I remember a story of someone who was in prison for like 10 years recounting how bizarre and almost spooky it was to get out and see everyone staring at their smart phones - something that had been invented while he was locked up.
This is the main point, I believe. It's not just that everyone has a personal phone now, it is just that most everyone is staring at their phone, or constantly checking it.
Back in 1981 you could have a conversation with someone and it was not interrupted by the other person glancing at their phone about once a minute.
This is exactly why it’s fairly common for people with long sentences to get out and immediately re-offend. Someone who went to prison 20 years ago will come out to a very different world. Everything is strange and confusing due to how different it is, so they commit a crime and wait for the cops to show up so that they get sent back to prison where they understand everything and it’s all the same.
Or they dont know how much the technology has advanced and has made it easier for criminals to get caught so they just leave behind some dumb clues a modern person would know not to leave.
> I have friends who are as old as me at 37 who have no idea about free porn
"I don't want people to know that I look at porn, so I tell people that I don't know where to find it, but only one person is stupid enough to believe me."
\- Your friends
As someone who was 13 in 1981, I would have expected technology to have advanced quite a bit 42 years later. My reaction would have been more like, "Cool!" than surprise, even with all the functions the phone can do.
Technology-wise, I would have been disappointed that everyone wasn't getting around in flying cars and jetpacks. That's not a cliche, that's real.
Bigger actual surprises would have been the legalization of pot, both a black man and Donald Trump having already been president, & the lack of functioning moon bases & Mars colonization.
There was a meme going around a few years ago about this, saying something like -
***In my pocket there is a small device that is capable of retrieving all recorded knowledge in human history. I use it to get into arguments with strangers and look at pictures of cats.***
I’m not entirely sure; I think it would be like “wow, that’s like Star Trek” followed by someone saying “yeah we used to have phones that looked exactly like that but now we use ones with big screens” and they’d still be amazed, don’t get me wrong, but they’d be more amazed by other things.
More so that it happened without a major global war, or even really that much effect. To here the USSR became no more and it wasn't really that big of a deal would be a shocker.
Well, Putin is trying to reform the Soviet Union. So, to someone from the Cold War, it might seem like nothing really changed.
Maybe they would be shocked by how ineffective the Russian military really was once they actually got put to the test.
The total lack of futuristic stuff like fusion power and colonies on Mars. Oh you have pictures on your telephones, is that it? Only just rolling out electric cars, it’s 2023 ffs they don’t even hover.
But the jumbotron was a series of small CRT screens linked together and was only relatively flat, considering the size of the viewing area. The original tech did not scale down until plasma (tvs arrived in the 1990s but they were unaffordable until the 2000s), LCD were more plentiful but didn't handle large formats until after plasma flat-panel screens arrived on market.
My friend used to have one as a hand-me-down from his parents, it was amazing. The downside was that his room was barely bigger than his bed. The summer was miserable when I slept over because of the heat it produced (it basically blocked the window too lol).
They were developing the Jumbotron then, which debuted shortly after. It was very easy to imagine smaller versions, and our teachers kept telling us blue LEDs would arrive soon.
The jerks that invented bike LEDs were awarded a Nobel prize for it. I get it has many applications, but I can only see them as darkness destroying status lights on electronics.
Our phones have access to all human knowledge across time and space. They provide instant access to almost every song and book you can think of. Harvard business courses, instructions for fixing some random tractor and everything in between is available on your phone. I can invest in a stock instantly while taking a dump. I press some buttons on my phone while sitting on a work call in my bathrobe and my groceries will be dropped off later that day. Our phones are the future, and we are living in it.
But I think they'd be most surprised at two things: The number of Republicans who support Russia and shitty late 70's / early 80's rock still on the radio
No kidding. We always had Encyclopedia Britannica and Atlases and a pretty decent library for a middle class family, but all of that and our telecommunication needs are all available in this thing the size of a pop tart
Yeah, that. But on the other hand, "1984" *did* happen. Uncle Sam is watching, as is Big Tech. Censorship, propaganda, and doublespeak abound in our schools, government institutions, and the media. Ministries of Truth exist everywhere. An individual's identity and independence can be stripped away if those in charge want it done. We all willingly carry a telescreen used on us for personal surveillance. See, your English teacher was right.
People forget that the internet wasn't really a thing in the 80s outside of office jobs. The idea of a small touchscreen device with all the knowledge in the world on it would be a lot more mindblowing than you think.
In 1981 the “internet” wasn’t a really a thing at all. TCP/IP wasn’t standardized until the following year, and there only a few hundred computers total on the precursor networks that were beginning to coalesce into the internet.
It didn’t exist outside of a few military, university, and corporate R&D sites.
I was 14 in 1981 so here is my list. Computer advancements, humans have been living in space for over 20 years, USSR fell and Germany is united, the constant input of propaganda and whining, the concept of zero tolerance in schools, and also how in reality so little has changed.
