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I'd be surprised at people owning individual computers, especially laptops, since I would have gone to sleep in a time when there were just mainframes with terminals that you had to buy time on. I would also be astonished at the user-friendliness, because I would have been most familiar with the type of computers that require programs to be on piles of punch cards.
The common use of computers for word processing would also be a surprise. I would have gone to sleep thinking that the IBM Selectric was the ultimate in writing tools.
The Internet would flabbergast me.
"The Berlin Wall is gone? China is capitalist? The Soviet Union has split up?"
I would also be happy to see more people of color in white collar and professional jobs and more GLBT people out of the closet
"Wow, you can get cappuccinos even in cities that don't have large Italian populations!"
"Who ever heard of a Vietnamese or Ethiopian restaurant?"
"You mean I can record TV programs that I'm not home to watch and rent movies to take home and play on a $40 machine?"
I would be dismayed at:
1) The proliferation of SUVs, given that in 1976, the oil crisis was making small cars popular. 2) Learning about how Reagan and the Bushes had undone most of the gains of the 1960s and 1970s 3) The way that cable TV has led not to more choice and more intelligent programming but to 200 channels of mostly idiocy 4) The relentlessness of suburban sprawl. (Moving back to Minnesota after 19 years, I saw how once quaint little country towns have been swallowed up by the McMansions and the big box stores) 5) The increased power of the fundamentalists of all stripes 6) The increase in public vulgarity, angry snarkiness, vandalism, the "whatever!" attitude, and just plain bad manners 7) The maintenance of the world's largest military force by far despite the lack of any enemies who would actually be effectively handled by such a force as opposed to by other methods 8) Conservative young people 9) The deterioration in standards of service and comfort in the airline industry 10) The loss of art and music instruction in many public schools and the budget cuts that keep public libraries closed part of the week 11) The way that cell phones, despite their conveniences, have given annoyingly loud people more reasons to be annoyingly loud 12) High prices for housing and medical care
On the whole, I'd probably want to go back to sleep. :-)
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