If it could stay just one year technologically forever...

[Arkay]

Originally Posted by andy

One thing I've noticed while reading old magazines is that people had many of the same complaints back in the 50's and 60's as we do in 2008. Government was too big, taxes were too high, there was too much traffic, young people had lost their way, there was too much cost cutting,... For some reason we often only remember the good things from the past.

Yes, people were complaining about these things, at a time when --compared with today-- they were not nearly as "bad". This just goes to show HOW CHANGED things have become, in some respects. The degree to which government and regulation intrudes into people's lives today, and the degree to which the central government dominates over state and local governments, etc... would have been UNTHINKABLE just forty years ago. People would never have believed it possible for things in the US to become the way they are today, because there would have been revolution if it had all been done at once, overnight. But because it has been incremental, step-by-step, and brought in partly through the school systems, television, etc... people have become conditioned to accept it, step by step. Sort of like the "death of a thousand cuts", in slow motion, or the old (and wrong) story about the frog in the frying pan. {This is not meant to be a political comment or inflammatory, just an observation. Whether the actual changes have been for the better or worse, is up to the individual to decide. I'm just saying that there has been great change in the yardsticks, even if what is being measured/complained about is the same issues.}

But we are talking about TECHNOLOGY in this thread, not other and more political factors. I think I'm glad to live today, with today's technologies for some things, but equally grateful that yesterday's technologies are still around and even more affordable, if you choose to look for them.

For purely AUDIO gear, I think tubes peaked in the late 60s, and solid state peaked around 1979. But back then when TOTL gear was expensive, I couldn't afford it. Now that it is old, I can get it and restore it, and still enjoy it. For example, I have stacked near me an SX-950, an SX-1050, and an SX-1250. I paid less for all three of them in today's dollars than one alone cost new in yesteryear's dollars, even before adjusting for inflation. Back when I drooled over ads for the SX-1250, I couldn't afford one, not only because I was a young student, but also because they were costly in comparison with other goods of the day, and wage levels. Even if I had been older and earning more back then, I would probably have had to save up and make sacrifices to get one. Today, instead of saving up for just ONE unit, I can COLLECT them, even on a modest budget, without big sacrifices. After renovation, I still enjoy that wonderful sound.

On the other end, if I want a small electronic device like a blood pressure meter or heart-rate monitor or laser levelling device or proximity-sensor alarm or any other technological gadget out there, there is a huge selection available and cheap today. Their equivalents years ago were big, expensive things, if they existed at all.

If I fall ill or am injured, I'm glad the hospital machinery will probably be relatively sensitive and reliable. I'm glad that MRIs and CAT scans and such make exploratory surgery largely a thing of the past. While medicine has completely missed the boat on health and healing, in terms of the importance of food and lifestyle and a dangerous over-reliance on toxic medicines, etc... it has moved forward tremendously in diagnostic technologies, and I'm grateful for and appreciative of that.

I even like having a really lightweight, portable music source for when I'm commuting by train...yes, the iPod! The sound quality is nowhere remotely as good as my home stereo, but it is portable, GOOD ENOUGH for a noisy train environment, and carries a lot more tunes than I could have carried in a Walkman or an MD player. Before Walkmen/MDs existed, my transistor radio was fun, but it wouldn't have received a signal at all down in a subway tube. Would I GIVE UP the 50s-70s technologies in order to have iPod technology? NO WAY! I like the sound of my home systems too much. But since I have the choice and chance to enjoy BOTH today, I choose 2008 for my year, too.

If I could, I might be tempted to choose a future year, perhaps 2020, because I think by then digital quality may have caught up or surpassed analog (?) with all the added convenience of digital. But by then there might be little or no chance to acquire the "golden era" vintage gear for affordable prices.

Otherwise, I'd like to go back to about 2000, simply because the audio wholesale market here in Hong Kong was FULL of CHEAP TOTL models of vintage 60s and 70s gear, but I didn't know about it yet, back then. If I had, today I would have a "monster collection" of almost unbelievable range and quality. Sansui AU-9500s and G-8/9000s and Marantz Quadradials, etc... were around regularly, often for under a hundred bucks back then. Unfortunately, I only learned about and gained access to the market as the heyday was already beginning to fade. I've been watching the stream dry up, even as I tried to drink my fill. I have still got some good things since I started, but not the almost-unbelievable audio wealth that used to be there for the easy pickings. Of course, that is a reflection of my personal story, and not about technological change in society at large. For technology, I'm content to live each year with the current technology.