kids, it seems the structure of the school day hasn’t changed much. Show up in the morning (often on a bus), divided periods and lessons to a schedule, shuffled to the gym/cafeteria to eat, recess if you’re that age, more divided lessons and out the door again in mid-afternoon. Sure there’s more Chromebooks and fewer overhead projectors but the basics of the School Day look the same as the 70s to me.
I remember people ignoring others while reading a newspaper, watching television, etc. Our parents worried about cable TV and video games instead of smart phones and social media.
There are definitely issues with smart phones and social media, but some modern complaints did not start with those things.
Speaking of small stuff, I think it’s funny how IRC (online chat rooms) keeps reinventing itself. First Slack, then Teams, then Discord, not counting all the smaller spinoffs. We’ve gone from copper phone lines to satellite constellations, all so we can keep text chatting each other.
Only now, in the last five years, have I owned a lawn mower (battery-powered); all my previous residences (town houses or condos) had no lawns.
I stopped buying paper books years ago, and only read on my tablet now.
In only one house I’ve lived as an adult did I not have a dishwasher, but as a kid I never washed the dishes, my parents did, and at one point they got a roll-around dishwasher that attached to the kitchen faucet. So using a dishwasher is one thing that hasn’t changed for me since I was a kid.
Jeans and a t-shirt is still perfectly acceptable attire for most casual events.
Sure, but none of those things have changed for me and none have changed so dramatically that me doing those things the same as a I did in, say, 1982 is actually “weird”. Not in the same way as still only having a kitchen landline would be weird. No one gives you a second look for opening a book or mowing your lawn.
I was not denying your experience or dismissing your post, just noting that two of the particular things you mentioned have changed for me, and one hasn’t.
This thread doesn’t have to be about things that haven’t changed for everyone, only for each poster.
The living room: TV and places to sit to watch it (or read or do crosswords).
The bathroom (mostly): toilet, toilet paper holder, sink, shower, towel rack, clothes hook, linen and other storage cupboard. The toilet now has an added bidet appliance.
The kitchen: stove, refrigerator, cabinets, sink(s) with counters (we used to call them drainboards). A table and chairs for eating at.
The bedroom: bed, nightstand, closet, chest(s) of drawers. My current bedroom has the addition of a comfortable chair for reading or falling asleep in.
I’m now 76, I was a kid in the 50’s, and all these things are substantially the same now as then. Interesting to think about, @Jophiel’s post started me off thinking about all these things.
eta: my current house was built the year I was born, and it was clearly designed to be lived in in this manner.
I was born in 1970 and, like all latchkey children, grew up on the television. This was 15-20 years after television had basically killed (or mortally wounded) many/most of the ways Americans entertained themselves away from the home, and with which Americans produced and exchanged Social Capital (metaphorically, of course). Fraternal societies. Hobbyist groups. Ladies’ gardening societies. Weekly bowling nights or poker nights.
Here we are 50 years later and we’re no closer to re-investing in Social Capital. If anything, we’ve kicked it when it’s down (COVID and smartphones have hastened along its death) and brought it closer to extinction.
People still cling to ancient mythology for guidance on their daily life (religion, astrology) and, in the case of religion, to enforce their beliefs upon others, to oppress others, to enrich themselves, to shield themselves from accountability when they commit horrible crimes.
People still believe that hitting their children is a moral and acceptable means of parenting.
Also, still no flying cars (they’ve been a decade away for several decades now) and still no colonies on the Moon (which an elementary school science textbook said would be a thing by the time I was an adult).
My entry would be “clothes in general”. The substances they’re made out of have changed a bit, but if you saw an average joe, not a fashionista, from the early 80s versus today, you could tell that they were dressed way differently, but not so differently that it would be distracting compared to if they had been teleported from the 1940s, or compared to other cultural touchstones like dialect and attitudes in general.
When I was a kid, I never heard anything about climate change per se. The environmental issues were pollution (air pollution, water pollution, etc.) and the ozone layer; and things were done about these issues (e.g. the CFC ban; motor vehicle emissions standards).
Geopolitics and the world economy is still largely about access to fossil fuels. We are slowly moving to EVs, but I thought we’d be farther along.
Airplanes still LOOK the same, but we fly them very differently because of advances in computer technology. Airliners especially haven’t changed their appearance very much because shape is mostly dictated by aerodynamics.
