I dunno, might be difference between Ireland and US but 1984 seems a hell of a long way away from this vantage. In the 1980s, Irish society was still largely beholden to the Catholic Church in a way it just isn’t any more. Divorce, homosexuality, routine access to contraceptives were all still illegal. When I was a kid plenty of people, especially in rural areas, didn’t have a landline, now everyone of every social class has at least one phone (except maybe the <6s). Many, if not most Irish households had 2 channels in 1984, the lucky ones had 6. Non-white Irish people were an exotic rarity. People were still being murdered on an everyday basis in the Troubles. In 1984 Irish people were starting to get into the microcomputer boom, so people were buying home computers en masse for the first time but it would be a dozen years or more before most people would be familiar with the WWW. In the 1980s, Ireland still had its own currency. In 1984 Ryanair did not yet exist. Air travel was still exorbitant. There were no motorways. In the 1980s there was a lag, sometimes of years between when a film or show would be available in the US and when it got a release here. The Celtic Tiger had not yet reared its ugly head. In 1985 there was hysteria over a supposedly moving statue of Our Lady. I could continue, but I won’t.
I think there was a lot of truth in that post, but it was very US-centric. A lot of other countries didn’t experience the 50s as an island of comfort, not the 60s-early 70s as a great upheaval, where people in their 20s thought they were a force in history.
If you lived in South Africa or Eastern Europe, the 80s were a hell of a long time ago, and a different world, I’m sure.
It’s true that in spite of advances like the internet, with streaming instant movies, Skyping, and extremely portable devices that keep the internet constantly at hand, for me, time really is divided into before computers/after computers, with “before” essentially being before desktop models at home, and Atari 2600. My mother’s generation probably sees TV the same way: in spite of leaps in technology, like HD, widescreen, DVR, On Demand, VCRs, color, cable and the expansion of channel availability from 4 or 5, to maybe 12, to 60, to 200 since about 1970, I’m sure for her the TV/no TV chasm is so wide as not to be spanned by any sub-TV technology.
Anyway, for me, “Computer” began right about 1980, and I was in middle school, so I’d just gotten out of the first tier of the US education system, and I’d had a break in my life where we’d lived abroad, plus, my family moved from Manhattan to the suburbs in Queens, and a lot of other changes happened. But it was a big break for me. Essentially, my life is divided into different “ages,” and the first one ended right about the time computers arrived-- well, home computing, and computers being ubiquitous. Computers seemed to arrive abruptly-- one year they weren’t there at all, and just a few years later, you were seriously handicapped if you didn’t have one, or at least access to one. The internet seemed to arrive more as drops in a bucket. First, the university had a VAX system, then intramural email, and bulletin boards, then newsgroups, then AOL, and, well, even the youngest people on the board can probably pick it up from there.
My father fought in WWII. I was a late kid though. WWII has never seemed that long ago to me…but then, I like history and old stuff.
One of my favorite books is* Testament of Youth*, a WWI biography by a woman who was a member of the Royal Army’s VAD (she was a nurse). It made the First WW live for me in a way that the Second didn’t. WWII has always been strictly about the Holocaust, and in an odd way, the Holocaust seems recent, while the war seems a long time ago. But I’ve never spoken to any WWII vets about their personal experiences, while I know several Holocaust survivors intimately.
Mark Hamill will turn 63 next week as he films Episode 7. He would be slightly older than Sir Alec Guiness was when he played Obi-Wan Kenobi back in A New Hope. Guiness turned 63 about a month before ANH was released.
MASH is actually a Vietnam story… it’s just sort of pretend-set in pretend-Korea at the pretend-date of the Korean War. The age of the characters is just one of the things it confuses (from memory, the ‘Koreans’ dress as Vietnamese? ). The characters are young enough to be serving, at that rank, in Vietnam, which is why their service records don’t work correctly for Korea.
I would have liked to have talked with Bob Hope and George Burns before they died. They experienced Hollywood in its beginning plus they started back in the day of vaudeville, moved to radio, then film, then tv.
Along the way they may have met many of the greats like the 3 Stooges, Marx Brothers, and others.
My son has a similar perspective on these event, FWIW. They are dusty old relics of history, even if they occurred 20 years or so before he was born (or less).
I’m amused by all the people saying the '80s weren’t that long ago. For you, sure. I was born in '85. I have no memory of Reagan speaking live on TV (as POTUS, at least). The '80s were forever ago. To me, the '90s were just the other day. To kids now, it was forever ago. The fashion, TV, movies, and video games are hilariously out of date and primitive to them. I’ve met young adults who refuse to watch movies before the '80s on general principle.
It’s all relative, like geologic or cosmic time. The dinosaurs only died 65 million years ago.
Chocolate chip cookies. It’s such an obvious idea you’d think it’s been around forever. Or at least since chocolate was discovered.
But the first chocolate chip cookie recipe was published in 1936. My parents, who are both alive, are older than chocolate chip cookies.
And Star Wars is closer to Gone With The Wind, than The one they are filming now
I’m 68, and I was born mere weeks after World War 2. I watched the conventions prior to the 1952 election, on our little Zenith TV with the 12” round screen. I watched Elizabeth’s Coronation, and I remember my mother saying “This is something you’ll always remeber.” She was right. I was already in college when JFK was assassinated and the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan’s show. I saw the suburb I grew up in go from 100% white to 100% black. I have a photo of myself sitting on my grandmother’s lap. I was an infant; her face was totally covered with wrinkles, like a woman in her 90s. But she was only 65 at the time.
It’s been 25,195 days since I was born. That long before I was born comes to almost 1877. That’s a mere lifetime of someone my age, dying when I was born. Ulysses S. Grant was President. Cars, planes and Penicillin were still decades in the future.