Stop the press. The haywire internet algorithms’ varioius malfuncitons aligned in such a way as to make a useful suggestion.
This digital miracle occurred over the weekend, when YouTube recommended a video wherein a Zoomer uses 1980s technology for a week.
For over fifteen minutes, I watched enrapt as YouTuber Liam Thompson spent a week self-exiled to the 1980s.
Did young Liam enjoy his 80s vacation? Or did he starve to death without DoorDash? Either way, what insights into man’s relationship with technology did he glean on his trip back in time?
Related: Gen Y and the Pre-Internet Age
The answers lie in this video:
My highlights:
Analog Video
It wouldn’t do to record a video about using only 1980s technology in digital HD, now would it? To avoid that inconsistency, Liam documented his week in the 80s on 8mm videotape.
You can spot the instant when he switched from the contemporary camera to the Sony camcorder. The picture becomes far grainier and less stable.
Maybe it’s just me, but my gut reaction to the 8mm video footage was Man, this looks normal.
Related: Watching the 90s Watch the 90s
Go back and check the video to see what I mean. Do you have the same response?
The Walkman
Thanks to Disney, this standard-issue 1980s device is probably the most familiar to younger generations.
Having just stopped using a Walkman within the past decade, it definitely struck the most resonance with me.
Liam, too, had all kinds of fun with his Walkman. You can hear the mirth in his voice and see his eyes light up while he’s listening to tapes on his daily run.
And it makes sense. Of all the Current Year tech, personal music players have changed the least in basic functionality. I’m not the first to point out that a Walkman is basically an iPod. The main difference is just a matter of storage.
In fact, the same can be said for a lot of 2020s tech.
More on that observation later.
Paper Maps
Here’s one contest modern tech wins hands down.
Navigating with paper maps was never not a pain in the ass.
And it could be dangerous, as well, if you were driving alone.
GPS is so vastly superior, it’s the sole reason I finally got my first smartphone. It’s a good thing Liam didn’t end up carjacked in a bad part of town or lost in the wilderness.
Paper Books
Liam mentions that he’s an avid reader, and it’s his custom to do his reading on a Kindle.
So one would expect the switch to paper books to be quite an adjustment.
He seemed to take to dead tree editions just fine, though.
Longtime readers of this blog know that eBooks are the other recent innovation, along with Google Maps, which I have embraced.
Still, you can’t overstate the importance of having physical media that tech oligarchs can’t censor with the click of a mouse. So advantage: paper books.
Pizza Hut
I couldn’t in good conscience end this post without awarding Liam maximum points for dining at the official pizzeria of the 1980s.
Related: Generation Y’s Real Café 80s
Conclusion: The More Things Change …
Liam’s look back at the bygone days of Reagan brings to light several key insights about where we’ve been and where we are now.
For one, the chronicle of a zoomer immersing himself in the tech level of the 1980s brings us some noteworthy, and often counterintuitive, revelations:
- We pretty much have all the same stuff now, it’s just a lot smaller
- It’s also more consolidated–Liam’s brick phone, Mac, Walkman, etc. pretty much took the place of his smartphone
- Current Year devices are also faster, which raises another key point …
The main difference between current technology and tech that did the same stuff in the 1980s is that 80s tech took longer to interact with. But paradoxically, that lower ease of use placed hard limits on consumption.
Liam remarked how odd it felt not to be able to just reach for his phone to instantly obtain any information or entertainment he wanted.
Instead of that one Swiss Army knife device, he had to reach for his Walkman for music, a TV and VCR for movies, and print books or maps for info.
That division of labor, along with space limitations for storing media, explains why binge-watching didn’t exist in the 80s.
And even though social media did exist in the form of BBS, only weird nerd shut-ins were extremely online back then.
So what smartphones have done is turn everybody into this meme:
As author David Stewart noted elsewhere, a major good that society lost due to the tech boom was the time to be alone with our thoughts.
Your memory’s tendency to focus on high and lows while cutting out the mid accounts for most members of Gen Y’s rosy picture of the 80s. We forget the long stretches of time during which nothing at all happened.
If I try hard enough, I can dig between rose-colored flashbacks to pizza parties, arcade excursions, and movie theater trips to unearth hour upon hour of idle time.
To be honest, a good 30 percent of the hangouts, sleepovers, and mall trips I’d try to arrange fell through.
More often than I’d like to remember, I’d come home from school or get up on a Saturday and call up my friends, only to find they were busy or get no answer. That meant spending the weekend watching TV for the 3 or so good hours of shows they broadcast, doing chores, and slaving over pointless homework.
And in between, there was nothing.
It was the same while standing in line to buy a new CD, watching the clock count down the last 20 minutes till the end of the school day, or sitting in the car on the long drive to grandma’s house.
In the 80s, the ability to keep yourself company was vital to maintaining sanity.
And as our current social disorders show, I think it still is.
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