01-27-2021, 12:17 AM
(01-26-2021, 02:43 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: A prediction from 1966 (55 years ago) on how domestic life would be in the early 21st century. Walter Cronkite shows us. The technological marvels of computers, microwave ovens (?) giant-screen televisions, more than the five choices in broadcast television of the time, and communications devices are wonderful. They have been achieved and often surpassed.
My comment as I put it in YouTube:
If people had known about the nightmare of housing of 2021 which is essentially a bad version of housing patterns from the 1950's they would have shrieked in horror! And paying 70% of one's income for rent of a dreary apartment in an inhuman city? Yikes! Landlords are kings in America, and our economic elites are about as rapacious, inhumane, and exploitative as feudal lords.
The gadgets for cooking, entertainment, communication, and data processing are even more wonderful for miniaturization. (And, yes, we would need those in the urban nightmares so expensive because they are where the economic action is in 2021. The economy concentrates in a few coastal cities and a few that have a little glamour for the time (Atlanta? Dallas? Austin? Denver?) and college towns. But other than that much of urban America is an urban wreck. Housing might be cheap in a place like (well, name just about any dying city in Ohio, Michigan, or Pennsylvania) -- just try finding work in such places.
Imagine a world in which people are deeply in hock to see people like them much as a pusher sees an addict. That is America circa 2021.
And yet another prediction from the same time frame proved to be horribly wrong. That was where we were told that the advanced technology most of us now kneel at the feet of would give us reduced workweeks and ever increasing amounts of leisure time. We were beginning to head slowly in that direction until the middle of the 1980s when the PTB became hell bent on making an abrupt change and reversing directions all of a sudden. The society went from being overly hedonistic to overly workaholic almost overnight. Plus, super ego was involved, and the desire to express oneself by flaunting money became paramount. There were stories written about how so many who were formerly obsessed with getting laid became super obsessed with making money. At the same time dating services, once considered to be the last resort for losers, suddenly not only gained respectability as time pressed singles shunned things like cruising in bars, but most also became ridiculously expensive as the world upscale found its place within the lexicon where it still resides today. Many people lost friends in this process. Would be curious to know if anyone in this forum thinks we’ll ever see that world of increased leisure we were once all but promised.