How were the 1980's and 90's?

Parent Cafe
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<p>I’ve been re-watching the late '80s series thirtysomething, and while it holds up very well, the giant shoulder pads and mom jeans are truly cringe-inducing.</p>

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<p>In the early 80s i was in grad school studying Immunology - which was an exciting time and also a tragic time. AIDS was exploding all around us and killing people left and right. The HIV virus had not been discovered yet, and we immunologists spent endless hours puzzling over the confusing set of symptoms and discussing what could be causing them. I was firmly in the school of thought that believed it was a virus and was gratified to be eventually proven right.</p>

<p>In the 80s I was amazed when the FAX machine came along. It was a way to instantly leave a message for someone one the other side of the world without them having to be there and awake to receive it. The FAX was blown out of the water a few years later by e-mail. </p>

<p>E-mail was at first just within the company or other closed users system. No one had heard of the internet and the web had not yet been invented. Eventually corporate e-mail got hooked into the internet for e-nmail and the Usenet, and years later the web too.</p>

<p>The first time I saw word processing was back in the late 70s, and then it required a special machine and a speciallly trained operator. Companies had whole word-processing departments and operators, similar to the old typing pools of earlier generations. My PhD dissertation in 1984 was the first one in the history of the entire department to be word processed. The department secretary typed in the whole thing for me, mostly because the chairman wanted to see what his new toy (the word processor, not really a computer) was capable of. </p>

<p>Back then college towns had an army of typing services that would type theses and term papers for you for a fee. All of that eventually went away due to the arrival of word processing on PCs.</p>

<p>Desk top computers came along in the 80s and most people did not have their own. At work there were shared computers set apart in computing rooms where you could go and wait your turn to get to use one of them. Eventually they started appearing on every desk. And a few years after that laptops came along.</p>

<p>The first time I saw a cordless phone in was about 1990. The early cell phones had to either be hard-wired into a car or to a brief case-sized power pack. The phones themselves were the size of a large brick and just as clunky.</p>

<p>The 90s were an exciting time primarily because the first tech boom was happening and the economy was roaring along. The music was better in the 80s and 90s than it had been in the disco era of the late 70s. It stayed good until rap/hiphop came along. It was the advent of rap that declared me as being officially Old. I began to make all the same gripes about the music that my dad had made about my rock of the late 60s and early 70s.</p>

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<p>Early 80’s? I played base guitar, I generally went to bed every night at 3AM,I had blue hair and I looked fantastic.</p>

<p>sigh…</p>

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<p>You used to have to route your own emails if the other person was more than a computer away:</p>

<p>hubhost!middlehost!edgehost!<a href="mailto:user@uucpgateway.somedomain.example.com">user@uucpgateway.somedomain.example.com</a></p>

<p>I had an eight-track player in my car until it was stolen in 1984 (the player, not the car).</p>

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<p>I remember having this hugh cord less phone. My friends were envious. No DVR, no dvd’s and I’m not sure when CD’s came out. Gulf war was exciting to watch on tv. And the box stores were just coming into our town.</p>

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<p>I remember wearing tretorn shoes, penny loafers and topsiders. I also wore skinny jeans with ankle boots, leg warmers, over-sized shirts with one sleeve off-the-shoulder and wearing a wide belt over a huge blouse. </p>

<p>I remember wearing wayfarers to parties and dancing to “Mickey,” “Rock Lobster,” and “Whip It.” I was wondering what all the fuss about Molly Ringwald was. I didn’t get it. I did like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and the obscure movie Last American Virgin because I love the soundtrack and the main character doesn’t get the girl. I remember watching St. Elmo’s Fire over and over again because I couldn’t get enough of Rob Lowe. Then my attention shifted to Johnny Depp in 21 Jumpstreet.</p>

<p>I remember playing Pac-man, Space Invaders and tetris which turns into a fake spreadsheet when you hit a certain key. Good times.</p>

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<p>they were great. Solid video games (lol). I remember when I got my NES and my Sega. Playing pong on the atari? yeah!!</p>

<p>wages were less, but the cost of living was less also.</p>

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<p>No one, especially not in printed form, mixed up their, they’re and there or too and to. No one used acronyms routinely.
No one had mental illnesses (lol)</p>

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<p>The Official Preppy Handbook!</p>

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<p>I bought my first personal computer in January of 1984. It was a Compaq luggable and weighed 27 pounds but was designed to be carried around. I worked as a free-lance writer and took it to jobs with me. It had TWO floppy disks.</p>

<p>It cost (in 1984 dollars) $2495 and the only reason I got it at that price was that I had two friends who were also buying PCs and we bought all three together as a package deal. List price was $2995 but we bought them on the last day of the quarter (March 31st) and thereby increased the store’s allotment from the manufacturer, which meant they’d make back the lack of profit on our deal. The three of us were playing four different stores off against each other for five days before we got to that deal!</p>

<p>I paid $6000 for the car I bought later that year (a Honda Accord, used). </p>

<p>Our mortgage was at 14.25% (1983) but we refinanced a few years later and brought it down to 9%. </p>

<p>In 1988 I bought, used, the actual Macintosh IIci (made by Apple) that the first music interface was designed on. Because it was used, it cost me ONLY $5000. I sold my car and bought a cheaper and beatup one so I could buy the Mac. My husband took it over and learned all about the Mac when he was laid off from his mini-computer company in the 91-92 recession and then got a job in microcomputers (competing against Apple)… </p>

