My house was built in 1954, in the new suburbs of a relatively insignificant Bay Area train-stop town. An onion field was torn up to make way for the development. Prefacing "sub" doesn't quite make sense as it was still within one mile of the depot and downtown. It was probably built to accomadate the burgeoning military complex's employees who supported the Air Force base one train stop away.
I was wondering the other night what my 1954 doppelganger thought about his predicament, and what he thought about as he looked back two generations ago and how he had it made. Then I wondered if I could brag the same.
My doppelganger moves into his brand new 1954 single family home. He's the first homebuyer. Maybe he's married; let's say he is (like I am). Let's say he plans on starting his family here (like I did). He flips on the lights in his gas and electic kitchen, pours himself a glass of ice-cold lemonade, and checks out his garage.
The old family junker is there, and he wonders when he'll upgrade it to something bigger--to accommodate a larger family, which should be growing real soon, he hopes. Sally (the car's name) doesn't start right now, but he can walk to his job at the aircraft parts factory (also conveniently close to downtown for when he needs a cold one at the local with his buddies after work). Still, he's got to get the car up and running for their weekend getaway to the beach, so he pops the hood and tinkers a bit until nature calls.
As he relieves himself on his porcelain, He thinks back to grandparents, immigrants who lived in the east-coast tenements. They had to haul their waste to the pit out back a couple times a day and fill up their pail of water in the common room on the ground floor. The family would take turns bathing themselves with shared water once a week. His grandma told him that they used candles for light--when they could afford them--but often went without. And for entertainment they relied on books and stories and the occasional Vaudeville.
His wife has put the paper in the bathroom. The movie listings for the downtown theater are there, right next to a color television ad. He'd like to watch NBC in color, he'll save up. Maybe the prices will come down in a few months and they'd replace the B&W then.
He is so grateful for all he has, so much better than living without a daily showers, and the hot quick, fresh meals his wife makes with the oven and stove. His fireplace is an ornament, not central heating and a stove fire combined. Come to think of it, central heating isn't too bad either, considering that it sometimes gets down to freezing in the winter, even in the mild climes of the Bay Area and he'd hate to have to sleep in the kitchen with a smoky fire just to stay warm like his grandma did.
The 50s man has it all: electricity, modern appliances, a car in the garage, chilled food that will keep weeks, central heat, hot water on demand, just enough kitchen appliances so that his wife doesn't break her wrists whisking or stirring when she makes pie (Hmmmm, he really likes cherry pie). and maybe best of all he doesn't have to haul a bucket to take care of his waste, he flushes instead. The phone rings, and he immediately picks it up. It's Mom, she wants to know if she's going to be grandma yet. Well, my own grandma didn't have a phone in her kitchen, he thinks, that's sort of a mixed blessing, but otherwise Life is Good.
Now here I am at the end of the aughts looking back on how much better things are from when my daughter's great-great grandparents emigrated from Italy. Like my doppelganger, I'm grateful for hot-and-cold running water, ice on demand, indoor plumbing, electricity, and my own car. I like my garden and lawn, and even though I'm not employed at a factory (I'm a part-time contractor and full-time stay-at-home dad), I've got enough to live on, and the bread-winner in my family (my wife) has enough vacation hours so that we can take a trip each year by car or plane and show our daughter the wider world.
What's changed in the last fifty years? Technology has certainly advanced, as it did the prior fifty, but did it change our lifestyle? I'm asking this question earnestly, as I'm at a loss to see if things have changed by even more than a few degrees. Compared to my doppelganger--who enjoyed a massive lifestyle and technological advantage over his own doppelganger--I'm pretty much stuck with a 1950s lifestyle.
Sure, there are more kitchen gadgets, but for the most part across America they lie dormant in drawers, thoughtful wedding gifts that just don't make life simpler. There's the microwave, of course, but I don't own one, and all it does is inadequately replace a parallel technology, the stove.
That's the modern way as far as I can tell, each new technology is either tinkering with an already existing one, or wholesale replaces it with a drop-in equivalent. Nothing much is added or taken away.
As examples of the first, LCD TVs, cell phones, CF light bulbs, and fuel-injected cars. For the latter, there's the computer. I'm tempting to say that the computer is a game changer, a real lifestyle mod, but as I peel back the layers, I'm not convinced. Inside my home, my laptop replaces my doppelganger's typewriter and his newspaper and occasionally his boardgames. (Outside our home, the computer has, among other things, eliminated his factory job.) And what else? (It's made a generation of near-sided geeks, but that's not better by a longshot.)
Medicine might be a place where things are so much better. I like my designer drugs, something that my doppelganger wouldn't be able to use to combat his seasonal allergies (or depression when his job is cut). Also, modern medicine made my daughter possible, and I don't know if infertility treatments circa 1950 (mare urine, ick) would have helped him if he and his wife had trouble conceiving. (Ours were derived from genetically-modified hamster liver cells cultured on a petri dish, double ick.) Still, he could adopt, or not have kids, just like us. And by the time he needs a pacemaker, it's a household word.
I'm putting this forward as a thought experiment because I think it's entirely possible I'm wrong. I not the first to think this up, and people are always saying it was better in the past. I'm not arguing that. I don't worry about red armies at my doorstep or the Korean War or whether we'll be sending troops to Vietnam soon. My doppelganger and I have disparate views on homosexuals, the role of women, and minorities, too. But none of that really affects our standard and style of living.
I like that my car is more efficient than his, and that my phone can come with me where ever I am, and that my newspaper is pocket-sized, and that my games have 3D graphics. I like that my contract job is to sit at a computer, not sweat in a factory.
I grant that throughout history mankind has always seen fit to provide himself with entertainment, transportation, and baths. But today, I'm not using Roman technology to stay clean or get around, I'm using the same stuff that was installed in my house when it was brand new and that's the standard that new construction uses as well.
What am I missing here? Have we reached a plateau? Is there another one around the corner--Twitter, hovercars, teleportation, nanites, the wingularity, Segways? And are we backsliding? Am I not seeing the forest through the trees? 42?
I'm very interested in the thoughts of this community. Tangents and normals and rants are welcome. Thanks for reading.