Why the 1920s-1940s?

Well, as a person in a highly technical field, it would certainly be hard for me to give up modern technology, including the internet, smart phones, and all the rest. However, unlike many others on this board, I'm not "vintage." I love technology, I love advancement, I don't see the advance of technology as a threat or affront to my life. I seek it out, embrace it, and use it for my needs. The idea that everybody out in the world are hopelessly mind-numbed proles is frankly an insult to our fellow humans. I do not take such a dim view of my contemporaries. Frankly, I'm amazed at how quickly the world adapts to the advancements of technology.

There has been good and bad associated with most every advancement in technology. I'm sure the first humans decried the development of the pointy stick as an affront to the times, and those loincloths were just people putting on airs.

While I like much about the Golden Era (wherever you define it), I wouldn't want to go back to it to live. Shorter life spans, worse medical technologies, fewer food choices, fewer opportunities in life due to the limits of the technology (mobility, communication), and a raft of other things. I don't like everything about today's times, but I wouldn't no matter where/when I was, I'm sure.

Frunobulax said:

There has been good and bad associated with most every advancement in technology. I'm sure the first humans decried the development of the pointy stick as an affront to the times,

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I'd imagine the person holding the pointy stick thought it was a great accomplishment. I'd imagine the person who was facing the pointy end of the stick probably disagreed.

I basically had to get a cell phone a decade ago when I had kids in school and parents who were seriously fading. Both of those things are now done. These days I only turn my phone on a couple of times a week for short periods (when I'm on the road, meeting up with someone, etc.) and only use a minuscule fraction of the minutes on my plan. I have less than zero desire to own a smartphone, but I know I'll have to move up to one eventually. Nobody has convinced exactly why I need to be accessing the internet over my phone all the time. I spend enough time sitting in front of computer screens at work and home, and have landlines in both places. The cell is a fifth wheel for me.

As Lizzie said, many of us who were adults before there were cells or smartphones know how to get along perfectly well without them. I feel no need to be "connected" all the time, use dedicated cameras when I want to take pictures, and have enough residual paranoia that I don't want my location and internet activities constantly tracked. Am I out of step with our society? Sure... but I ALWAYS have been!

LizzieMaine said:

I'd imagine the person holding the pointy stick thought it was a great accomplishment. I'd imagine the person who was facing the pointy end of the stick probably disagreed.

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Why does it have to be a person? Why not prey for food? I wasn't even thinking along those lines. Humans don't always have to be pitted against each other.

Frunobulax said:

Why does it have to be a person? Why not prey for food? I wasn't even thinking along those lines. Humans don't always have to be pitted against each other.

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That's usually the way it ends up, though. The cotton gin was supposed to be a wonderful achievement -- and it was, for the planters. Not so much so for the slaves. Modern industrial agriculture could feed the entire world -- but it doesn't. Millions starve in the midst of plenty. Very often technology ends up as tool for class exploitation and oppression

That's not to say we should reject all technology -- but we should be extremely wary of claims that it's going to solve all our problems. Because the one who's claiming that is usually not claiming it out of the goodness of his heart -- he's claiming it because he's trying to sell you something.

LizzieMaine said:

That's usually the way it ends up, though. The cotton gin was supposed to be a wonderful achievement -- and it was, for the planters. Not so much so for the slaves. Modern industrial agriculture could feed the entire world -- but it doesn't. Millions starve in the midst of plenty. Very often technology ends up as tool for class exploitation and oppression

That's not to say we should reject all technology -- but we should be extremely wary of claims that it's going to solve all our problems. Because the one who's claiming that is usually not claiming it out of the goodness of his heart -- he's claiming it because he's trying to sell you something.

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Again, I don't take such a dim view of life, people, and the world.

Doctor Strange said:

As Lizzie said, many of us who were adults before there were cells or smartphones know how to get along perfectly well without them. I feel no need to be "connected" all the time, use dedicated cameras when I want to take pictures, and have enough residual paranoia that I don't want my location and internet activities constantly tracked. Am I out of step with our society? Sure... but I ALWAYS have been!

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Kind of funny! I grew up before home computers, I remember the giant IBMs with their reel to reel and punch cards, which makes the smart phone all the more incredible! When my motorcycle club stops for lunch, every one pulls out their phones, we range in age from, mid 20s, to a couple in their early 80s! I can't understand how any one that grew up reading Dick Tracy, and watching NASA can not help but be in awe of the smart phone? That does not mean, becoming a slave, it's only a machine, you are still in control!

