Moreover, technology has also relieved budgetary and technical limitations on producing culture. Creators no longer need to appeal to mass audience to survive, and plenty of them choose not too.
This, more than anything else, is the important takeaway of this generation. We've basically seen, if not the death of, then at least the severe decline in influence of the mono-culture. When we think of past decades, there is often a few large distinguishing things that encompassed all of pop culture. Tye-dye, grunge rock, bell bottoms, flannel, pong, disco, whatever.
These broad cultural touchstones don't really exist in the same way today; everything's too decentralized now. People don't watch the same 6 o'clock news channel, they watch their network of choice. People don't read the paper, they follow their own collection of websites. YouTube videos instead of mainstream television, indie flicks over the summer blockbuster. I've spent the last several days watching Summer Games Done Quick. It appeals to such a subculture of a subculture of a subculture, and you're not going not going to see most people on the street have even the slightest clue what that is or why it exists, but people in that group live and breathe it.
Subcultures have always existed, obviously, but the ease with which the internet has allowed them to come into being and thrive on the support of a tiny group of instantly-connected individuals mostly just means that the "millennial generation's" cultural contribution will be that you can now easily create your own instead.
This is it. People used to watch the same TV shows, the same news, TV was a big thing and unless you had 80s style cable, your options were limited.
Also, movies in theaters took a long time to be released onto VHS or even Betamax and many people didn't even own a VCR. My family got a VCR in '90 or '91 I believe. My father told me he remembers watching "Romancing the Stone" on a Betamax tape around 1985 or so.
But I often fall for what I call the "2000 curse". Even to this day, when someone references "...twenty years ago..." my mind immediately thinks the year 1980 or so. However, twenty years ago would actually be the Summer of 1994. So in my mind perhaps our pop culture of the "good old days" is more recent than it even is.
Check out this NBC promo from 1985:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8NMtQabci0The next day, a Friday, people could be at work and would be discussing President Reagan's address, or something funny that happened on Cheers or who Johnny Carson had on that night's show.
Now, you no longer have that. You have someone who doesn't watch TV, then someone who only watches reality TV. Even current hit shows average no more than 20 million viewers. Back in the day, even mediocre shows averaged more viewers than that. Our threads are being separated.
But I do get the impression that younger people today just don't care. I remember a newsstory from an Iowa TV station in 1980 of a younger woman in her early twenties being asked what she thought about Ambassador Bush, who was running for President. She said something like, "I hadn't heard him before, but I was impressed..." yada yada yada.
Now imagine today, asking a younger woman in her early twenties about Ambassador Huntsman and what she thought about him running for President. Chances are, she would look at you and have no idea what the hell you are talking about.
In other words, the newer age of technology and the new huge wealth of information age has given people
so much data, that they will pick and choose their own interests. While this could be nice, it may also create a lack of knowledge in subjects that are important.
