Um… no. Having been an adult in the 1970s, I can testify that people read a great deal more then than they do now, and among the things they read were such optimistic tomes as 1984, I Am Legend, The Death of Grass, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or anything else by Philip K. Dick, The Egghead Republic, anything by Kurt Vonnegut, Silent Spring, the works of Harlan Ellison, and I could go on. Problem was then what it is now: corporations can pay for and broadcast lies faster and louder than a whole lot of worried people can yell and point and warn*. Don’t be fooled by selective hindsight: there were a whole lot of people getting pretty nervous, even in the 1970s, and being told we were worrying needlessly because history could only move one way…
*To quote Jonathan Swift (the probable originator of the idea that Terry Pratchett brought to Millennials) " Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it." (1710)
Um… no. Having been an adult in the 1970s, I can testify that people read a great deal more then than they do now, and among the things they read were such optimistic tomes as 1984, I Am Legend, The Death of Grass, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or anything else by Philip K. Dick, The Egghead Republic, anything by Kurt Vonnegut, Silent Spring, the works of Harlan Ellison, and I could go on. Problem was then what it is now: corporations can pay for and broadcast lies faster and louder than a whole lot of worried people can yell and point and warn*. Don’t be fooled by selective hindsight: there were a whole lot of people getting pretty nervous, even in the 1970s, and being told we were worrying needlessly because history could only move one way…
*To quote Jonathan Swift (the probable originator of the idea that Terry Pratchett brought to Millennials) " Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it." (1710)