The Door Into Summer
Apr. 28th, 2009 02:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
memelainaI seem to be going through one of my periodic "Heinlein Phases" - probably brought on by viewing (what's left of) Heinlein's home in Colorado Springs. Or possibly brought on by checking the audiobook shelf at the local library and picking up A DOOR INTO SUMMER. I've always loved this book since I first read it in the late 60's and have just finished another read through (or listen through).
What hit me this time - perhaps because I'm older now than I was in the 60s - are the things that Heinlein forecast both for 1970 and for the year 2000. DOOR was published in 1957, the year I entered Kindergarten. It's projections for the thirteen years between 1957 and 1970 included a short dirty nuclear war in which much of the East Coast of the US is destroyed, but most of his comparisons are between the 1970 when his story opens and the world of 2000 where much of it takes place.
So I started thinking about the differences, and the similarities, between how I do things today in 2009 and how I did them in 1969. In 1969 I was a sophomore in college in California. I drove a car (V8 engine) that got about 10 miles per 30 cent gallon of gas - but driving a car was pretty similar to what I do today. Cars had radios, occasionally 8-track tape players, big steering wheels, no airbags, and seat belts that we uniformly left unfastened. Babies were held in a passenger's arms, or lay on the bench seat, or sat up front next to the driver. There were red stop signs, traffic lights, and speed limits just like now - but no handicapped parking spaces. And no handicapped access to buildings, curbs, etc. either.
I'm trying to remember if we had plastic trash bags in 1969, and I don't think we did. We certainly didn't have microwave ovens. We had TV dinners, but they came in foil trays, went in the regular oven, and took at least half an hour to cook. Soda pop came in bottles that you returned for the deposit, or in aluminum cans that might or might not have had pop top lids. We recycled nothing, but my mother burned paper trash in an incinerator in the back yard. No one drank bottled water.
In 1969 some girls studied law and medicine, but not many. My college (Sacramento State) still had a department of Home Economics and lots of girls, and no men, had that as a college major. Policemen and soldiers were uniformly male with a few standard exceptions like nurses and secretaries. Heinlein comments in DOOR on how nurses' uniforms had changed but still has them wearing little white caps and dresses - and being female. I suppose the majority of nurses are still female but there are a lot of men in the profession these days and both sexes tend to wear brightly colored scrubs.
Thinking of nurses reminds me of nurses shoes. The first women to run in the Boston Marathon (unofficially, because only men could enter) wore nurses shoes because there were no running shoes made in womens sizes. In the sixties I sometimes wore Keds tennis shoes made of colored canvas, but I was a kid. The whole athletic shoe show that we now participate in was yet to come. The idea that everyone and their mother would wear branded, stylized, striped, layered, multi-colored athletic shoes wasn't even a whisper of an idea.
Heinlein hypothesizes cigarettes changing to a self-lighting brand, but didn't imagine the ban on cigarette commercials (common in 1969), the ban on smoking in restaurants and public places, and the general decline of smoking in our society. That, IMHO, is one of the best changes to take place between 1969 and 2009.
What else would you notice if you went back to walk through a day in 1969? You'd likely have more cash money in your pockets and no credit cards. If you did have a credit card it would likely be for a local store or gas station, and the attendant at the gas station would pump your gas for you (and clean your windows and check your oil) then bring out a little clipboard with carbon copies for you to sign. And if you needed cash you would have to go to the bank, between 10am and 3pm on weekdays, and cash a check, or possibly write a check at the supermarket for more than your groceries and get cash back. Those groceries would be manually rung into the cash register, item by item and your receipt would be a list of numbers, not a modern receipt naming the item and listing a price beside it.
If you had a baby you would lay it carefully to sleep on it's stomach like a civilized person because everyone knew that babies choked to death of they were laid to sleep on their backs. Your baby would wear cloth diapers, and probably rubber pants over them, not because you were conscious of the ecology but because paper diapers hadn't yet come onto the open market. Diaper pins with plastic heads like yellow duckies or pink bunnies were available in any supermarket. Have you tried to FIND a diaper pin lately? The only way I've been able to buy one is on the internet.