<p>My memories of the 80s and 90s involve surfing recession to recession and market shift to market shift, from supercomputers (1977 to 1980) to minicomputers (1981 to 1992) to microcomputers and the internet (1992-2001). From AOL (I was one of the first 500K AOL customers in 1993) to Netscape to Internet Explorer…</p>

<p>It was exhausting, and I’m awfully glad to be selling old technology (mostly) now… bicycles.</p>

<p>(Oh, and sadly, I remember a friend dying from an overdose of cocaine, during the years when cocaine was trendy and cheap.)</p>

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<p>Before 1984, no one drove minivans other than [hippies[/url</a>] and [url=&lt;a href=“http://www.geekradio.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/vw_bus_updated2.jpg]surfers[/url”&gt;http://www.geekradio.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/vw_bus_updated2.jpg]surfers[/url</a>]. Then minivans became [url=&lt;a href=“http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/1985_Voyager_LE.jpg/800px-1985_Voyager_LE.jpg]popular”&gt;http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/1985_Voyager_LE.jpg/800px-1985_Voyager_LE.jpg]popular</a> family vehicles](<a href=“http://www.vintagevwcars.com/Images/hippie-bus.jpg]hippies[/url”>http://www.vintagevwcars.com/Images/hippie-bus.jpg).</p>

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<p>Hmmm… [electronic</a> dual control brake/shift levers for 11-speed rear sprockets](<a href=“http://bike.shimano.com/publish/content/global_cycle/en/us/index/products/road/dura_ace.html]electronic”>http://bike.shimano.com/publish/content/global_cycle/en/us/index/products/road/dura_ace.html) are “old technology”?</p>

<p>There was a time when “10-speed” mean 10 total gears on your bicycle (5 rear sprockets * 2 front chainwheels). Now “10-speed” refers to just the number of rear sprockets; multiply by 2 or 3 front chainwheels to get 20 or 30 total gears (or 22 or 33 total gears if you have 11-speed rear sprockets).</p>

<p>Of course, now there is a trendy thing of fixed gear single speed bicycles. But when will people realize that you need at least a front brake to ride them safely on the street?</p>

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<p>1980s --8086, 286, 386, IBM PC goes for under $5000 for the first time (approx 1985), bye-bye CRT, faxes, bag phones, car phones ($1000) Ronnie, starwars</p>

<p>1990s --Dessert Storm, scuds, down with the Wall, Bill-Hillary, balanced budget (towards the end of 1990s), Prodigy, dial-up, day traders, internet, internet bubble broke, Monica-Bill</p>

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<p>UCBAlum: you’ve hit on the exact reason I said “mostly” old tech. However, the basic bicycle design–two wheels, triangle frame–has not changed substantially in since the late 1800’s. Yes, there have been wonderful refinements to the gearing systems, including electronic shifting and carbon frames. (I know very few people who ride fixies without brakes… and I know a lot of people who ride fixies. I know even more people who ride single-speed bikes, which are much safer. Usually they are commuters who don’t have a safe place to leave their bike during the day. Single-speeds are less appealing to thieves.)</p>

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<p>CRTs were still common until the early 2000s. Star Wars movies came out in 1977 (IV), 1980 (V), 1983 (VI), 1999 (I), 2002 (II), 2005 (III).</p>

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<p>Actually, pretty big surpluses at the time. Then came tax cuts and spending increases (both military and non-military spending like Medicare Part D) that put the government back into deficit to provide stimulus to inflate bubbles… But it is unlikely that a politician who suggests raising taxes to 1999 levels and cutting spending to 1999 levels will get elected.</p>

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<p>During the 90s, people were very concerned about acts of domestic terrorism such as the Oklahoma City bombing and the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. The Militia movement in particular was a very scary thing at the time. We wondered if such occurrences might increase.</p>

<p>During that era, nobody really expected any kind of major terrorist attack by outside forces to occur here. People were just getting over being terrified by the Cold War threat of nuclear war.</p>

<p>I know we’re not supposed to talk about politics, but I don’t think this is politics; it’s more about…zeitgeist.</p>

<p>I’m a little surprised by how many of the posts on this thread have been about technology.</p>

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<p>ucbalumnus–</p>

<p>What we called CRTs in the mid-late 1980s were electronic typewriters that were in essence dedicated word processors with either single line LCD displays or multi-line CRT displays, built-in line editors in ROM, a spelling and grammar checker, a few kilobytes of internal RAM and optional cartridge, magnetic card or diskette external memory-storage devices for storing text and even document formats. Text could be entered a line or paragraph at a time and edited using the display and built-in software tools before being committed to paper. </p>

<p>Reagan’s starwars technology not the movies.</p>

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<p>Actually, when the Oklahoma City bombing occurred, the news media was abuzz with speculation about foreign terrorists, until the suspects were arrested. I was thinking, “why would a foreign terrorist bomb that building?” and “the BATF office in there does look like the kind of thing the ‘militia’ types would want to attack”.</p>

<p>A foreign-based terrorist group did try to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993 with a truck bomb.</p>

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<p>1990s–Ruby Ridge and Waco-Branch Davidians.
1985 --Philly police helicopter C-4 bombing of the MOVE buildings.</p>

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<p>Imagine no google or wikipedia. In the 80s, we had encyclopedias and the yearly almanac to look things up, or you had to go to the library. If you needed a phone number, you looked it up in a big yellow phone book, or called directory assistance but that cost money. There was no online banking, but you could check your balance on the phone and the ATM became popular.</p>