I was one of those early adopters, for I had a company which was selling business telephone systems and cellular telephones in suburban Boston for most of the 1980's. In I got my first cellular telephone and found it to be an absolute nuisance. I nonetheless kept the thing because there was a great deal of money to be made in selling the devices, and mine was used as a demonstrator. I believe that I was the first to have installed a cellular telephone in a Flivver, a custom job that I built with a Western 105 handset hanging from a hook on the dash board. That was the only car in which I made a point to use the telephone when zi was in traffic...

Stearmen said:

Kind of funny! I grew up before home computers, I remember the giant IBMs with their reel to reel and punch cards, which makes the smart phone all the more incredible! When my motorcycle club stops for lunch, every one pulls out their phones, we range in age from, mid 20s, to a couple in their early 80s! I can't understand how any one that grew up reading Dick Tracy, and watching NASA can not help but be in awe of the smart phone? That does not mean, becoming a slave, it's only a machine, you are still in control!

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I honestly can think of nothing sadder than a group of frends out on an adventure all stopping to gawk into their phones instead of enjoying each other's company face to face.

I see this sort of thing every day at work. People come in, watch a show, and then, instead of enthusiastically discussing it with the person they came in with, they whip out those damnable phones and just stand there in the lobby and go into a trance. Even Dick Tracy wasn't constantly dropping everything to gaze glassily into his Two Way Wrist TV.

People who are addicted to something rarely recognize that addiction. And if there's one thing modern consumer culture loves to exploit, it's exactly that kind of addictive behavior.

LizzieMaine said:

I honestly can think of nothing sadder than a group of frends out on an adventure all stopping to gawk into their phones instead of enjoying each other's company face to face.

I see this sort of thing every day at work. People come in, watch a show, and then, instead of enthusiastically discussing it with the person they came in with, they whip out those damnable phones and just stand there in the lobby and go into a trance. Even Dick Tracy wasn't constantly dropping everything to gaze glassily into his Two Way Wrist TV.

People who are addicted to something rarely recognize that addiction. And if there's one thing modern consumer culture loves to exploit, it's exactly that kind of addictive behavior.

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A variation on the theme: It seems that millennials and kids are so into telling others what they are doing in real time - via texting, instant photos, etc. - that they loose at least something of the experience itself. I see this with younger people where they are in a restaurant, at a sporting event, etc., and they are so into capturing the moment in pictures and - in real time - texting whomever about it, that they, IMHO, lose some of the impact / some of the experience of the event when it is happening.

LizzieMaine said:

I honestly can think of nothing sadder than a group of frends out on an adventure all stopping to gawk into their phones instead of enjoying each other's company face to face.

I see this sort of thing every day at work. People come in, watch a show, and then, instead of enthusiastically discussing it with the person they came in with, they whip out those damnable phones and just stand there in the lobby and go into a trance. Even Dick Tracy wasn't constantly dropping everything to gaze glassily into his Two Way Wrist TV.

People who are addicted to something rarely recognize that addiction. And if there's one thing modern consumer culture loves to exploit, it's exactly that kind of addictive behavior.

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I love my wife dearly... but I swear that if I ever walk out on her after 30-plus years it will be because she whipped out that damned cell phone one too many times during one of our all too rare dinners out.

Fading Fast said:

A variation on the theme: It seems that millennials and kids are so into telling others what they are doing in real time - via texting, instant photos, etc. - that they loose at least something of the experience itself. I see this with younger people where they are in a restaurant, at a sporting event, etc., and they are so into capturing the moment in pictures and - in real time - texting whomever about it, that they, IMHO, lose some of the impact / some of the experience of the event when it is happening.

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The other night in the subway I sat near a young lady-17 or 18-reading a book.
So I opened my briefcase and handed Patricia Hampl's memoir, A Romantic Education to her.

Right after I relented and allowed my wife and daughter to buy I-phones they whipped them out at a nice Italian place I had taken them to while waiting for dinner. I threatened to take them (the phones) and crush them under the car. I haven't had an issue since then with I-phones at the dinner table.

GreatWhiteHunter said:

Right after I relented and allowed my wife and daughter to buy I-phones they whipped them out at a nice Italian place I had taken them to while waiting for dinner. I threatened to take them (the phones) and crush them under the car. I haven't had an issue since then with I-phones at the dinner table.

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You "allowed" you wife to have one?

Harp said:

The other night in the subway I sat near a young lady-17 or 18-reading a book.
So I opened my briefcase and handed Patricia Hampl's memoir, A Romantic Education to her.

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nice

It is good to see a kid reading these days.