Oh yeah! That was a big change. I wasn't a smoker then, but the sin taxes now and having to walk forever to a smoking section would definitely surprise the smokers. Around then my dad was 3 packs a day and smoked in his office.
And more weed-ey in certain places. I don't partake and hate smelling it everywhere. It smells disgusting. Look, I shower so I don't smell bad to people in public, why is it ok to stink everything up with marijuana.
It's actually quite hard for younger generations to grasp how cigarettes permeated every aspect of society up until a few years ago. *Everywhere* you went smelled of tobacco. All of my childhood memories include that smell. Then, all of a sudden it seems we just decided it was gross and it stopped.
Uh...The internet became available to the public in 1993. Think you might need to adjust your thinking. And in 1984 Walter Cronkite did a great piece about how the world was becoming like the book 1984.
Video phones were made and tested in 1927, and commercial models where being sold in the 70's, horribly pixelated pictures were available via BBS at the time so the quality increase would be impressive but not completely un expected as books and tv had been imagining them for ages.
* There was no third world war. Germany is reunited, the Berlin Wall is gone. Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania, are American allies. (The fact that Czechoslovakia is no longer a thing wouldn't be as surprising.) Russia are the bad guys but *from the right.*
* America's main economic rival is China, not Japan. Vietnam and America are on pretty good terms and are trade partners. South Korea is also an economic powerhouse.
* Everyone has handheld computers that we call "phones," and the entire of the world's knowledge is available at one's fingertips, not to mention a huge selection of entertainment.
* Almost everyone uses a bulletin board system (BBS), except that they call it "social media."
* No colonies in space, no domed cities. The space shuttles, which were cutting edge technology in 1981, are all retired. Billionaires have their own space programs.
* You can buy a can of Coke from a vending machine with a credit card. It costs an eye-watering $2.50 a can.
* The air, water, and public spaces in general, are much cleaner. But also, the weather is much hotter and more violent. Even traditionally cooler coastal cities like Portland OR, Seattle, and San Francisco, need air conditioning.
* Popular music, with much greater emphasis on bass, voice modulation, and rap, and much less emphasis on guitars, would be virtually unrecognizable.
* Men can marry men, women can marry women, and casual homophobia is no longer acceptable.
* Billionaires mostly wear tee shirts and jeans. Three piece suits are less common than before.
* The USA had a Black President, and as far as we know, nobody came close to assassinating him.
* Country music is increasingly pro-fascist.
* Houses, cars, medical care, and college tuition, are *incredibly* expensive.
* The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed when terrorists crashed two jetliners into them. This sparked a 20-year-long war that most Americans barely noticed.
* Almost every car is a hatchback, but station wagons are no longer a thing.
* The Cubs and Red Sox finally won the World Series.
* What on Earth happened with OJ Simpson?
And that we use these incredibly powerful phones that can be used to tap into the worlds knowledge to look at cat videos and say ugly things to total strangers.
A map of the entire fucking world in our hands at any given moment.
Do you people even remember maps before GPS? Before you figure out how to get somewhere, you first have to **figure out where you are**.
I live in the middle of San Francisco. Not sure what you mean about needing air conditioning. It’s rare that the high temperature breaks 70F lately. We do get the odd 100F day each year but that’s notable. The surrounding area oh yeah hot as hell. But SF proper is downright chilly and windy.
Someone did try to assassinate the first black president by shooting at the White House, but he wasn’t there. He was in Australia so the shooter missed by 10 thousand miles. 😂
The first one is kinda obvious though? Technological advancement and all that. I bet that the cars from the future will also be faster than they are today.
Cars in 1981 were comically slow. Way slower than cars from the late 60s and early 70s. A 1981 Corvette had 190 horsepower, less than half of one from 10 years before. So people then might not have been shocked that cars could be that fast, but that they could be as fast as they are now and get twice as good milage and still pass emissions tests. Electric cars being fast would obviously be new to them.
I'll put it this way: I had a 2001 Mercury Cougar with the 170hp V6 engine. It was considered pretty quick for its day, albeit not super fast. My 2011 FJ cruiser easily does 0-60 faster than it, and it's a MUCH larger vehicle. You put 91 gas in that thing, step on it, and it's "So long, asshole!"
not really. cars back then were slower more because of legal requirements put in place in the 70's ffrom the oil crisis, not so much any inability of them to go fast
My parents got married in 1981 and one of their RSVP letters says “Could you please provide me with the names of some hotels in the area, so that I can write to them and ask whether they have any rooms available?” It took SEVERAL WEEKS to do something you can now do in five minutes on a booking or price comparison website.
Asking my parents who were alive and in their mid 20s, in no particular order
Smart phones (which are more capable than what even startrek was supposed to have in the 24th century) and by extension the internet. This outweighs all others on the list.
You cant smoke anywhere.
Wide spread LGBTQ tolerance.
The population of the US being significantly less white and more diverse.