Ah, the internet. In 1957 Heinlein disn't even imagine the internet. Computers, yes. Memory tubes, yes. But not the internet. Not the instantaneous communication of email and IM. Not googling to find any bit of information you happen to want at any moment you happen to want it. He did forecast reading on a screen instead of on paper, but not the incredible availability of anything you ever wanted displayed on a home computer screen, purchased with a credit card, and delivered to your door the next day. In 1969 I occasionally used an IBM electric typewriter to type out the final copy of term papers for college classes. Sometimes an electric was not available and I used a manual. You didn't keyboard, you typed, and when you struck a key, it sent a physical little arm with a letter image to strike the paper through a carbon ribbon. I used a typewriter eraser to correct errors. It was shaped like a wide-leaded pencil with a brush on one end. You used it to erase the mistyped letter and brushed away the detrius of paper and ink, then back-spaced and typed over the error. When's the last time you owned one of those?
Bathrooms were pretty much the same. A toilet from then looked pretty much like a toilet today (except in Japan, of course). Sinks and tubs often had two spigots - one for hot and one for cold - as opposed to today's single spigot design that mixes the waters to a pleasant warmth. I don't think I had ever seen a home bathroom with a shower until I was twelve. School locker rooms had showers, but homes had bathtubs and you sat in the tub and washed. Does anyone take baths to get clean anymore? Mostly, I think, our society showers. And they do it daily. We for sure didn't do it daily, although using deodorant was a big thing in 1969 - mostly in areosol cans.
In DOOR Heinlein talks about eating in restaurants. With obvious intent to shock he has the doctor at the sanitorium where his character is awakened after a 30 year sleep comment that you can get a good dinner for $10 if you are careful to choose a reasonable restaurant. In 1969 I occasionally went out to dinner, carefully choosing a reasonable restaurant, and might pay between $4 and $6 for an entree. I could get a Taco Bell taco for 25 cents and a McDonald's hamburger for just a little more than that. It's the explosion of fast food that's a made a major difference in American society over the past 40 years. Then, we still mostly ate all our meals at home. Now a fast food meal is a common occurance - often once a day, more when I'm traveling. We eat out constantly, and we eat at fast food places, or pick up food at the drive-through, or we eat a chain restaurant that has the same interior and menu whether you are in San Bernadino or Schenecktady.
Okay, this went on way too long, so I've hidden it behind a cut. But I challenge all of you to take a look at what you were doing 40 years ago (or 30 or 20 or 10) and post a comment comparing the differences. We may not have flying cars. We may not vacation on the moon. But our lives are none the less very different in this year 2009.
What hit me this time - perhaps because I'm older now than I was in the 60s - are the things that Heinlein forecast both for 1970 and for the year 2000. DOOR was published in 1957, the year I entered Kindergarten. It's projections for the thirteen years between 1957 and 1970 included a short dirty nuclear war in which much of the East Coast of the US is destroyed, but most of his comparisons are between the 1970 when his story opens and the world of 2000 where much of it takes place.
So I started thinking about the differences, and the similarities, between how I do things today in 2009 and how I did them in 1969. In 1969 I was a sophomore in college in California. I drove a car (V8 engine) that got about 10 miles per 30 cent gallon of gas - but driving a car was pretty similar to what I do today. Cars had radios, occasionally 8-track tape players, big steering wheels, no airbags, and seat belts that we uniformly left unfastened. Babies were held in a passenger's arms, or lay on the bench seat, or sat up front next to the driver. There were red stop signs, traffic lights, and speed limits just like now - but no handicapped parking spaces. And no handicapped access to buildings, curbs, etc. either.
I'm trying to remember if we had plastic trash bags in 1969, and I don't think we did. We certainly didn't have microwave ovens. We had TV dinners, but they came in foil trays, went in the regular oven, and took at least half an hour to cook. Soda pop came in bottles that you returned for the deposit, or in aluminum cans that might or might not have had pop top lids. We recycled nothing, but my mother burned paper trash in an incinerator in the back yard. No one drank bottled water.
In 1969 some girls studied law and medicine, but not many. My college (Sacramento State) still had a department of Home Economics and lots of girls, and no men, had that as a college major. Policemen and soldiers were uniformly male with a few standard exceptions like nurses and secretaries. Heinlein comments in DOOR on how nurses' uniforms had changed but still has them wearing little white caps and dresses - and being female. I suppose the majority of nurses are still female but there are a lot of men in the profession these days and both sexes tend to wear brightly colored scrubs.
Thinking of nurses reminds me of nurses shoes. The first women to run in the Boston Marathon (unofficially, because only men could enter) wore nurses shoes because there were no running shoes made in womens sizes. In the sixties I sometimes wore Keds tennis shoes made of colored canvas, but I was a kid. The whole athletic shoe show that we now participate in was yet to come. The idea that everyone and their mother would wear branded, stylized, striped, layered, multi-colored athletic shoes wasn't even a whisper of an idea.
