To those who were alive in the 1980s what was it like ?

[Stevicus]

Yes, I remember that. I had just begun my teaching career, and computers were a new thing. The Gestetner's rolling in ink cranking copier was just being replaced by the magic photocopier. My '72 Duster with the slant 6 was running strong. The kids on athletic teams had to wear short shorts, like in the NBA old days. Some of them (girls mostly) hated that.

I had a '73 Duster through high school and part of college, but it was totaled in 1985. Some guy ran a stop sign in front of me and we collided.

 

[SkepticThinker]

The smell of stale cigarette smoke in every public place... like decades of it absorbed into the drywall and just off-gassing a little bit all the time.

Cars were crap - our family cars tended to have critical problems around 160,000 km / 100,000 miles to the point that it was just cheaper to get another (used) car.

Kids were more independent. I remember walking home from school by myself in kindergarten (so age 5-6) in 1982-83.

There was a big shift in terms of religion in schools here (Ontario) in 1986. Before that, we'd have more explicitly Christian stuff in public schools - some teachers would do the Lord's Prayer every morning. After the law changed, that disappeared (thankfully).

We had computers (for my parents' business, mainly). Internet wasn't a thing then, but by the end of the decade, I was on BBSes - there were free newspapers available at places like Radio Shack that had classified ads in ths back where sysops could list their BBSes.

It seemed like technology would get obsolete way more quickly then. Today, my laptop is 6 years old and it does everything that a new computer does, but just a bit slower. In the 80s, a 6-year-old computer was basically a useless boat anchor that was completely incompatible with the current operating systems.

We did the Lord's Prayer every single morning. We also had some guy come in once a week to our classroom to sing Christian songs with us.

We had a Commodore 64 that I thought was the coolest computer in the whole world.

 

[Stevicus]

There was a big shift in terms of religion in schools here (Ontario) in 1986. Before that, we'd have more explicitly Christian stuff in public schools - some teachers would do the Lord's Prayer every morning. After the law changed, that disappeared (thankfully).

Wait, so Canada didn't ban prayer in school until more than 20 years after it was banned in the U.S.? I guess that's one area where we were more progressive than Canada.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Oh - and competing for the phone! If I needed to call someone but my sister was on the phone, I just had to wait.

My sister and I had many fist fights over who got to use the phone (She was bigger than me so she usually won )
Oh, and it was attached to the wall.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Wait, so Canada didn't ban prayer in school until more than 20 years after it was banned in the U.S.? I guess that's one area where we were more progressive than Canada.

Score one for the USA!

 

[Shaul]

In the 1980s Donald Trump was not hated and generally popular and well liked, even by liberals.

 

[Eddi]

I think the only memory I have of the 1980s was going to the hospital after my sister was born when I was four years old

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Wait, so Canada didn't ban prayer in school until more than 20 years after it was banned in the U.S.? I guess that's one area where we were more progressive than Canada.

That was Ontario, not Canada as a whole. Different provinces have had different approaches to prayer in schools. Newfoundland didn't even get a secular school system until 1998; until then, all schools were religiously affiliated.

Here in Ontario, we still haven't banned prayer in government-funded Catholic schools.

There is no constitutional separation of church and state in Canada... just a requirement for equality of religion, but religious schools are mostly exempt from it.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

In the 1980s Donald Trump was not hated and generally popular and well liked, even by liberals.

I remember some Mad Magazine cartoons making fun of him, but yeah - his reputation didn't start really tanking until the first of his bankruptcies in the early 90s.

 

[exchemist]

Regarding phones, I think I saw my first cordless phone around 1980, although it had a short range. Still, not being tethered to a wire connected to the wall was an improvement from having to remain standing in the kitchen through an entire phone conversation.

I still quite like the land line. It avoids the nuisance of bad reception and I see no need to go wandering about when I'm on the phone. Often I need to sit down in any case, with a pen and paper to hand, to make notes. But I'm told my phone provider will some time in the next few years scrap landlines for phone. They will from then on be used just for broadband.

 

[Rival]

I still quite like the land line. It avoids the nuisance of bad reception and I see no need to go wandering about when I'm on the phone. Often I need to sit down in any case, with a pen and paper to hand, to make notes. But I'm told my phone provider will some time in the next few years scrap landlines for phone. They will from then on be used just for broadband.

I must say, I do not miss the time when you could not use your phone and internet at the same time.

 

[Vinayaka]

We did the Lord's Prayer every single morning. We also had some guy come in once a week to our classroom to sing Christian songs with us.

We had a Commodore 64 that I thought was the coolest computer in the whole world.

So did we, and I was so unenthusiastic that in 9 years of daily recital, I never did memorise it.

 

[Secret Chief]

that is a good thing

Why is a decline in musicianship a good thing?

 

[Shaul]

In the 1980s the home computer market was just starting and there were non-PC alternatives. Such as the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A home computer which had Bill Cosby as its spokesman long before his popularity was gone and his reputation ruined.

 

[Heyo]

Internet wasn't a thing then, but by the end of the decade, I was on BBSes

Internet was a thing then, usenet was established in 1980. What wasn't a thing yet was the web.
And internet wasn't available (or affordable) for private users in the early '80s. I had access through the uni.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Internet was a thing then, usenet was established in 1980. What wasn't a thing yet was the web.
And internet wasn't available (or affordable) for private users in the early '80s. I had access through the uni.

I meant that it technically existed, but wasn't "a thing" for regular people.

I remember around 1986 (I think?), they rigged up a connection from our school's computer lab to the University of Toronto to let a class at our school do a text chat with a school in Australia, which took a lot of doing and didn't get repeated. I now realize that this connection was via the internet, but I hadn't heard the word "internet" at the time.

 

[JustGeorge]

I must say, I do not miss the time when you could not use your phone and internet at the same time.

I still can't. But I do that on purpose.

I do have fond memories of talking to friends late at night on my corded phone, and curling up under the desk and falling asleep on the phone...

 

[SkepticThinker]

I meant that it technically existed, but wasn't "a thing" for regular people.

I remember around 1986 (I think?), they rigged up a connection from our school's computer lab to the University of Toronto to let a class at our school do a text chat with a school in Australia, which took a lot of doing and didn't get repeated. I now realize that this connection was via the internet, but I hadn't heard the word "internet" at the time.

We did that too!

 

[PureX]

Mostly the 80s was an awful decade. The music was so bad that deliberately bad music became a popular 'statement'. Fashion was atrocious: either violently angry or absurdly androgynous. Greed, vanity, and mindless excess were considered the highest of virtues. Idealism went extinct. Talk radio abused and humiliated everyone all day long every day and their listeners couldn't get enough of it. All afternoon on the TV there was an endless parade of idiots and buffoons for the audiences to shout insults at and laugh at. Sometimes fist fights would break out, and those shows would get the highest ratings. Everyone hated each other and enjoyed it. Any sense of shame vanished. Politicians would lie right to your face knowing full well that they were lying that you knew they were lying. Advertisers would sell you poison and tell you it's health food and everyone thought they were very clever.

The 1980s was when the United States collectively decided to strive for the abyss ... the abyss of stupidity and selfishness and excess. The whole culture just collectively decided "F-it!" And we've never really recovered.