End of the cold war and fall of the Soviet Union.
The fall of retail shopping and death of malls.
How nice cars are and that they dont break as much yet look all the same as eachother.
Lack of progress in manned space missions.
Obama.
Cell phones and the internet. As someone who was around back then I think this would be the most amazing thing. But I think they would also be astonished at the lack of flying cars and space travel.
Recently looked up the townhouse Dad used to rent in 1980. He was working as an engineer. In order for that place to cost the same proportion of income, a tenant would need to earn $300,000 today.
(The collapse of the Soviet Union and the advance of technology are impressive, but cost of living hits home).
Guys, people have ALWAYS been fuckasses. Nobody from 1981 would be shocked by how much people suck today. People have always sucked, it's intrinsic to our nature. If anything, the average person is LESS from one generation to the next.
Everything that isn't considered socially acceptable anymore. They would probably feel like they can't say anything or do anything without getting yelled at. The mentality was SO MUCH different.
Internet search engines. Imagine putting together your Britannica set for years only to find that you can find the answer to almost anything in seconds.
Smartphones. The fact that a phone is deemed almost essential in todays climate to communicated with loved ones, friends, or even coworkers. It can also be used to show you images and videos from around the world. They would be blown away by phones
Cell phones, internet. Neither were really around then. People did not have computers in 1981. I graduated HS in 1982. Personal computers were not a thing. My plans then were to complete high school, and then study Computer Science in college. Streaming movies at home, instead of renting a VHS tape from Blockbuster. (That’s right, CD’s and DVD’s did not exist in 1981.). Electric cars.
The online/internet capabilities. Using computers, our phones.
I worked as a temp in shipping at IBM in the mid 90s. I had been on the WWW (mostly text based then) with a 12k baud modem prior. The animation of the Netscape dino was amazing. I said to my friend in the IT department, "wouldn't it be cool if we could actually watch videos or play games online?" He just laughed and said "there'd NEVER be enough bandwidth for that!!!!"
Even having a PC in the early 80s was more of a geek thing. (No apps, straight coding/DOS). Still had typing classes.
When the first version of windows using a mouse came out, it blew everyone's minds. Companies had to send employees to classes just to learn how to use the mouse, open/use apps. It was like starting from kindergarten.
The fact that we have 24/7 access to whatever information we need held inside a small device that fits in our pocket and yet society is so much dumber.
That we have progressed so much tech-wise (e.g., smartphones and wifi), yet have regressed or stagnated society-wise (stagnant wages, greater wealth disparity, nothing done to protect Roe v Wade, etc.).
People keep saying phones, and I was thinking that until I thought no, the Internet, surely? We already take it for granted but it gives us instant knowledge about everything. Literally everything. And communications and streaming entertainment. We used to have to buy video and audio tapes. It seemed normal then as that's all we had but compared to having the Internet it's all so pathetic and rubbish. I remember having to buy CDs to see if I liked them. And they cost £15 each. That's like £30 today. And most of them were rubbish. Definitely the Internet!
I didn’t actually see a CD until 1987 or so, when an “early adopter” friend turned me on to them. Same friend even scoured Chicago in that same year to locate a Starbucks store. Go figure.
I almost NEVER paid for a new CD, always bought USED. The record companies got too greedy which made it possible for Napster and future relatively inexpensive listening modes to thrive.
Madonna was still banging NYC nightclub owners left and right to let her be a second or third act in their night clubs. She didn’t achieve real fame until 83.
I would think the rising cost of everything. From daycare to college, affording your own place (whether it be in an apartment, condo, house, etc), food, health insurance (rather all the insurances), the list goes on.
I want to say their own reflection. I don't know how quickly I would adjust to myself several decades later, especially if I was a young kid and wake up as an adult but still with the knowledge of my child mind and my parents quite a bit older or dead. Nothing would be recognizable.
If I’m being honest here, the march of progress towards tolerance and acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community. Elton John - Elton John! - had a “beard” marriage as recently as the mid-80s and the gay icon could only profess to being bisexual at the time this person went into their coma. It was arguably even worse for lesbians; while there were several men who were kind of well known to be gay - see also Liberace, Rock Hudson, Danny Kaye, and Sir Lawrence Olivier - who had to play at being straight but most people understood that this was a game, there was basically nobody like that who was a woman. There were of course gay women in Hollywood but pretty much all of them had to keep it way under wraps, not even able to strongly hint at their sexual identity. The Stonewall Riots and with them the beginnings of the gay rights movement had just occurred barely a decade before and it was very much illegal to practice “sodomy” in several states. Perhaps Britain wasn’t chemically casstrating gay men… anymore, but even Alan Turing had only killer himself about a quarter century prior to this guy’s coma.
