************************************************************** * * * CYBERSPACE * * A biweekly column on net culture appearing * * in the Toronto Sunday Sun * * * * Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer * * Free for online distribution * * All Rights Reserved * * Direct comments and questions to: * * * * * ************************************************************** Talking About My Generation The net, they say, is built by 25 year old males. A funny thing happens to males in their mid-20s. Unable to deny that they are statistically likely to survive to 30, they begin to experience feelings of nostalgia for the decades of their innocent youth. If they're HTML savvy, they build some wonderful pages, nay, shrines to the sights and sounds of the '70s and '80s. 1970s As a child of the '70s, I believe the only things worth remembering are Watergate and School House Rock. Cartoons all but vanished from TV and were replaced by congressional hearings. Since this was Before Cable, we were forced to watch and wonder what guys with funny sounding names like Air Lick Man had to do that nice President Nixon who greeted all the Apollo astronauts. If you're still in the dark, or you want to know why people in the '80s were scared of supreme court nominee Judge Bork, you have to go all the way to Australia (netspace.net.au/~malcolm/wgate.htm) to get a good overview. A lot will argue Watergate marks the beginning of the end of civilization. I, however, argue society began to slide when ABC cancelled Saturday morning's School House Rock. Running between shows like, Superfriends and Elektrawoman, School House Rock used ultra-catchy tunes to teach kids about politics ("I'm just a bill/Sitting here on Capitol Hill") and grammar ("Conjunction Junction, what's your function?"). That's right, cartoons taught kids grammar. Today, they teach kids not to bring guns to school. Draw your own conclusions about the start of the new dark ages. Fortunately a web site at hera.life.uiuc.edu/rock.html keeps a spark alive with a huge archive of School House Rock tunes. If you don't remember School House Rock, you'll find something memorable at www.rt66.com/dthomas/70s/70s.html. There's a huge selection of TV commercials ("Plop plop/Fizz fizz"), sit com signature tunes (yep, Three's Company), and even a long lost K- Tel discography. 1980s Most web builders spent the '80s as teenagers so you're going to find a lot of pages devoted to New Wave music. An Ottawa fellow named Jeff maintains a large number of links to '80s band pages at chat.carleton.ca/~jmain/eighties.html. The important thing about New Wave is that it taught us a person could go far with a Flock of Seagulls type haircut. There were limits, however, as the Retro Hairdo Hall of Shame demonstrates (www.well.com/user/lilyb/hairdo.html). If music and hair were not your thing, take a general walk down Info Memory Lane at www.rpi.edu/~boothj/eighties.html. Lists upon lists remind us of the good, bad, and cheesy. No tour of the decade would be complete without a visit to the ultimate '80s shrine: The Ronald Reagan Home Page (www.dnaco.net/~bkottman/reagan.html). The page's author proudly reminds us that Reagan oversaw the greatest expansion in US history, although brazenly ignores that the national debt increased 250% under Reagan or that no one asks Reagan his opinion on anything these days. I do count my blessings, however. No one seems to have created a Margaret Thatcher page.