LizzieMaine said:

I honestly can think of nothing sadder than a group of frends out on an adventure all stopping to gawk into their phones instead of enjoying each other's company face to face.

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No, we do not look at our cell phones all the way through lunch, we just check them when we get off the motorcycles!

Very true. Rest assured, I love the internet, I love satellite radio, and I love that even over my rabbit ears, I get far more channels than I got growing up. It would be silly to be so stubborn as to push away the good, just because you don't like the bad. Would I trade the conveniences off to go back and live in an era I feel I'd be happier in? Absolutely. Is that ever gonna happen? Absolutely not. With that being said, may as well make the best of it!

Throughout time, you'll always find people who prefer the old days to the here and now. Nostalgia's been around as long as there's been a time to be nostalgic about.

EmergencyIan said:

What are you going to do?... We're, now, humans living in the 21st Century. Most of us will adopt and adapt to one degree or another. I suspect that for most of us here, it will be as minimal as possible. As much as we love the past or, at least, some of it, we are also are people of this time.

- Ian

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I was born in the vintage Boomer year of 1947. My mother was small-town Texas girl and my father the son of Dustbowl Okies who sought a better life in South Texas. They were raised between the two most destructive wars in history and were just the right age to take part in the second. They had little to zero nostalgia for the years of their youth, though they freely admitted that they had it better than many people they knew. Dad was the first of his family to go to college. For them, the great years were the postwar '40, the 50s and the beginning of the 60s. After that, the world got a bit strange for them, though it never made them nostalgic for their growing-up years. I spent my summers from 1954-1960 in a wonderful neighborhood in Pasadena, where my aunt and uncle had a house. My aunt, who was my mother's twin sister, had married way up in society. She'd married one of the innumerable airmen who were training around San Antonio during the war. When he took her home to meet his parents she found that he was a scion of a wealthy Wisconsin industrial family. He became a POW during the war and developed MS shortly after returning and they moved to Pasadena where he could get the latest treatment. That time and place are still paradise on earth for me. They had a swimming pool, the only one in the neighborhood back then, so all the neighborhood kids congregated there. On the 4th of July we'd trek up a firebreak in the San Gabriels and watch the fireworks in the Rose Bowl below. Of course, I was a child then, without adult worries and without even school to dread. But I do remember how terrified all our parents were of polio, before the Salk vaccine. One reason I saw so many of the films back then was that my small-town movie theater was the only air-conditioned building in town and the adults believed that getting overheated contributed to contracting polio. Movies were a quarter and you got in free the second day so they could sell you popcorn and coke. There was a new movie or double feature every Monday, Wednesday and Friday so I saw them all during the hot months (a lot of those in South Texas).

Like most of us here I have a strong aesthetic sense and it's the aesthetics of the era I love most, not its politics, lifestyles or events, though all those are of great historical interest. The music, the Deco and moderne architecture, the clothing the autos and trains and all the rest, even the lettering on signs. I loved film noir before anyone knew what to call it. As usual, it took the French to teach us about our own popular culture. It's the music and pop culture of the postwar years that I actually remember, so that's not second-hand.

By the way, that uncle who was a POW? In his later years, near-paralyzed by MS, his favorite tv show was "Hogan's Heroes." I once asked him how, having experienced POW life in Germany, he could like that show. He said, "I like it because it's silly."

Well, I'm primarily a car and gun guy, so I take a little different view. There are a lot of people that view the 30s and WW2 era as the Golden Age. But as a car guy, I despise cars from before 1955 as they were all so anemic before Chrysler revolutionized the American motoring experience with the C-300. For the first time, the American motorist, providing he/she had deep enough pockets, could go to a showroom and buy a genuine race car that with VERY little modification could place in the top 5 in any sanctioned racing event you could find. A bone stock C-300 ran 144 mph on the sand at Daytona and IIRC a '56 300B broke 150 at Bonneville. And things only got better from there. Super Stock Dodges that could turn 11 second quarter miles bone stock, Road Runners that could be VERY competitive in A Stock and B Stock drag racing. Then the bottom fell out in the 70s with net HP ratings and emission controls. While Chrysler soldiered on with Lean Burn til 1977 or so, the catalytic converter really ended the Golden Age. The auto industry has yet to match the visceral thrill of burying your right foot in a Hemi Coronet R/T or 440 Six Barrel Road Runner.

For guns, I have a broader window. A pre-64 Winchester or prewar about anything has fit and finish that simply can't be matched today; an era when labor was cheap and parts weren't.

So, for guns, my "Golden Age" is 1870- c. 1965, and for cars 1955-1974.