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Did people grossly overgeneralize as much in the '50s?
I didn't think it would be useful to dig out exact percentages, so I went with generalizations in the interest of conciseness and brevity, mistakenly believing that an overview would suffice in this forum. Sometimes gross over-generalizations are historically useful, like "Vikings plundered southern lands" or "India exported tea". Most of them arise from observations of people who were there and reported knowledgeably about their times. When you disagree with them, you are welcome to dispute them with verifiable data. Like, if you can show that there were just as many Americans using psychiatric drugs to maintain emotional balance in the 1950's as there are today, we will gladly embrace your scholarship, but please do not expect your overgeneralzation to remain unchallenged.
And, yes, in fact such methods of assembling information were used in the 1950's with limited fear of trolls.
If you militantly did not want to know what a someone from the 1950s thought about today, you probably should have just ignored this thread.
As I recall from living with my grandparents in the late 1940s and early 50s, people lived within walking distance of work or near public transit so they could get there. Supermarkets and big box stores didn't exist either, you shopped at the Butcher, Produce Market, Bakery or Farmers Market all oof which you walked to. Coal and Ice were regular deliveries and the lamplighter lit the streetlights. This was in Philadelphia. When I moved to San Francisco in 1992 I was thrown back into that world and loved it. The only time I used my vehicle was for travel. Oh and there was no TV until a few years into the 50s so outings to the movies came once or twice a week
I was born in 1956 but remember a few things. The details of everyday life are interesting to me.
All of these memories are from the Atlanta Georgia area.
We didn't have a drycleaners in our suburb but two towns down did. A man would pick up the cleaning on Monday and deliver it on Thursday. He hung it on your front door.
Businesses in many towns closed on Wednesday afternoons and the banks closed all day. My parents owned a dimestore and we went downtown every Wednesday. Until I was about 13 my mother and I went shopping while my father went to the wholesale houses. Everybody dressed up to go shopping. I remember wearing basically Sunday dresses for little girls with petticoats.
Further along the retail vein . . . we had traveling salesmen who brought sample cases of shoes into our store. He would open up the cases and my father would place orders. I also remember the dress man and his car. There was a bar in the back seat for the samples. He would assemble a rack and roll it in.
We also had layaways. People would put up layaways for back to school and Christmas. Most patrons paid on them every week.
A television man would come to the house and replace tubes. He had a huge toolbox. I can still see him taking the back off of the television.
There are people who idealize the way things were when they came of age. Nothing today can compare. Culture sucks across the board for them -- from television to crime, fashion to behavior. Why does it suck? Because it's not the same as that of their nostalgia.
They would be appalled.
Then there are people who embrace new things. They would be endlessly fascinated. In some cases surprised, in other cases not so much. Mostly, they'd observe technological solutions of various problems, lower poverty rates, longer lifespans, increased democratization worldwide, greater equality -- not to mention that the seemingly inevitable East v. West nuclear hot war never occurred.
I was born in the 50s. Some things about that period were nice, but not everything. I can remember when we drove through a town that had a Uniroyal rubber factory we had to roll up our windows because the smell was so noxious. The factory had huge tubes coming out the back of it that discharged green liquid into the river that ran along the backside of the factory. The water in the river was green with frothy yellow scum and I doubt any living creature existed in it or used it for a water source. We've made great advances in protecting our environment - no way would I want to go back to that kind of world.
Basically kind of the same as someone from 1912 thinking of today thread.
So, how would someone from the 1950s react to todays current digital technologies and other cool gadgets and entertainment? Would he be impressed or a little dissapointed? To people who were around in the 50s or knew people who were around in the 50s what do you think of todays technologies?
It depends on who you are talking about.
If it's a heterosexual white christian male, he'd be horrified...just look at the political forums for examples of those.
If it's a black person, they'd think you were playing a trick on them...a black president, black athletes running the show, black celebrities, Oprah, Jay-Z owning the Nets, etc.
If it's a woman, she's amazed at the progress for women. She's confused about the lack of men pinching her butt though, so maybe her self-esteem drops because she's no longer given that Stepford treatment...
If it's a nerd, he's in space-age heaven.
If it's a gay man, he's glad he can be open to be himself.
If it's a Mexican, Asian or anyone else not white or black, they're happy with the progress in their culture as well.
Basically, unless you're a WASP or WASP-equivalent, life is significantly better now.
I'm mostly thinking of the nerds or people who were into a lot of science fiction or Science Fiction authors. But other people can be fine too.
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So now you are going to lump every single democrat into that category? My god. 
Give me a break.
