How the world has changed in 20 years

A few days ago, a friend and I took a walk down Forbes Avenue to Magee-Womens Hospital,… A few days ago, a friend and I took a walk down Forbes Avenue to Magee-Womens Hospital, located just a few blocks from campus. Despite the fact that I live down the street, I hadn’t been on its grounds since I was born there 20 years ago. (I guess, being male, I didn’t have much reason to make the trip.)

Walking around the hospital got me thinking: Most of the hospital looked very fresh and new, and the huge glass walls of the front of the building led me to believe the structure had changed quite a bit since I visited last. It’s funny how something like that can make you think. What would be different about our lives if we were living them 20 years ago?

Well, for starters, the prospect of having to pay $4 for a gallon of gas would be enough to send somebody from 1988 running for his life. The cost of a gallon of gasoline plummeted to a low of 90 cents in November of that year, according to Salon.com, a website that tracks economical changes, among other things. A movie ticket went for $3.50, and at 24 cents, a postage stamp cost only a fraction of what it does now.

The economy isn’t the only thing that’s changed, though. For instance, there’s little doubt that I’d be typewriting this column if I were writing it 20 years ago. And the long walk to The Pitt News office to submit it by deadline would substitute for the now-ubiquitous e-mail.

A student calling his or her parents would probably use the pay phones in the lobby of Litchfield Towers, for which there’d be lines five to 10 deep. The pay phones on Pitt’s campus have slowly been disappearing lately. I guess there’s little use for sharing a public phone when most people have a private one that easily fits in their pocket.

We’d be listening to our favorite songs on a turntable, or if we were fortunate enough, we might already have our hands on the staple of the next generation of music: the CD player. CDs began to outsell LPs for the first time in 1988. Something called iTunes (or anything starting with a lowercase i, for that matter), wouldn’t make the slightest sense to us.

We probably wouldn’t be too concerned with terrorism – 1988’s biggest war dealt with drugs. The crack epidemic was at its height, and First Lady Nancy Reagan was leading a campaign to remind kids to “Just say no.” The era of the public service announcement would be ushered in to remind kids of the dangers of peer pressure every time they turned on the TV.

But public service announcements wouldn’t be all that we’d be watching. “The Cosby Show” was the biggest hit of the year, as it had been since 1986, the first time a television show with an all-black cast topped the Nielsen ratings. We’d also be closely tuned in to “Cheers” and “Family Ties,” many of us watching those shows over “rabbit ear” TVs with no cable. A switch to digital TV and the need to obtain a converter box would be the farthest thing from our minds.

We might be talking about rap music, which was still very much underground at the time. Will Smith would win the Grammy Award for Best Rap Artist that year but would protest and not attend because of the Grammy Foundation’s refusal to include the rap awards in the televised part of the broadcast. It’d be a full three years before a rap song topped the Billboard charts. (Vanilla Ice, a white rapper, would ironically be the first to accomplish this feat.)

The changes we’ve undergone in the past 20 years are mostly viewed as good, because, let’s face it, a research paper that can be completed without the writer ever having to get dressed and leave his room trumps searching the library for hours on end. An e-mail sent for free certainly benefits one’s wallet more than buying books of stamps, and being able to leave your house and still wait for a call is better than sitting around waiting for the old landline to ring.

But there are downsides to all the changes, too. The limitless possibilities of the Internet take away the need for many smaller daily tasks, and the U.S. Postal Service, local newspapers and real estate and travel agents are among the occupations losing business thanks to the ability to access e-mails and information quickly and for no fee.

While telecommunications can improve our quality of life, doesn’t it seem impossible to take a break anymore? When was the last time that you went to the library, movies or dinner without having your concentration or enjoyment interrupted by a phone call or text message? And I don’t know about you, but I think I’d be happy if I could go through the rest of my life without listening to someone shouting into his phone on an elevator.

One thing that’s certain is that we’ve voluntarily made the world around us and everything in it much more complicated.

But if we want to take a trip back to a simpler time, there’s an easy solution few of us ever employ. Just hit the power button.

Want to take a trip back to 1988? E-mail Peter at pbm1@pitt.edu and he’ll go with you.