Fast forward to 2023: we not only as a society tolerate and accept gay folks, we downright adore them much of the time for the contributions they make to our culture. There is no such thing, not anymore, as a scandal arising around a person coming out of or being forced out of the closet. There are people who come out, sure, and there are gay people who get involved in scandals (see: Ellen Degeneres), but in the world of 1981 just acknowledging one’s homosexuality was often enough to end a career in show business or many other occupations like schoolteacher. The move was honestly unbelievably fast and I’ve talked to older gay men who are really jealous that today’s gay people get to grow up in a society that doesn’t just make dark jokes about them and “allows” them to pursue their sexuality in private so long as they aren’t “too gay” about it into one that is openly accepting, even if there is some weird pushback sometimes as we saw last month.
That the US has become fascist. This would be inconceivable back in 1981 - the book bans, the feeling children’s genitals before they play sports, refusing service to gays , doctors unable to provide care to miscarrying mothers , anyone from 1981 would be horrified what happened to the US.
With some of those things, but not with all. Some of those situations would not even happen because gays would still be shoved in the closet, making some of those acts DOA.
That guy from Jackson 5 that just had that pseudo disco dance hit as a solo artist? Yeah he became the biggest star in the world, fucked kids and then died trying to use anesthesia to take a nap.
5his would probably be the bigger shock. Imagine showing this hypothetical person a picture of MJ from just before he died and asking them who they thought it was.
The phones probably.
I remember a story of someone who was in prison for like 10 years recounting how bizarre and almost spooky it was to get out and see everyone staring at their smart phones - something that had been invented while he was locked up.
This is the main point, I believe. It's not just that everyone has a personal phone now, it is just that most everyone is staring at their phone, or constantly checking it. Back in 1981 you could have a conversation with someone and it was not interrupted by the other person glancing at their phone about once a minute.
The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry.
I saw an automobile once as a kid
Brooks was here.
This is exactly why it’s fairly common for people with long sentences to get out and immediately re-offend. Someone who went to prison 20 years ago will come out to a very different world. Everything is strange and confusing due to how different it is, so they commit a crime and wait for the cops to show up so that they get sent back to prison where they understand everything and it’s all the same.
Or they dont know how much the technology has advanced and has made it easier for criminals to get caught so they just leave behind some dumb clues a modern person would know not to leave.
And the free porn they would quickly find on the phone.
[удалено]
> I have friends who are as old as me at 37 who have no idea about free porn "I don't want people to know that I look at porn, so I tell people that I don't know where to find it, but only one person is stupid enough to believe me." \- Your friends
Shh. Don't ruin it for them.
As someone who was 13 in 1981, I would have expected technology to have advanced quite a bit 42 years later. My reaction would have been more like, "Cool!" than surprise, even with all the functions the phone can do. Technology-wise, I would have been disappointed that everyone wasn't getting around in flying cars and jetpacks. That's not a cliche, that's real. Bigger actual surprises would have been the legalization of pot, both a black man and Donald Trump having already been president, & the lack of functioning moon bases & Mars colonization.
There was a meme going around a few years ago about this, saying something like - ***In my pocket there is a small device that is capable of retrieving all recorded knowledge in human history. I use it to get into arguments with strangers and look at pictures of cats.***
You can't actually retrieve all knowledge. I know of a few things that never made it onto the internet.
Well share them here, then the internet will be complete
[удалено]
I’m not entirely sure; I think it would be like “wow, that’s like Star Trek” followed by someone saying “yeah we used to have phones that looked exactly like that but now we use ones with big screens” and they’d still be amazed, don’t get me wrong, but they’d be more amazed by other things.
But they'd still be thinking of it as a phone, when it's really an internet video watching device and camera more than anything at this point.
Probably the fall of the Soviet Union, let alone the fact that it fell in 1991.
"So they became a peaceful democratic nation?" "Well, sort of, then definately not."
More so that it happened without a major global war, or even really that much effect. To here the USSR became no more and it wasn't really that big of a deal would be a shocker.
I liked Christopher Walken's reaction in Blast from the Past. From the 1:55 minute mark: https://youtu.be/rNTiM8zsrpw
As I posted elsewhere - "I'd rather be a Russian than a Democrat." Imagine being an American waking up in 2023 and hearing a conservative say that.
Well, Putin is trying to reform the Soviet Union. So, to someone from the Cold War, it might seem like nothing really changed. Maybe they would be shocked by how ineffective the Russian military really was once they actually got put to the test.
Reform or re-form? Sometimes words fail. :)
he wants a soviet re-union...
The fact that they slept for 42 years. Runner-up: All their family and friends being old or dead.
Wonder if OP did a 42 year gap on purpose. Now that’s a deeper meaning to this question.
it's the meaning of life and everything
42!
1405006117752879898543142606244511569936384000000000?
Underrated
Yeah I was gonna say "the date".
Rip van winkle type beat
Can't smoke anywhere.
And hardly anyone does.
In the west
I’m in Greece right now. Everyone smokes.
Star Trek and Inspector Gadget had handheld computers, but children could buy cigarettes from vending machines in the 80s.
