Someone on the portal formerly-known-as Twitter recently posted a question like “if someone had fallen asleep 40 years ago and woke up now, what would surprise them the most?”
An intriguing question, it generated hundreds of responses. Many were political – Joe Biden still being around (he actually made his political debut back in 1973), a buffoon like Donald Trump having become president, that sort of thing. Quite a few commented on how bad hit music is now… hmm, can’t argue with that. Surprisingly, no one I saw mentioned the fact that the Rolling Stones are still here and just put out a new album! People’s fascination with or addiction to celphones was frequently mentioned. How rude people were and how little they interacted with those around them also made a number of appearances on the list. Several noted how few places you can smoke these days, which to me is an improvement. Maybe the best one I saw was “probably the fact that they woke up in 2023!”. That would be a bit of a surprise, now that I think of it!
It got me thinking about how much life, and the world, has changed in that span, let alone my lifetime which goes back 16 odd years prior. The popular responses were valid.
People are ruder than they were back then, by and large. You see it on the roads with drivers behavior, you see it on the streets, in the schoolyards, in the stores. You hear it in their vernacular, you see it on their faces, you see it clearly on a bus or in a coffee shop when no one looks up from their phone or dare talk to anybody else. There are plenty of examples of it, and of course it’s extended now into politics, where the other side of the floor is increasingly seen as demons and mortal enemies rather than people who just have some different opinions than us.
People might be surprised to see how big cars are these days, if you count SUVs and pickups as “cars”, per se. They’d guess that the “Energy crisis” had been solved while they snoozed. They’d definitely notice that you don’t see public payphones on city streets anymore, and would quickly find out why. They might be equally surprised to see when they go into many stores these days, they have to check themselves out and bag the products on their way out.
But really, I think the hugest surprise would have to be the internet and how everything revolves around it these days. Forty years ago, home computers were big, clunky, slow and capable of little more than making a grocery list or playing Pong. The internet was the thing of science fiction. Now? Newspapers are increasingly rare because we can get up-to-the-minute news online. Many shopping malls are deserted and two-thirds empty space because we can order stuff cheaper and have more variety online. TV antennas are a rare sight and even Cable TV is on life-support because we can stream any show or movie online… and that means we don’t have to go to the theater anymore if we don’t feel like it. If you do find a mall still active, you won’t see a record shop in it because nine out of ten people don’t want to own physical copies of music anymore when they can pick and choose their tunes online. Feeling ill? There’s a reasonable chance you’ll see your doctor while staying in bed. House calls are passe, but we can interact with the good doc online.
Of course, there’s also the aspect that you now might not know your next door neighbor but you could have close friends on a different continent thanks to social media. Which is nice, but kids now don’t have to limit their worries about bullying to the maladjusted lug up the street but can be harassed anonymously from anywhere on the globe. And worse still, it wouldn’t take the person long upon awaking to learn what “cybercrime” is and how some nefarious kid in Russia (or Raleigh, for that matter) can empty their bank account or close down the hotel they registered at, mostly without detection.
Of course, it the sleepyhead were in Ontario, their biggest surprise might be that the Maple Leafs still haven’t won another Stanley Cup!
It’s hard to gauge it all or measure the impact the internet has had on so many aspects of life in the past 25 years, let alone 40. I love some of the things it’s done. I met my current sweetie online and ended up moving to a different land to be with her. I’ve also made some good friends in farfung places as Scotland and New Zealand that I’d never have come in contact with otherwise. And of course, I’m presenting this to you via that same internet, and every day I have dozens, sometimes hundreds of people reading a music column I write on it. That makes me feel quite good and has helped me gain appreciation for all sorts of different music I might never have found thanks to their input and commentary. It wouldn’t have happened if I’d had to try to type it up, photocopy it and mail them out. I love that there are more reference “books” online than there were at even my best-stocked public libraries of my youth, although finding them can be even trickier than going through stacks of shelves. Still, it’s nice when I’m wanting information at 10 o’clock at night and it’s rainy outside.
Yes, it’s changed everything and that person would be shocked at how different 2023 is compared to when they went to sleep. But the real question is would they think it’s a better world?
If the answer to that isn’t a clear-cut “Yes!”, then people, we’re not doing a great job as a species. Let’s do better before that next 40 year nap.
Everydave Life 