That said, I do wonder if times really were simpler back then - in the sense of the way people thought.
Movies seem to be simpler back then. Watched Sleepless in Seattle a while back. I heard it was very popular back in the day. Well … I’m not that impressed, sorry to say. The plot is very simple and a little weird when viewed using today’s social mores. Direction and pacing is adequate. Or maybe I just don’t get it.
I think “things got more complicated” as “information velocity” increased, first with newspapers, then the radio, then TV, and finally the internet - the internet can even be broken down into before ubiquitous social media, before internet video became “trivial”, …
Movies maybe. We are in the golden age of TV, at least. Thanks to streaming and 'binge watching' creators feel a lot more comfortable with putting up shows with more complicated continuity, instead of independent episodes, than they used to.
As far as I can tell, books haven't really gotten more (or less) complicated in at least the past 200 years. Or rather: you might be able to detect some trends with a statistical analysis, but the variance is big enough that as a casual reader, you won't notice a trend.
Movies seem to be simpler back then. Watched Sleepless in Seattle a while back. I heard it was very popular back in the day. Well … I’m not that impressed, sorry to say. The plot is very simple and a little weird when viewed using today’s social mores. Direction and pacing is adequate. Or maybe I just don’t get it.
I think “things got more complicated” as “information velocity” increased, first with newspapers, then the radio, then TV, and finally the internet - the internet can even be broken down into before ubiquitous social media, before internet video became “trivial”, …