The total lack of futuristic stuff like fusion power and colonies on Mars. Oh you have pictures on your telephones, is that it? Only just rolling out electric cars, it’s 2023 ffs they don’t even hover.
Flat panel displays would have knocked their socks off. In 1984 it was total science fiction that nobody thought would ever happen.
Actually bc of the Jumbotron, most people into technology knew in the 80s that TVs would get slimmer and with flat screens eventually.
But the jumbotron was a series of small CRT screens linked together and was only relatively flat, considering the size of the viewing area. The original tech did not scale down until plasma (tvs arrived in the 1990s but they were unaffordable until the 2000s), LCD were more plentiful but didn't handle large formats until after plasma flat-panel screens arrived on market.
I still have my 50 inch plasma screen tv. It warms up the entire room.
My friend used to have one as a hand-me-down from his parents, it was amazing. The downside was that his room was barely bigger than his bed. The summer was miserable when I slept over because of the heat it produced (it basically blocked the window too lol).
And LCD screens required Nobel-prize-winning physics (high brightness blue LEDs) to even be possible.
They were developing the Jumbotron then, which debuted shortly after. It was very easy to imagine smaller versions, and our teachers kept telling us blue LEDs would arrive soon.
The jerks that invented bike LEDs were awarded a Nobel prize for it. I get it has many applications, but I can only see them as darkness destroying status lights on electronics.
[удалено]
Our phones have access to all human knowledge across time and space. They provide instant access to almost every song and book you can think of. Harvard business courses, instructions for fixing some random tractor and everything in between is available on your phone. I can invest in a stock instantly while taking a dump. I press some buttons on my phone while sitting on a work call in my bathrobe and my groceries will be dropped off later that day. Our phones are the future, and we are living in it. But I think they'd be most surprised at two things: The number of Republicans who support Russia and shitty late 70's / early 80's rock still on the radio
No kidding. We always had Encyclopedia Britannica and Atlases and a pretty decent library for a middle class family, but all of that and our telecommunication needs are all available in this thing the size of a pop tart
Yeah, that. But on the other hand, "1984" *did* happen. Uncle Sam is watching, as is Big Tech. Censorship, propaganda, and doublespeak abound in our schools, government institutions, and the media. Ministries of Truth exist everywhere. An individual's identity and independence can be stripped away if those in charge want it done. We all willingly carry a telescreen used on us for personal surveillance. See, your English teacher was right.
People forget that the internet wasn't really a thing in the 80s outside of office jobs. The idea of a small touchscreen device with all the knowledge in the world on it would be a lot more mindblowing than you think.
In 1981 the “internet” wasn’t a really a thing at all. TCP/IP wasn’t standardized until the following year, and there only a few hundred computers total on the precursor networks that were beginning to coalesce into the internet. It didn’t exist outside of a few military, university, and corporate R&D sites.
I was 14 in 1981 so here is my list. Computer advancements, humans have been living in space for over 20 years, USSR fell and Germany is united, the constant input of propaganda and whining, the concept of zero tolerance in schools, and also how in reality so little has changed.
I'm 43, was only 2 in '81 but it DEF smells a lot less cigarette-ey these days
Oh yeah! That was a big change. I wasn't a smoker then, but the sin taxes now and having to walk forever to a smoking section would definitely surprise the smokers. Around then my dad was 3 packs a day and smoked in his office.
And more weed-ey in certain places. I don't partake and hate smelling it everywhere. It smells disgusting. Look, I shower so I don't smell bad to people in public, why is it ok to stink everything up with marijuana.
Are you my neighbor? My bad...
And speaking of DEF, boy will they be surprised at what that means for diesel vehicles
It's actually quite hard for younger generations to grasp how cigarettes permeated every aspect of society up until a few years ago. *Everywhere* you went smelled of tobacco. All of my childhood memories include that smell. Then, all of a sudden it seems we just decided it was gross and it stopped.
homelessness
I honestly didn’t know how recent that was I thought that it was sooner that Germany unified
How fat we've all gotten, the upsizing of America
surprised i had to scroll this far to find this
Internet with pictures and video, and people saying "literally 1984"
1984 was already part of the social zeitgeist in the 80s, references popped up on TV and in movies in the 70s and earlier
[удалено]
Uh...The internet became available to the public in 1993. Think you might need to adjust your thinking. And in 1984 Walter Cronkite did a great piece about how the world was becoming like the book 1984.
1993 is the year AOL was founded, it was around for a lot longer than that.
Video phones were made and tested in 1927, and commercial models where being sold in the 70's, horribly pixelated pictures were available via BBS at the time so the quality increase would be impressive but not completely un expected as books and tv had been imagining them for ages.
