My mom once told me that the biggest societal change she has ever witnessed was the change in public attitude toward smoking from the early eighties to the early nineties: a smokers’ paradise became an exile of “no-smoking” signs, standing out in the cold, and federal charges levelled against people who snuck smokes on airplanes.
What are the biggest changes you have witnessed?
Communication, transportation, entertainment, food just to name a few.
To explain that:
[ul][li]Communication - News was days and weeks getting spread around by radio and newspaper. The only visual news was gotten when you went to movies. People wrote each other letters on a regular basis using snail mail.[/li][li]Transportation - no interstates, trains were used more than planes and there were no jets. No UPS, FedEx, etc. just U.S. Mail. No containers for ships.[/li][li] Entertainment - mostly black and white movies, no TV, records only contained one song (no albums), few amusement parks and nothing like Disney World or 7 flags. Resorts mostly for the rich (no motels).[/li][li] Food - fresh fruits and vegetables only in season and then short in supply and high in price, no frozen foods, few prepared foods, no sweetened cererals, no fast foods.[/li] Etc. - no computers, no faxes, no CDs, no calculators, very simple plastics (about 5% of those known today). No air conditioning, anywhere. No automatic transmissions, no power steering or brakes. Or how about 5 cents for a coke or candy bar? 5 and 10 cent stores were just that; a date downtown to a movie and then to get something to eat for $2.00 (Dad paid for gas which was 28 cents a gallon), all that and we got hear how much cheaper things were during the depression. No one, but no one thought we’d go to the moon any time soon. I read “1984” and wondered if it would happen.[/ul]
Being only 21, I’d have to say the internet’s the biggest lifestyle change in my lifetime.
I’m 22, and agree with Aesiron. mmm, Amazon, not to mention ordering Papa John’s delivery online.
Physical changes in my old neighborhood in Hawaii. When we moved there in 1985 or so, the neighborhood was new. The little mall next door had only a Foodland. Now there are several restaurants, gas stations, a laundromat and arcade, and a handful of other shops. The stretches of land that were once pineapple fields are now homes and a huge recreation park. The large, empty field facing my front door now holds an Outback Steakhouse and a parking lot. It’s odd sometimes because I would remember things as they looked when nothing was there… and then I’d hear the roaring engine of a sixteen-wheeler dropping off food and kitchen supplies.
This growth was part of the start of the wave of development of the central and southwest parts of the island. Whole new neighborhoods have sprouted up since then. New zip codes have been created. Whatever changes you can imagine new neighborhoods bringing to the state, they happened, and still are happening. Seeing the place grow and change is fascinating.
And damn, I never thought I’d be older than whole towns.
Other than that, it’s been the Internet. I’m 25.
Globally, the end of the Cold War. In terms of daily life, probably the omnipresence of computers and all the cool things we can do with them.
American society has become much more diverse, accepting, tolerant, and just more open-minded in a general sense.
Young people have more access to information which makes them more worldly, but not necessarily more wise.
Gadgetry - good grief. I grew up with an 8 party line.
Technology went into overdrive during my lifetime. At only 36, I don’t feel like an old geezer, but I remember what life was like before (in no particular order):
[ul]
[li]microwave ovens[/li][li]cable television[/li][li]personal computers[/li][li]VCRs[/li][li]DVDs[/li][li]CDs[/li][/ul]
These are all things which I find to be indespensible parts of my life.
Barry
Cell phones.
And Internet, of course, but that has already been mentioned multiple times.
Before the Tylenol murders in 1982, most food/drug products did not have safety seals on them.
What’s been said, with digital computing and the defeat of communism being high on the list.
Also, sex. With the advent of The Pill and the Free Love movement in the '60s (actually, I remember the Free Love demonstrators being fire-hosed off the steps of the library at UC Berkeley in 1959), getting laid on a first date was a distinct possibility, even with a “nice” girl. People started living together w/o worrying about getting married. Along came the Stonewall riots and the surfacing of a gay rights movement.
The 1970s were years of sexual license, for anyone who cared to pursue it. ~1980 there was a media blitz about herpes that seemed to put a scare into folks. Little did we know what was right around the corner.
AIDS changed the changes, eventually for everyone.
I’ve gotten taller, for one 
I’ve gotten wider!
As a physician, I see the changes in technology. I remember the first CT scans, the very early NMR (Now known as MRI) scans, the advent of nuclear imaging, laparascopic surgery (in overnight for a gallbladder removal and back to work in 3 days, as opposed to 2 weeks in the hospital and 3 weeks at home recovering), in and out deliveries, ultrasounds, angioplasty, organ transplants, and so on.
But nobody’s invented a better prostate exam yet! Damn! :mad:
I’m only 30 and like godzillatemple I remember a time before:
Microwaves (we got one when I was about 12 and my mom was always afraid of it because she thought it would give us cancer. All it really did was mangle food! And nothing was made for the microwave like today… it was just a big re-heater)
cable TV (I remember getting Star. The one channel available. Then we had HBO & Showtime.)
PCs (I got my first one before I went off to college. A whopping 386 I was psyched to get a 30 meg hard card and a 2400 baud modem. And oh to get the VGA monitor!)
VCR & DVD (my parents first vcr must have weighed 25 pounds. It was HUGE. Later they got a video camera that was also huge and it had a vcr that you strapped to your back so you could take it places)
CDs (I still have records in a box downstairs. I just wish I had a player! I had one of the little ones that was in its own box that was blue gingham)
I’d like to add:
Answering machines… The first one we got had a computerized voice with a preset message and was rented from the phone company. Blech! I much prefer voice mail.
