# Were the any ways in which "the olden days" were better than today? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 23, 2019, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947 "2019-04-23T18:00:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2019, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/221 "2019-04-30T13:54:41Z")
Twice I’ve had health care providers ask me “What medications do you take.” I shot back “I don’t do drugs.” Whereupon I was informed that “I was asking about medications, not drugs.” And I’ve been told “That’s not drugs. It’s medication.” Does getting it on a prescription make it any better or even different? I remember the 1960’s, when people (mostly women) were given prescriptions for all kinds of psychotropic drugs without the doctor giving a thought. “Mother’s Little Helper” indeed. ---
**Author:** ![Bibliothecarius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b2d939/32.png) [@Bibliothecarius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bibliothecarius)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/222 "2019-05-29T09:18:24Z")
I would say the one unequivocally better thing in the past was privacy and space to yourself. These are fast becoming bizarre notions to the generations growing up today in a world where everyone is pretty much contactable and trackable 24/7 unless they go out of their way not to be as much as is possible. Unless you’re one of the few hold outs who still use actual cash, all of your purchases are no longer private. Everywhere you go outside of your home, you are being watched by CCTV cameras, in some places with facial recognition technology. Drones increasingly buzz around the sky. For most people, your biometric data is on file somewhere, whether because you have a passport or driver’s license that requires it, or you use your thumbprint to log into your smartphone, which also conveniently tracks your location 24/7 along with your banking and social media and everything else that you do on that phone that reveals massive amounts of data about your private life. Even at work, your computer is probably logging every single key you hit so your boss can keep an eye on you, as if the panopticon of the open-place office didn’t make that easy enough already. And nowadays people just accept their lack of privacy as the norm when in fact it is the most abnormal human experience in all of human history. Back in the '50s, all of this was just Orwellian science fiction. Now, we are actually living in the technological dystopia and few people even seem to care anymore. You can say it’s to keep us safe all you want, but just imagine if the technology available today were available in Europe in the 1930s. History would have turned out _very_ differently for millions of people. With this level of technological surveillance, there is no way of escaping if the wrong person comes into power (or if you happen to live in China, where they won’t even see this post because this site is probably blocked anyway). The biggest change in the last 20 years is that we now have the infrastructure in place that every single dictator in world history would have loved to have had. I wager that sooner or later what we’ve allowed to happen to us is going to be humanity’s biggest regret. Whether it’s people making stupid decisions at election time or hackers taking over the system, eventually someone is going to take advantage of this technological infrastructure for their own ends. It may not happen in our lifetimes or the lifetimes of our children or grandchildren, but mark my words - eventually it _will_ happen. ---
**Author:** ![fedman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/278dde/32.png) [@fedman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fedman)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2019, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/223 "2019-05-30T13:57:10Z")
> [@XT](#): > > In what way? Also, your access to them was far, far more limited. And there were a lot fewer of them. My guess here is you are cherry picking the few really, really exceptional movies and then saying they were all better, not realizing there were plenty of stinkers and that there were just a lot fewer options. > > It’s funny, but even the richest person back then couldn’t bring up a list, world wide, of all the movies out for the past 50 years and choose to watch any of them any time they chose. They could, maybe, have someone set up a projector and watch a movie, maybe, in their own room set up for that…and the experience would suck. born in 1947–the 50 and 60’s had plenty of what were called “B” movies, which supplied drive-ins with product ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2019, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/224 "2019-05-30T14:25:12Z")
It’s been a while so it may already have been mentioned but traffic was far less congested and, up to a point, stressful. Of course, the offsets to that were less reliable cars and more dangerous roads. But I kinda miss the days before even the interstates were endlessly jammed (yes, I’m looking at YOU, I-95 south of DC). ---
**Author:** ![fedman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/278dde/32.png) [@fedman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fedman)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2019, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947/225 "2019-05-30T14:26:16Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Not in New York. And probably not in LA or San Francisco. Where I grew up we were a majority, and any kid uttering anything snti-Semitic would have had the shit beaten out of him. > > Not everywhere. Certainly in the south, but not New York or California at the very least. did you forget that so-called “liberal” California had restrictive covenants re: selling to Blacks? Or that they had segregation even for Black celebrities? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-any-ways-in-which-the-olden-days-were-better-than-today/832947.md?page=11)