re: To those that experienced the 80s

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Case in point: I don't have to write my wife letters or wait by the phone to communicate with her while we're apart.

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Here is the disconnect. I have letters written between my great grandparents that are much better communication than anything I see today. They are also in a form that can be preserved and not lost when some cloud server craps out. I am not sure how to convey the difference in feel and content but it is real.

Internet may be more connective but much less real communication and more fluff. A handwritten letter between two people is not the same a a "social" site offering "free" service at the cost of data mining for big business and big government. This is no way to personal freedom.

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And let's not pretend that the past was totally interactive, either:

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I have spent the majority of my life in and old and established community built in the post Civil War era. As the lone minority household it was tougher but the interpersonal relationships were much more connected. I much preferred my neighborhood in the 80's when everybody in the neighborhood knew everybody else and the food, while admittedly less healthy, was way better tasting. Now folks have moved in and changed the dynamics (it has gotten gentrified) and the new folks are not engaged as being neighbors. They just want to live in their cyber cocoons and not be "interactive" with their darker next door neighbors.

My neighborhood may be an outlier but it certainly was better in the 60's, 70's, and 80's than it has been since. It seems the decline started in the Ronald Reagan administration and has fallen since. While the city may be happier with the higher property taxes it is a hollow replacement for the history and feel of the flesh and blood humans who once called it home.

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Come on, now. If anything, people are using technology for nookie like never before.

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I have lived through all the eras and the pill and lack of life altering STD's leads me to believe the 70's may have been the peak of good nookie. Real live 70's funk may have been the greatest sex inducing technology ever invented.