What did people think back then?

Question

If you are older, meaning over 60, when you were about 10 years old...how did you think the world would be today?

Answer 1

I haven't hit 60 yet, but I have an answer for you...

It may have to be a dual answer though, because there was both joy and fear, (and yes 10 year olds can have some grip of what's going on. By 16 many people loose that ability.) so it's not as clear cut as your question.

When I was 10 we walked on the moon for the first time and had finally beaten those Russians. We thought that space was cool and that maybe we would be working there when we grew up. The movies we went to gave us the idea that any day now the flying cars would start showing up and the robot would cut the grass for us. We lived in the strongest and best country on earth (we thought, hey we were 10.) and no one was better at building cool stuff than we Americans.

By the same token we were afraid, every week we still heard the air-raid siren drills when we were at school (yup, even then.) and there was always such scary stuff on the news. Dad used to make us leave the room before Walter announced the body counts for that day, but we still heard them. And the war was a topic in our school because of our "current events" class, so we knew a little of what was happening in Vietnam. Several of my classmates and I wore POW/MIA bracelets in some cases for many years. I wore mine for almost 3 years until the soldier it was for came home.

My friends and I were convinced that we would either grow up to live in a science fiction like world where things like Star Trek were real, or almost real. Or we would all die before we had families of our own in The War that thank god never came. It was a tough thing really, for the most part we went along planning on our flying cars and our robots but every so often, like during an air-raid practice, the fear would come home big.

It's a shame about our flying cars, but I'm glad the bombs didn't start falling.

Answer 2

~Duh, and how do you envision the planet in another 50 years.

Jules Verne took us to the moon and to the ocean floor. Dick Tracy gave use cell phones and space shuttles. Tom Swift gave us Stealth and Supersonic airplanes. We haven't figured out HG Wells' time machine yet. Aldous Huxley gave us the drug culture, and George Orwell gave us the Nixon years today's neo-con right wing 'christian' fanatics and republicans.

I was kind of expecting something in the way of social justice, at least in the States if not abroad, and some rational thought about and concern for the environment, especially given the 60's. Oh, well, maybe that'll still come but since there's no money in it and we keep electing the likes of Ronald Reagan and the Bushes, I won't hold my breath.

I did expect to see a lot more forest plowed under for shopping malls and parking lots because of irresponsible reproduction, but we're getting there.

The only really new and amazing technology out there that one couldn't see coming is the personal computer and the internet, but the net was already around in its infancy in the 50's. The military will have its way. Everything else (except maybe velcro) is a natural progression of that which came before.

Answer 3

OK - that means about 1957 - but You really don't start asking these kind of questions until 16 or so, so lets say 1963....
I would have expected all those things printed in sci-fi mags - like flying cars, robots doing all the work, space flight...
I WOULDn't have thought of things like cell phones, Internet(talk to someone in Japan for nothing????) Artificial hearts, etc.