1980's: The Decade of Decadence
by Dan Gutman

Someday we'll bore our grandchildren with tales of life before the 1980s... 
"When I was your age," we'll wheeze, "we didn't have telephone answering
machines.  If somebody wasn't home when we called, we would have to call them
back later!  And there was no word processing then, y'know.  We had to use
PENCILS!  I'm tellin' ya, life was tough back in the old days."

"Wow!" the tykes will marvel, wide-eyed.  "How did you survive?"

When I reflect on the passing of the 1980s, I don't think of Reaganism, or the
fall of Communism, or the rise of Michael Jackson.  I think about eight things
that rocked to world of the average person:  the personal computer, the
microwave oven, the compact disc player, the Walkman, the video cassette
recorder, the camcorder, the telephone answering machine, and the fax machine.
These technologies have dramatically changed the way we work, play, and even
eat.  Technology-wise, the 1980s was the decade of decadence.  Our
grandparents witnessed the birth of radio, and our parents watched television
being born.  But has there ever been such an outpouring of revolutionary
technologies as there was in the last decade?

It's hard to believe, but in 1979--just ten Decembers ago--most people had
never even HEARD of these machines.  Today, of the 90 million households in
the United States, 58 million have a VCR, 20 million have home computers, 25
million have telephone answering machines.  There's a video store on every
block, and they're sending faxes from the corner drugstore.  You can't find
anything but CDs in the record stores.  It's hard to find a company in the
whole country that doesn't run the whole show with computers.

My wife and I are expecting our first child a few weeks into the new decade,
and I can't get over the fact that this baby is going to grow up in a
completely different world from the one we grew up in.  While I continue to
marvel at the wonder of a fax machine, he or she will slip a sheet of paper
into it just like we used to put it into the mailbox.  This kid will pop a
tape into a Walkman without even thinking there was a day not long ago when
such a thing didn't exist.  We've become so comfortable with the technologies
that became popular in the Eighties that memories of "the old days" are fading
even for adults.  Do you remember the hours you slaved over a
typewriter--perhaps a MANUAL typewriter--struggling to write a report or term
paper?  Do you remember when we could only watch movies when the TV networks
decided to show them?  Do you remember when you had to start baking a potato
an HOUR before the meal was to be served so it would be cooked on the inside? 
Do you remember how the film used to get caught and mangled in those Super 8
home movie cameras and projectors?  Do you remember when you had to sit home
and wait if you were expecting a telephone call?  This isn't ancient history. 
It was just ten years ago.  I can't help but be amazed at how much has changed
in such a short period of time.  It's hard for us to imagine the the Nineties
will give rise to another gush of technologies like the ones we've seen
recently.  But I hope my baby will be lucky enough to see some incredible new
machines being born, the way I did in the Eighties.  And I hope I won't become
one of those old, boring fathers who insists everything was better "in my
day," and how hard we had it before these machines came along.
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