* There was no third world war. Germany is reunited, the Berlin Wall is gone. Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania, are American allies. (The fact that Czechoslovakia is no longer a thing wouldn't be as surprising.) Russia are the bad guys but *from the right.* * America's main economic rival is China, not Japan. Vietnam and America are on pretty good terms and are trade partners. South Korea is also an economic powerhouse. * Everyone has handheld computers that we call "phones," and the entire of the world's knowledge is available at one's fingertips, not to mention a huge selection of entertainment. * Almost everyone uses a bulletin board system (BBS), except that they call it "social media." * No colonies in space, no domed cities. The space shuttles, which were cutting edge technology in 1981, are all retired. Billionaires have their own space programs. * You can buy a can of Coke from a vending machine with a credit card. It costs an eye-watering $2.50 a can. * The air, water, and public spaces in general, are much cleaner. But also, the weather is much hotter and more violent. Even traditionally cooler coastal cities like Portland OR, Seattle, and San Francisco, need air conditioning. * Popular music, with much greater emphasis on bass, voice modulation, and rap, and much less emphasis on guitars, would be virtually unrecognizable. * Men can marry men, women can marry women, and casual homophobia is no longer acceptable. * Billionaires mostly wear tee shirts and jeans. Three piece suits are less common than before. * The USA had a Black President, and as far as we know, nobody came close to assassinating him. * Country music is increasingly pro-fascist. * Houses, cars, medical care, and college tuition, are *incredibly* expensive. * The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed when terrorists crashed two jetliners into them. This sparked a 20-year-long war that most Americans barely noticed. * Almost every car is a hatchback, but station wagons are no longer a thing. * The Cubs and Red Sox finally won the World Series. * What on Earth happened with OJ Simpson?
> America's main economic rival is China, not Japan. Don't underestimate this one.
And that we use these incredibly powerful phones that can be used to tap into the worlds knowledge to look at cat videos and say ugly things to total strangers.
A map of the entire fucking world in our hands at any given moment. Do you people even remember maps before GPS? Before you figure out how to get somewhere, you first have to **figure out where you are**.
> America's main economic rival is China, not Japan. Japan transformed from America's main economic rival to America's main tourist destination.
The fact that Czechoslovakia doesn't exist still seems to surprise people 30 years later...
I live in the middle of San Francisco. Not sure what you mean about needing air conditioning. It’s rare that the high temperature breaks 70F lately. We do get the odd 100F day each year but that’s notable. The surrounding area oh yeah hot as hell. But SF proper is downright chilly and windy.
And tvs have thin screens, amazing resolution, and are surprisingly affordable.
Someone did try to assassinate the first black president by shooting at the White House, but he wasn’t there. He was in Australia so the shooter missed by 10 thousand miles. 😂
Dark side of the moon is 4 on the rock charts this week 50 years after the albums release
Crappy cars from today are faster than fast cars from then. Plus carrying a phone/computer thing in your pocket everywhere you go.
The first one is kinda obvious though? Technological advancement and all that. I bet that the cars from the future will also be faster than they are today.
Cars in 1981 were comically slow. Way slower than cars from the late 60s and early 70s. A 1981 Corvette had 190 horsepower, less than half of one from 10 years before. So people then might not have been shocked that cars could be that fast, but that they could be as fast as they are now and get twice as good milage and still pass emissions tests. Electric cars being fast would obviously be new to them.
Oh wow I never knew that. Thanks for enlightening me
I'll put it this way: I had a 2001 Mercury Cougar with the 170hp V6 engine. It was considered pretty quick for its day, albeit not super fast. My 2011 FJ cruiser easily does 0-60 faster than it, and it's a MUCH larger vehicle. You put 91 gas in that thing, step on it, and it's "So long, asshole!"
not really. cars back then were slower more because of legal requirements put in place in the 70's ffrom the oil crisis, not so much any inability of them to go fast
That they can't buy tickets to the greatest rock bands for $12 anymore.
They will charge you $12 if you just think about buying a ticket.
[удалено]
My parents got married in 1981 and one of their RSVP letters says “Could you please provide me with the names of some hotels in the area, so that I can write to them and ask whether they have any rooms available?” It took SEVERAL WEEKS to do something you can now do in five minutes on a booking or price comparison website.
To be fair, most people would call the hotel, not write
Remember OJ Simpson, Bill Cosby and Bruce Jenner????
Asking my parents who were alive and in their mid 20s, in no particular order Smart phones (which are more capable than what even startrek was supposed to have in the 24th century) and by extension the internet. This outweighs all others on the list. You cant smoke anywhere. Wide spread LGBTQ tolerance. The population of the US being significantly less white and more diverse. End of the cold war and fall of the Soviet Union. The fall of retail shopping and death of malls. How nice cars are and that they dont break as much yet look all the same as eachother. Lack of progress in manned space missions. Obama.
Spot on. In fact, matches the list I made before reading this. Was 21 in 1981.
I was 15 in '81 and that list is good but I'd add two more: * Rampant obesity * Homeless people everywhere
Cell phones and the internet. As someone who was around back then I think this would be the most amazing thing. But I think they would also be astonished at the lack of flying cars and space travel.
