Contrasts

[jsburbidge]

Here's an exercise I sometimes do: look at the things around me, or at what I'm wearing and think what would be different if it were:

• the year I was born (1960)
  


• a century ago


• a century before the year I was born?

This has two aspects: a social and a purely technical one.  For example, a few days ago I was thinking of this and considering the clothes I was wearing (I was wearing a blazer, shirt, and tie at the time, and carrying an umbrella and a briefcase).  Now, if I just went back to the year I was born, there wouldn't have been much difference: the style of the tie would have been slightly different, and the ballistic nylon briefcase would have probably been leather instead.  Push it back a hundred years, though, and just about everything would have been technically different, because almost everything I had had some form of synthetic in it  (Even the shirt had plastic buttons; there's elastic in various other garments; zippers are synthetic rather than metal; the cloth on the umbrella is synthetic fibre) even though the social aspects wouldn't have changed, although I would probably have been wearing a suit rather than a blazer.  (Right now I'm wearing a polo shirt and khakis.  I can guarantee that the social dimension would have been different a hundred years ago, or even in 1960: I wouldn't be wearing garments like this, period, in just about any imaginable context.)

The social aspect can be complicated by considering more general factors such as what level of income one would be likely to have (i.e. what part of the population was middle class compared to now, and what that meant), but I tend to ignore that, because the point of the exercise is to think about technical aspects of change rather than simply the social changes in the interim.  If I start worrying about more general changes I also have to consider, e.g. the impact of different tariff rules on what would have been available to purchase, which goes way beyond my knowledge.  On the other hand, where technical advances have made a function affordable instead of unaffordable, I do consider that: thus, say, anything where the real cost has dropped sharply due to mass production techniques will have availability considered.

Or consider my bedroom.  In 1960:

• The digital alarm clock would probably have been a mechanical "Baby Ben" which required winding every evening
  


• Shampoo, aftershave, etc. would be in glass, not plastic, bottles (I ignore specific brand differences)
  


• The CD player would have been an LP player, if I had had one in my bedroom at all; the radio aspect might have been filled by a transistor radio  (I certainly had my childhood bedroom furnished with a cheap LP player for stories at night; but given the relative newness of the LP format in 1960, I'm not sure whether this would have been likely then)
  


• More books would have been sewn rather than perfect bound


• The bookcase would be in a more conservative style (it's IVAR shelving, from IKEA)


• No compact fluorescent lights

Still, things map fairly closely on a functional level.  A century ago, though:

• No alarm clock at all
  


• Shampoo, aftershave, etc. would still be in glass, not plastic, bottles, but the razor would probably have been a straight razor (the Gillette safety razor was introduced in 1903, but had not penetrated the market or become standard by 1907)
  


• There would have been nothing to fill the role of the CD player/radio
  


• All books would have been sewn rather than perfect bound, and would have been hardcover.  Fewer books, as well, because their real cost was much higher
  


• The bookcase would definitely be in a more conservative style -- if I had had enough books to warrant having an (overflow) bookcase in the bedroom
  


• Maybe electric lights, depending on where in the country I lived and how well off I was, but I'm betting that I'd have been using candles.
  

In 1860:

• No alarm clock at all
  


• The razor would definitely have been a straight razor
  


• There would have been nothing to fill the role of the CD player/radio
  


• All books would have been sewn rather than perfect bound, and would have been hardcover.  Fewer books, as well, because their real cost was much higher
  


• The bookcase would definitely be in a more conservative style -- if I had had enough books to warrant having an (overflow) bookcase in the bedroom
  


• No electric lights
  

One thing that tends to emerge is that although technical changes since 1960 have been pervasive in terms of how things are made (and they have been extensive: fuel injection instead of carburettors, much more extensive use of plastics, CD players/MP3 players instead of phonographs, digital cameras replacing film, much improved appliances and engines in just about every way) most functional slots today have equivalents (with the gaping exception of the personal computer).  On the other hand, as one moves back to the beginning of the twentieth century, there are much bigger gaps in functionality.

The exercise really has a more interesting tone, though, when you turn it around.  Imagine standing in that equivalent room in 1960 (or 1907, or 1860) and trying to project what sorts of changes would take place over the next N years.  You'd probably focus on the big, large-scale things that you might foresee; the smaller-scale changes would probably escape you.  I'll take a simple example: many of the toys which my five-year-old daughter buys with her allowance money are cheap molded plastic.  In fact, they're so cheap that she can buy ten dolls for the price of a children's paperback.  The difference in the price factor for "cheap small toy" is so considerable that it has a massive influence on her experience of play compared with my experience when I was young, when toys (even plastic toys) cost a good deal more.