1975

This is but one impressionistic view of 1975 whose claims should not be taken literally. A few examples...<p><i>no video games except pong</i> -- The Odyssey home system was sold as early as 1972.<p><i>Word processors were still 10 years away</i> -- WordStar for CP/M came out in 1978; for DOS in 1982. AppleWriter for Apples in 1979.<p><i>No one thought to make a sequel to a movie just because it made a lot of money</i> -- Ten Bond films had already been made by 1975.<p><i>The work week was five hours shorter</i> -- This still varies a lot by region and industry; there are plenty of people who work 9-5 or less. And long-term studies of work vs. leisure time suggest Americans were working slightly fewer hours in 2003 than 1975. (See for example Figure 1 on p. 9 of this survey: <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1233842" rel="nofollow">http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1233842</a> .)

I have his same age but things were a little different in my home country in Europe:<p>- No automatic doors in supermarkets. Actually there were no supermarkets, just little shops. - Coffe: we had espresso in every bar/restaurant. - Only one and a half tv channels, no tv in the mornings, no cable of course. - University was free and it's still basically free (small fee) - We had no pizzas, (or cereal for breakfast or burgers)<p>oh well, too many differences, political and social etc

<i>Nobody went into debt for college. You either saved money in advance or worked your way through.</i><p>The Federal government has been loaning money directly to college students since 1958 and has been guaranteeing bank-originated student loans since 1965.<p><i>Phones had disks with holes, not number pads.</i><p>I can't find statistics on how quickly Touch-Tone dialing was adopted, but AT&#38;T started promoting it at the 1964 Worlds' Fair.<p><i>Tapping a phone was difficult, both technically and legally, and you could safely assume your phone calls and letters were private.</i><p>The Church Committee reported in 1975 and 1976 that the CIA and FBI had been wiretapping and intercepting mail without warrants. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was not passed until 1978.

"Recorded music was a little scratchy, but sounded better because engineers did not kill dynamic range to make it louder."<p>I thought they compressed the dynamic range in those days too, in order to compensate for noise in tapes and vinyl?

"Doomsayers were worried about something they called the "greenhouse effect." They said if we didn't reduce our carbon emissions soon, the world would heat up and we would have an ecological catastrophe."<p>Ice age was the preferred senario of the Doomday crowd back then.<p><a href="http://sweetness-light.com/archive/newsweeks-1975-article-about-the-coming-ice-age" rel="nofollow">http://sweetness-light.com/archive/newsweeks-1975-article-ab...</a><p>My grandfather subscribed to Reader's Digest and kept every one of them, in a tall neat stack that reached to the ceiling next to the toilet. There were more from as far back as the 50's in a little cubby hole between the toilet and bathtub. We lived with him for a year in the 80's, and I read a huge number of those; I was convinced the return of the ice caps was imminent, and quite excited about the prospect.<p>I read quite a bit about the nuclear winter debate, and nothing in the popular press about warming until the 90s. I know from what I have read that papers on warming were published as early as the 40s, but in the popular immagination, cooling was expected, and any human effects would be catastrophic cooling from a nuclear exchange.

Oh, well. I have faint memories of Laser Discs around 1983-1984. When DVDs were being heavily marketed in the early 2000s I could hardly believe it...<p>"Huh? I thought we already proved those were inferior to recordable/affordable VHS tapes in 1986." (I still think this. DVDs make for horrendous media.) Oh, well. Fact is, not much has changed in terms of actual day-to-day life beyond the interactive qualities of the internet.

Pong, ahh. I almost wish I had been born sooner so I could have watched computers become mainstream.