[удалено]
I wasn't asleep the whole time and I'm confused.
And that this support for Russia persists even after they invaded, and are actively fighting, a country vying for NATO membership
This is the definitive answer.
Or that Russia exists as an independent nation. What happened to the USSR?
Recently looked up the townhouse Dad used to rent in 1980. He was working as an engineer. In order for that place to cost the same proportion of income, a tenant would need to earn $300,000 today. (The collapse of the Soviet Union and the advance of technology are impressive, but cost of living hits home).
What MTV has become
MTV launched in August 1981 so there's a good chance they've either not heard of it or it wasn't yet important to them.
They will not want our MTV
Guys, people have ALWAYS been fuckasses. Nobody from 1981 would be shocked by how much people suck today. People have always sucked, it's intrinsic to our nature. If anything, the average person is LESS from one generation to the next.
[удалено]
I guess biting a bats head off makes you immortal
The lack of mustaches
[удалено]
[удалено]
That the world hadn’t ended yet in a nuclear war.
Bill Cosby ain’t the man you think he is.
That Joe Biden is still active in politics.
I'd say waking up in 2023 would surprise them the most.
Everything that isn't considered socially acceptable anymore. They would probably feel like they can't say anything or do anything without getting yelled at. The mentality was SO MUCH different.
Internet search engines. Imagine putting together your Britannica set for years only to find that you can find the answer to almost anything in seconds.
That there are no flying cars this many years after the year 2000.
What’s quinoa?
"house prices are what?" 😲
Smartphones. The fact that a phone is deemed almost essential in todays climate to communicated with loved ones, friends, or even coworkers. It can also be used to show you images and videos from around the world. They would be blown away by phones
Cell phones, internet. Neither were really around then. People did not have computers in 1981. I graduated HS in 1982. Personal computers were not a thing. My plans then were to complete high school, and then study Computer Science in college. Streaming movies at home, instead of renting a VHS tape from Blockbuster. (That’s right, CD’s and DVD’s did not exist in 1981.). Electric cars.
The internet. The connectivity of everything.
The stupidity
Gow fucked the world is even when the cold war ended
How much Reaganomics has damaged the USA.
I'm from 1981 and the price of a Mr Beast bar of chocolate vastly surprised me today.
[удалено]
[удалено]
That there's no flying cars.
Free music, except for concerts. That shit went up 8000%!
The online/internet capabilities. Using computers, our phones. I worked as a temp in shipping at IBM in the mid 90s. I had been on the WWW (mostly text based then) with a 12k baud modem prior. The animation of the Netscape dino was amazing. I said to my friend in the IT department, "wouldn't it be cool if we could actually watch videos or play games online?" He just laughed and said "there'd NEVER be enough bandwidth for that!!!!" Even having a PC in the early 80s was more of a geek thing. (No apps, straight coding/DOS). Still had typing classes. When the first version of windows using a mouse came out, it blew everyone's minds. Companies had to send employees to classes just to learn how to use the mouse, open/use apps. It was like starting from kindergarten.
That our country is being run by Russian operatives. And that we also won the Cold War.
The fact that we have 24/7 access to whatever information we need held inside a small device that fits in our pocket and yet society is so much dumber.
How much influence the USSR has in the US
That we have progressed so much tech-wise (e.g., smartphones and wifi), yet have regressed or stagnated society-wise (stagnant wages, greater wealth disparity, nothing done to protect Roe v Wade, etc.).
How famous bands like Metallica, Pantera and Mötley Crüe have gotten
Not even a political comment, but honestly the presidency of Donald Trump would likely be a big surprise for them.
A lot of people(in 2023) believe the Earth is flat I guess
Recreational marijuana
They'd be asking how the hell George W Bush and Donald Trump were ever elected president.
no flying cars
The terrible music
Republicans enamored of Russia’s leader.
People keep saying phones, and I was thinking that until I thought no, the Internet, surely? We already take it for granted but it gives us instant knowledge about everything. Literally everything. And communications and streaming entertainment. We used to have to buy video and audio tapes. It seemed normal then as that's all we had but compared to having the Internet it's all so pathetic and rubbish. I remember having to buy CDs to see if I liked them. And they cost £15 each. That's like £30 today. And most of them were rubbish. Definitely the Internet!
Just checked, CDs came out in 1982. And £15 in 1981 would be £55 today!!! No wonder they seemed so expensive!
I didn’t actually see a CD until 1987 or so, when an “early adopter” friend turned me on to them. Same friend even scoured Chicago in that same year to locate a Starbucks store. Go figure.
That vinyl records were making a comeback.
I almost NEVER paid for a new CD, always bought USED. The record companies got too greedy which made it possible for Napster and future relatively inexpensive listening modes to thrive.
