This is but one impressionistic view of 1975 whose claims should not be taken literally. A few examples...
no video games except pong -- The Odyssey home system was sold as early as 1972.
Word processors were still 10 years away -- WordStar for CP/M came out in 1978; for DOS in 1982. AppleWriter for Apples in 1979.
No one thought to make a sequel to a movie just because it made a lot of money -- Ten Bond films had already been made by 1975.
The work week was five hours shorter -- 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: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1233842 .)
These things (video games, word processors, sequels) were available, but they weren't common. You can go out and buy a tank today if you want (http://www.tanksforsale.co.uk/), but tanks aren't something the average American would own.
This list shows how much things don't change more than how they do. A lot of new ideas are really just old ideas recycled and updated. Look at movie plots and popular music - even movies that aren't explicitly remakes are often very similar to old movies that most people have never seen. The same thing for business ideas - just as development of railroads and parcel post allowed Sears to develop as a catalog company, Amazon was made possible by the internet and electronic payments - and they've gone about capitalizing on it in much the way Sears did - by getting very big very fast, etc. Studying the past teaches us about the future.
Also, digital watches existed in 1975. In fact, one of those ten Bond films you mention (Live and Let Die, 1973) featured Bond wearing a digital watch (it was a cool gadget).
I remember a guy I worked for showing me his new digital watch. It was a matrix of tiny red LEDs that consumed so much current from the batteries, that the display would only light up when you pushed a button on the side of the watch. I bought one myself a year or two later.
Comments
This is but one impressionistic view of 1975 whose claims should not be taken literally. A few examples...
no video games except pong -- The Odyssey home system was sold as early as 1972.
Word processors were still 10 years away -- WordStar for CP/M came out in 1978; for DOS in 1982. AppleWriter for Apples in 1979.
No one thought to make a sequel to a movie just because it made a lot of money -- Ten Bond films had already been made by 1975.
The work week was five hours shorter -- 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: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1233842 .)
These things (video games, word processors, sequels) were available, but they weren't common. You can go out and buy a tank today if you want (http://www.tanksforsale.co.uk/), but tanks aren't something the average American would own.
This list shows how much things don't change more than how they do. A lot of new ideas are really just old ideas recycled and updated. Look at movie plots and popular music - even movies that aren't explicitly remakes are often very similar to old movies that most people have never seen. The same thing for business ideas - just as development of railroads and parcel post allowed Sears to develop as a catalog company, Amazon was made possible by the internet and electronic payments - and they've gone about capitalizing on it in much the way Sears did - by getting very big very fast, etc. Studying the past teaches us about the future.
Also, digital watches existed in 1975. In fact, one of those ten Bond films you mention (Live and Let Die, 1973) featured Bond wearing a digital watch (it was a cool gadget).
I remember a guy I worked for showing me his new digital watch. It was a matrix of tiny red LEDs that consumed so much current from the batteries, that the display would only light up when you pushed a button on the side of the watch. I bought one myself a year or two later.
Yup, exceptions that prove the rule.