Heinlein hypothesizes cigarettes changing to a self-lighting brand, but didn't imagine the ban on cigarette commercials (common in 1969), the ban on smoking in restaurants and public places, and the general decline of smoking in our society. That, IMHO, is one of the best changes to take place between 1969 and 2009.
What else would you notice if you went back to walk through a day in 1969? You'd likely have more cash money in your pockets and no credit cards. If you did have a credit card it would likely be for a local store or gas station, and the attendant at the gas station would pump your gas for you (and clean your windows and check your oil) then bring out a little clipboard with carbon copies for you to sign. And if you needed cash you would have to go to the bank, between 10am and 3pm on weekdays, and cash a check, or possibly write a check at the supermarket for more than your groceries and get cash back. Those groceries would be manually rung into the cash register, item by item and your receipt would be a list of numbers, not a modern receipt naming the item and listing a price beside it.
If you had a baby you would lay it carefully to sleep on it's stomach like a civilized person because everyone knew that babies choked to death of they were laid to sleep on their backs. Your baby would wear cloth diapers, and probably rubber pants over them, not because you were conscious of the ecology but because paper diapers hadn't yet come onto the open market. Diaper pins with plastic heads like yellow duckies or pink bunnies were available in any supermarket. Have you tried to FIND a diaper pin lately? The only way I've been able to buy one is on the internet.
Ah, the internet. In 1957 Heinlein disn't even imagine the internet. Computers, yes. Memory tubes, yes. But not the internet. Not the instantaneous communication of email and IM. Not googling to find any bit of information you happen to want at any moment you happen to want it. He did forecast reading on a screen instead of on paper, but not the incredible availability of anything you ever wanted displayed on a home computer screen, purchased with a credit card, and delivered to your door the next day. In 1969 I occasionally used an IBM electric typewriter to type out the final copy of term papers for college classes. Sometimes an electric was not available and I used a manual. You didn't keyboard, you typed, and when you struck a key, it sent a physical little arm with a letter image to strike the paper through a carbon ribbon. I used a typewriter eraser to correct errors. It was shaped like a wide-leaded pencil with a brush on one end. You used it to erase the mistyped letter and brushed away the detrius of paper and ink, then back-spaced and typed over the error. When's the last time you owned one of those?
Bathrooms were pretty much the same. A toilet from then looked pretty much like a toilet today (except in Japan, of course). Sinks and tubs often had two spigots - one for hot and one for cold - as opposed to today's single spigot design that mixes the waters to a pleasant warmth. I don't think I had ever seen a home bathroom with a shower until I was twelve. School locker rooms had showers, but homes had bathtubs and you sat in the tub and washed. Does anyone take baths to get clean anymore? Mostly, I think, our society showers. And they do it daily. We for sure didn't do it daily, although using deodorant was a big thing in 1969 - mostly in areosol cans.
In DOOR Heinlein talks about eating in restaurants. With obvious intent to shock he has the doctor at the sanitorium where his character is awakened after a 30 year sleep comment that you can get a good dinner for $10 if you are careful to choose a reasonable restaurant. In 1969 I occasionally went out to dinner, carefully choosing a reasonable restaurant, and might pay between $4 and $6 for an entree. I could get a Taco Bell taco for 25 cents and a McDonald's hamburger for just a little more than that. It's the explosion of fast food that's a made a major difference in American society over the past 40 years. Then, we still mostly ate all our meals at home. Now a fast food meal is a common occurance - often once a day, more when I'm traveling. We eat out constantly, and we eat at fast food places, or pick up food at the drive-through, or we eat a chain restaurant that has the same interior and menu whether you are in San Bernadino or Schenecktady.
Okay, this went on way too long, so I've hidden it behind a cut. But I challenge all of you to take a look at what you were doing 40 years ago (or 30 or 20 or 10) and post a comment comparing the differences. We may not have flying cars. We may not vacation on the moon. But our lives are none the less very different in this year 2009.
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no subject
Date: 2009-04-28 11:18 pm (UTC)And I have.
The Door Into Summer
Date: 2009-05-05 05:24 pm (UTC)but not the incredible availability of anything you ever wanted displayed on a home computer screen, purchased with a credit card, and delivered to your door the next day.
>
"For Us The Living", his first full length novel (published posthumously) had something very like that. Deliveries could be make by pneumatic tube.
It is interesting reading 50's scifi that portray commonplace interplanetary spacecraft but the navigation being accomplished using crude calculators and books with tables. We haven't acheived similar spacecraft technology but have *way* outstripped the predicted computational capabilities.
--Wayne