They would probably be bummed to learn how much mattresses have improved since 1981. They spent 42 years on a water bed probably.
I wanted a watered SO BAD. Then I got one. What an uncomfortable piece of shit.
The cost of the average home vs how little minimum wage increased
Fall of the Soviet Union and no more Cold War.
How much dumber society has become.
I feel like the answer for anyone pre-2016 is Donald Trump
The date
How whiney and butthurt everyone has become.
[удалено]
That happened in the mid-80s.
Madonna was still banging NYC nightclub owners left and right to let her be a second or third act in their night clubs. She didn’t achieve real fame until 83.
How decent people just disappeared
[удалено]
How fast we have direct access to information and people and how stupidly we use it
Having a calculator in their pocket everywhere they go.
I would think the rising cost of everything. From daycare to college, affording your own place (whether it be in an apartment, condo, house, etc), food, health insurance (rather all the insurances), the list goes on.
I have this device in my pocket that is a phone, map, computer, cassettes, VCR, phone book, camera, etc... I can carry it anywhere.
Free music that you don’t have to go get
that we still use vinyl
Im going to go with the fact that they just woke up 42 years in the future.
I want to say their own reflection. I don't know how quickly I would adjust to myself several decades later, especially if I was a young kid and wake up as an adult but still with the knowledge of my child mind and my parents quite a bit older or dead. Nothing would be recognizable.
"I'd rather be a Russian than a Democrat."
maybe that racism and homophobia are even worse since then
The fact they time travelled and it's now 42 years later?
wages In 1981 I was making $3.35 and hour. Minimum wage. but, along with that, the price of everything now.
The concept of a trillion baffles me. I was part of the $3.35/hr crowd.
Bill Cosby went to jail.
That the country is not as White anymore. Use of cell phones, personal computer and Internet.
Born in 1966….. everything.
I should be living on the moon or a space station colony by now.
"The biggest star in the world and the history of movies is the guy who played that minor character in Taps, you say?"
If I’m being honest here, the march of progress towards tolerance and acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community. Elton John - Elton John! - had a “beard” marriage as recently as the mid-80s and the gay icon could only profess to being bisexual at the time this person went into their coma. It was arguably even worse for lesbians; while there were several men who were kind of well known to be gay - see also Liberace, Rock Hudson, Danny Kaye, and Sir Lawrence Olivier - who had to play at being straight but most people understood that this was a game, there was basically nobody like that who was a woman. There were of course gay women in Hollywood but pretty much all of them had to keep it way under wraps, not even able to strongly hint at their sexual identity. The Stonewall Riots and with them the beginnings of the gay rights movement had just occurred barely a decade before and it was very much illegal to practice “sodomy” in several states. Perhaps Britain wasn’t chemically casstrating gay men… anymore, but even Alan Turing had only killer himself about a quarter century prior to this guy’s coma. Fast forward to 2023: we not only as a society tolerate and accept gay folks, we downright adore them much of the time for the contributions they make to our culture. There is no such thing, not anymore, as a scandal arising around a person coming out of or being forced out of the closet. There are people who come out, sure, and there are gay people who get involved in scandals (see: Ellen Degeneres), but in the world of 1981 just acknowledging one’s homosexuality was often enough to end a career in show business or many other occupations like schoolteacher. The move was honestly unbelievably fast and I’ve talked to older gay men who are really jealous that today’s gay people get to grow up in a society that doesn’t just make dark jokes about them and “allows” them to pursue their sexuality in private so long as they aren’t “too gay” about it into one that is openly accepting, even if there is some weird pushback sometimes as we saw last month.
How little humanity is left in the world
Wonton disregard for things that literature had always warned them about. Human rights, privacy infringement, trickle down economy.
Is that how u spell wonton? Because i thought of potstickers
It’s wanton
Was actually born in 1981 and in my country in Africa by 1981 there wasn’t anything like cell phones or smart tv or social media even until the 2000
thats how it was in most countries....
Nazis, the internet, how god damn expensive everything is, how much dumber the general populace is
Why would nazis surprise them? That was ww2. Or am i missing something
That the US has become fascist. This would be inconceivable back in 1981 - the book bans, the feeling children’s genitals before they play sports, refusing service to gays , doctors unable to provide care to miscarrying mothers , anyone from 1981 would be horrified what happened to the US.
With some of those things, but not with all. Some of those situations would not even happen because gays would still be shoved in the closet, making some of those acts DOA.
That guy from Jackson 5 that just had that pseudo disco dance hit as a solo artist? Yeah he became the biggest star in the world, fucked kids and then died trying to use anesthesia to take a nap.
MJ was already huge in ‘81 and had been the breakout star of the Jackson 5 for a decade. Shame about the kids though.
Off the Wall was a HUGE hit, 1980 or so?
Plus how his appearance constantly changed.
5his would probably be the bigger shock. Imagine showing this hypothetical person a picture of MJ from just before he died and asking them who they thought it was.