I know everyone has mentioned the internet. I was talking to my hubby the other day about how email has gotten out of control. It is the new way to sell anything and annoy your friends. 75% of my email is spam and glurge these days. I would never call my friend and tell him any of the stupid jokes or insipid prayers sent around via email nor would I wad up some trash and put a stamp on it and mail it… seems since it is so easy and you don’t actually have to see your friends grumble and hit delete that inflicting crap on them in this way is fine. very small rant
I remember when Pine was the way to read email and all the web pages were text only… Lynx anyone?
Oh and heart surgery. My grandfather had one of the first bypass operations! Now they are routine! Sheesh look at how cool that biocor(?) artificial heart is!
House prices! My folks bought their house when I was 4 for $27000. We just bought a similar house for $240000. What’s my kid going to have to pay for her first house? $1000000??
Orange juice was such a pricey item that you only got a little tiny juice glass of it with breakfast…now I think nothing of using the big huge glass for it.
Stores weren’t open on Sundays…as a retail wage-slave I wish we could get that day off back.
It wasn’t a common thing for teenagers to have a baby or two before graduation…now sixth grade boys are teased for not being somebody’s “baby’s daddy”.
See godzillatemple’s list.
When I was a kid it was okay to ride in the bed of a pick-up truck. Apparently kids were more intelligent back then, because we knew we weren’t supposed to stand up and horse around while the truck was moving.
Motorcycles helmets. Used to be we didn’t have to wear them. I always did, because I value my Gulliver. I also didn’t have to wear a helmet on a bicycle. All motorcycles pretty much looked the same. (The UJM “Universal Japanese Motorcycle”.)
Skateboards. My first skateboard had ceramic wheels. Really. Every kid in the neighbourhood longed for Cadillac trucks and urethane wheels.
I had Shrike and XS-1 gliders with little “jet” motors in them that was fueled with Freon. Yes, Freon. You put a tube up the nozzle and filled it from a can. I had more than one “frozen thumb” from when the nozzle popped out too soon.
Cars still had metal dashboards when I was a kid.
There were up to 15,000 small airplanes being made every year. There were fewer restrictions too.
Lawsuits brought by people who did something stupid were less common. Parents were unlikely to sue for things like “My child was only given an A instead of an A+”.
In games, there were winners and losers. Everybody couldn’t be a winner just for playing. Minor injuries were expected when kids played rough games, too.
“Sir”, “Ma’am” and “Excuse me” were more commonly used than today.
There were drive-in movie theatres.
Leaded automotive fuel went away. So did two-stroke motorcycles above a certain displacement.
No more leisure suits. Thank the gods!
Music. “New Wave” was refreshing and fun. At least we still have punk! 
Just as I was in the age where sex was acceptable, the AIDS epidemic started.
I remember when it was still “Kentucky Fried Chicken”. Col. Sanders was in the commercials. We still had Pioneer Chicken and Straw Hat Pizza. (My favourite chicken place was Picnic’n’Chicken, in San Diego on Balboa or Genessee – I think.)
Politics. I was too young to know much about it at the time, but it seems the Watergate scandal caused people to lose faith in the government. It seems to me that there were fewer laws that were “for our own good” back then. People seemed to want to do things for themselves, rather than have the government do it.
[ul][li]The gold standard was abandoned[/li]
[li]Makers didn’t view product longevity as negative[/li]
[li]Quality television wasn’t an oxymoron[/li]
[li]Major movie events didn’t rehash old television shows[/li]
[li]The two political parties were significantly different[/li]
[li]Appliances were repairable[/li]
[li]Tape machines were all open reel[/li]
[li]A computer used to require its own building floor[/li]
[li]Cars were easily distinguished from each other[/li]
[li]Fast food was a dietary exception[/li]
[li]The popularity of musical acts was based on skill[/li]
[li]Coins were once a single solid metal[/li]
[li]Postage stamps used to have artistic merit[/li]
[li]Real estate used to be affordable[/li]
[li]Lifetime employment did exist[/li]
[li]Manual mathematic calculation is now obsolete[/li]
[li]Musical ability is no longer prized[/li]
[li]Art does not imitate life[/li]
[li]The penny candy counter is now extinct[/li]
[li]Civil engineering used to incorporate art[/li]
[li]Plastic was an uncommon material[/li]
[li]Children were well mannered[/li]
[li]Popular music had content[/li]
[li]Advertising didn’t rely upon being suggestive[/li]
CEO pay didn’t outpace the workers’ by orders of magnitude[/ul]
Besides most of the technological changes
-Color/Cable TV
-CDs
-personal computers [although I can also remember the prediction CRTs would make ours a ‘paperless’ society]
I can remember little changes like
-home delivered, unhomogenized milk in glass containers. There would be about two inches of cream floating at the top of the jug.
-large dry cell batteries, I think they were “B”
-Roman Catholic Mass said in Latin
-nuns teaching in Catholic schools
Bigger societal differences like
-going to the store to buy cigarettes for my parents at the age of six
-while my parents were shopping, being sent to the car for misbehaving–by myself, after dark, at the age of five
-IIRC, women, as late as 1971, could not legally work more than 40 hours per week
Perhaps this is the first sign of old-foginess in me, but it seems people today are completely willing to consider themselves experts on French politics, medicine, botany, and other complex areas of study. Seems like yaboos will listen to Tucker Carlson or Noam Chomsky or Marcia Clark for five minutes of superficial TV commentary, and then those yaboos decide they know all they need to know about the subject.
It seems to me that in the last 15 years or so, homelessness has gone from being a national disgrace. something that made the cover of “Time” magazine, to being something that people more or less accept.
IIRC, 10 years ago, when executions happened they were reported much more than they are nowadays, although that may just be a matter of perspective (I may not be in awe of capital punishment like I used to be.).