Just as sociocultural currents influenced the technological implications of the 19th-Century, so too did the sweeping sociocultural tidal waves of the 20th-Century affect the evolution of the technology we employ everyday now in our quotidian lives. And just as art influences life and vice versa, technology too influenced life and vice versa.
The practical applications of technological developments direct the way in which they are designed. These practical applications may be different from user to user, i.e. the government, the military will use certain technologies many times in much different ways than civilians will in their daily lives; businesses may use certain technologies in different ways than NASA, etc.
The 1990s with the 'Tech Boom', or the birth of the Information Age, saw the beginnings of the fruition of many, many technologies trickling down to the lay person. No longer was it necessary to educate oneself to a staggering degree in order to fully immerse oneself into the realm of personal computers and the burgeoning internet. Gone were the days where only the wealthy and electronically-inclined were able to build hi-def home stereos and theatres. Just as the Industrial Revolution brought high-speed travel, electricity and long-distance auditory, telephonic communications to the masses, the Information Age brought PCs, video games and satellite television to the luddites - technology used and embraced by everyone from retired seniors to elementary school children.
So how did this new state of affairs affect and infect culture? The technology boom of the 20th-Century was by no means instant or universal, but you can find Toyotas and Michael Jackson cassette tapes in Third World villages the world over. The Cold War's military forces brought plenty of technology to these remote regions and so did the growing phenomenon of globalization.
In the smoldering ashes of the fallen Soviet Union, the door was opened for the West and its investment capital to move into previously verboten territory making new strides in the increased availability of cheap labor and the subsequent lower production costs.
As with anything viewed as change, whether the particular point of view deems it as good or bad, there are those who see more negative than positive aspects in the new state of affairs. Not that their fears are totally unwarranted every time: nuclear warfare threatens us to this day, new diseases arise with stronger immunity to our medicinal countermeasures, global finance is at the whim of a growing international market affecting all corners of the world, terrorist backlashes (sometimes referred to as blowback) from groups ranging from suicidal fundamentalist Muslims to jaded fundamentalist 'pro-life' Christians to crazed, homegrown activist-zealots (be they of the animal-rights, racial supremacist or other ilk).
One such fear stemming from the unique situation we have become accustomed to as a result of our modern-day digital world was the so-called 'Y2K' scare. This particular circumstance involved the date change at the beginning of the new millennium when the dates of computer software would traditionally have rotated on a two character year format from '99' to '00'. As you can see, this problem would have resulted from computers representing the year 2000 as the year 1900 by default - as all computers (electronic at least) up to this point had all existed in one century, the 20th.
I will take for granted here that everyone reading this will remember vividly all of the possible apocalyptic scenarios peddled on all of the nightly news programs(and by that time the twenty-four hour news channels as well for that matter).
As the urgency to change code in all possibly affected software increased, businesses large and small from banking conglomerates to independent business owners, and government agencies and offices hurried to update all their software and operating systems to show the four digit year and thus avoid any possible breakdown in the immense system of res digitalis on which we had all come to depend.
Even with the lumbering bureaucracies of the US government, the updates were completed in time and the earth did not crumble even as we clinked glasses over the familiar melody of Auld Lang Syne. Yet another Eschaton had failed to be immanentized. Sorry, Nostradamus...I guess.
In the wake of this largely non-event, a subconscious affirmation of our abilities to avoid Frankenstein-like self destruction by way of our own technological developments arose. We had dodged a bullet which we had accidentally, or unknowingly, fired at more vital organs than our feet. As the decade wore on the first generation to be totally immersed in internet culture started to grow up. In a few short years cell phones became as prolific as blue jeans once had, and quicker nonetheless.
Everything from instant messaging to instant bill payments became a way of life for more and more. Harddrives became more capacitous and processors quickened at an incredible rate (and continue to). And size decreased making it feasible to hold 2 gigabytes of information on your keychain for a few hours' wages. The ability to carry thousands and thousands of high-quality audio tracks in your pocket, to check your myspace page and take pictures with your phone.
As we said before, life influences technology and technology influences life and hence, culture in general. It seems that our successfully overcoming the Y2K dilemma has renewed our confidence in mankind's ability to overcome both problems in nature with our technology and our technolgical problems with our intelligence and increased awareness. We now live in an age where the generation is living which doesn't know life without complete digital immersion, just as our parents were the first to lack the ability to understand life without television.
The implications of this fact are numerous, but specific cultural tremors are already being felt: the total marketization of all Western sub-cultures. A phenomenon which was already moving in full force starting in the '80s with rock and pop music continuing to partition further down the rabbithole of subgenera and subsubgenera and the increase in them to steal more and more market share from the broader more sterile powerhouse acts. The '80s saw the last of the true giant hit makers such as Aerosmith and Bruce Springsteen. Underground music in all broader genera of rock and pop (and the rise of rap/hip-hop) served as alternatives to the sterile, formulaic corporate rock and pop.
Just as punk had sought to rebel against the overproduced, over-indulgent arena rockers of thh '70s, the New Wavers and alternative, college radio bands of the '80s on into the '90s flew largely under the radar - but not necessarily without any success or attention.
The '90s saw recording technology become available which was both affordable and easy to operate with which musicians could record themselves and feasibly distribute their do-it-yourself recordings on a wider scale through tape trading and thankless touring. In turn, a sort of fetishization with low quality but seemingly more genuine recordings set in and soon the alternative became the norm, much as it usually does.
The moral of the story, of course, is not who got big or who sold out, but rather the way in which technological growth allowed for a new dynamic to take hold of an industry and bring us closer to the unique situation we experience today.
And where we are today is a total commodification of every tappable subculture from dance-rock to violent, mysogenistic hard-core rap, from Swedish black metal to 1001 subgenera of techno. That which was risque just in the Reagan adminstration now will not raise an eyebrow. The free-wheeling flower children of the '60s are now becoming grandparents and the freaks who dressed in all manner of bizarre regalia for Cure shows are now sending many of their children to college (and more Cure shows).
A cultural benchmark has definitely been set and has it served a real purpose insofar as the cultural evolution of society as a whole is concerned? Have we made progress as a result or are our standards for a modicum of 'decency' merely watered down due to oversaturation of 'offensive' behavior and media products?
The '60s's cultural revolution is now trivialized (if it wasn't then) and the adament please for universal LSD usage didn't really do much to change the overall consensus reality outside of certain isolated echo chambers. This naive beseeching for a tuned in, dropped out world may have been responsible for some actual, progressive change, but many aspects have merely morphed into casual facets to the normalities of bourgeois humdrum.
It must be noted however that many in the '60s revolution did, after the fact, turn inward to further their personal growth journey and reformulate their approach to changing the world. These individuals who retained an ability to continue their maturation have effectively promoted actual paradigm shifts in an array of sociopolitical aspects. Everything from medicine, politics and academia to the subtle overall views on all things previously underground.
The groundswell in changing perspectives has slowly, but definitely, affected the shift in what is thought to be 'normal'. The forward momentum with which erstwhile avant garde memes have taken hold in the cultural vocabulary and the whole constellation of accepted behaviors and style is definitely a legacy of those subcultures and countercultures of the 1950s and 1960s.
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