That 60's research assignment sounds so cool. I would have been bolting towards the door to get started almost before you finished explaining it. Your choice of
technological advances from the 60's that influence our lives made me think of pop culture influences from that decade. So, with a definite and substantial helping hand from Jane and Michael Stern's Encyclopedia of Pop Culture ( which is just as engrossing as You Tube ) I'm going there. Pop Culture gets a bad rap from some folks sometimes. It's treated the same way that live stage treats the movies and the movies treat television and television treats radio , etc Well, if its popular it means in one respect that most folks are still tuning in to it and talking to each other about it. The Sterns noted in their intro " Once at the periphery of what seemed to matter, pop culture has become the drumbeat of everyday life" They pretty well nailed it , whether we snobs will acknowledge it or not!
There's such a danger here that I'll just go off on a multi-page verbose and self-indulgent tangent about music. I'm seriously fighting the urge! This was the decade in which America, in an act of futility, sent The Beach Boys and Motown to fend off the British Invasion. A bittersweet victory for the Brits, though. The Fab Four, appeared, bloomed magnificently and withered in that one decade.Let me just say this before I change horses. If anyone had told me in 1963 that the Beatles would collapse into an accountant and lawyer-fueled orgy of legal and personal acrimony and that those ( at the time) scruffy sybaritic Rolling Stones would still be up front a half century later I would have assumed, even at 13, that they were drugged to the hilt.
So, how 'bout the language thing?
It's amazing how much of the 60's and late 50's jargon has hung on and totally embedded itself. The Beatniks got it rolling right at the very end of the 50's. Things that " bug " you or things you " dig " or things that are a " drag" or are " funky " weren't expressed as such before then. A " hang-up " a " shack-up " a " turn-on" or greeting someone with " what's happening" were not common parlance in pre-Beatnik times. The way we now commonly use the words " hip " " man " and " like " were inaugurated in Beatnik parlance.
And then this laid-back, bohemian lifestyle, coupled with the whole mistrust of the square generation that those Mad Magazine reading kiddies in the fifties brought to the sixties helped beget them there " Hippies" . Harmless, happy flower children following Timothy Leary's advice to the max - " Tune in, turn on, drop out." A hippie life seemed like a pretty good life, for sure. Free love, love the one you're with and make love not war . It sure sounded lovely!
Well, the idyllic lifestyle part may have collapsed as its acolytes grew up but the language didn't. Terms we all use and understand now came about in this hazy Camelot - terms like " bummer " " rip-off " and " hassle " still say what they mean, even if they id you as a flower child. It could be in part because they're being heard by another flower child.
It may be dating yourself to refer to something as " groovy " or " out of sight " or " freaky " but even in 2013 " doing your thing " still, essentially means doing what you want to do.
Okay, I'm in the you-know-what cave now. Your guess for my last riddle was semantically correct. It was actually " pardon" but " appeal" would probably get the vote of the lexicological judge. I'm gonna guess that yours for this time around is a paper clip. Here is mine for this week:
Squares or stars may get the point
Potent collaboration of cereal and oranges
Renders other devices uptight
Or sets them free
Don
fig 1 - goodreads.com
fig 2 - etsy.com
fig 3 - sandypine.blogspot.com
fig 4 - alleyace.deviantart.com
fig 5 - demotivationalposters.org
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