Identifying Decades from the 1950s to the 2030s

by

There are iconic looks for different decades. There was changing fashion, cars and devices that we carried.

The look of the 1950s was immortalized in the movie American Graffiti and the TV show Happy Days. The iconic cars were early station wagons, convertibles, Studebakers, Hudson cars, motorcycles.

There was a high percentage of kids because of the post-war baby boom and many people in the US began homeownership because of the GI bill. People smoked a lot.

The phones were black dial-up phones.


The Western Electric model 500 telephone series was the standard domestic desk telephone set issued by the Bell System in North America from 1950 through the 1984.

The 1960s is the decade of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

There were now color dial-up phones and the first push-button numbers on phones appeared.


Model 1500 phone was from 1963 to 1968

The Volkswagen Beetle and VW Van were iconic vehicles and motorcycles.

The Space Program is active through the 1960s and the Apollo program ends in 1972.

The 1970s in the US is the age of Disco and the look of Grease and Saturday Night Fever. There are many young families living in suburbs.

There are still mostly dial-up phones, but the phones are made of lighter construction. Movie and TV tough guys would not knock someone out with a heavy receiver like something set in the 1950s or 1960s.

Compact cars and cars from Japan emerge and become popular.

Pan Am is the dominant airline from the 1930s through to the 1970s. Pan Am continued into the 1980s.

The 1980s see a fitness craze and MTV (music videos). There is a substantial decline in smoking.

Phones continue to get lighter construction. The first brick mobile phones appear.

Minivans appear and there are a lot of sports cars. There are more upscale Japanese cars. Pickup trucks get a lot bigger.

Pacman and Ms Pacman are the most popular video games along with Atari video games.

The Space Shuttle program is from 1981-2011.

People get personal computers.

Instant Polaroid cameras are popular. The Sony Walkman is a popular device. CD Players are popular.

The 1990s see colors and fashion have less bright colors. The Friends TV show has the look of the decade.

Cellphones become popular first as basic phones, flip phones and then early smart phones.

SUVs gain popularity. Laptops become popular.

The Internet and worldwide web become popular starting around 1993 but getting really hot around 1995.

The 2000s see iPods and then iPhones.

SUVs get more popular. Laptops get thinner.

The Internet gets more mature. Facebook displaces MySpace.

The 2010s see iPads and tablets.

SUVs get more popular and big F-150s remain popular.

SpaceX gains dominance of commercial flight and masters reuse of the first stage.

Voice assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Home emerge.

Video calling (Skype) emerges it the 2000s but becomes popular through the 2010s and then video calling for work and social activities becomes dominant during COVID.

The 2020s will see the shift to almost all new cars and trucks becoming electric and getting self-driving. The Tesla Cybertruck will be an iconic vehicle.

There was mask-wearing starts around 2003 in Asia but it becomes and remains standard around the world during and after COVID.

SpaceX gets the fully reusable rocket. The Starlink satellite network competes with fiber and cable internet delivery on the ground.

There will be great broadband communication in rural and remote areas and on planes, ships and trains.

The amount of activity and things moved to space will increase by over 1000 times. There will be thousands of people in orbit and the moon and some on Mars.

Technology will help turn the corner on obesity. New drugs and lifestyle changes could see life expectancy edge up towards 90 in many countries.

Self-driving trucks will enable 1-day ground delivery across North America, Asia and Europe.

The 2030s will see even more self-driving. There will be mobile rooms and offices.

There was mask warning starting around 2003 in Asia but it becomes and remains standard around the world during and after COVID.

There will be tens of millions traveling, working, and living in space. There will one-hour anywhere flight on safe reusable rockets. 1000 people at a time will fly in the rockets. There would have been rapid package delivery in the years before reusable passenger rockets.

The amount of activity and things moved to space will increase by over 100 times over the 2020s level.

Technology will make huge progress against obesity and people will be made fit through technology like genetic manipulation or nanotechnology. More powerful technology will see radical life extension of over 30 years. 70-80 will be the new 40s.

Direct Brain-computer interfaces (non-invasive and invasive) will gain some traction.

Self-driving cars and tunnels will make traffic jams a thing of the past.

Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

13 thoughts on “Identifying Decades from the 1950s to the 2030s”

  1. By 2030 more than 25% of new car sales will be electric. More than 50% of purchases by government and corporations will be electric. Semi purchases will be over 70% electric.
    By 2030 we will have made major strides treating at least 3
    of the top 10 causes of death in the US.
    By 2030 we will have vaccines for at least 10 more diseases
    than we now have.
    By 2030 fully capable, automated, human carrying flying drones will be available for purchase by the public but at $300k+ in 2020 dollars. Prices will come down later.

  2. How about just 10 years? :
    As today, Information/Communication technology and biotech will advance more rapidly than other sectors.
    By 2025 polio will finally be eradicated.
    By 2030 complete scans of dead human brains will be demonstrated. Probably achieved by frozen microscopically thin slices, imaging of those slices including depth and angles, and AI reassembling the dendrites and axons to put the images together. Not necessarily making that brain work virtually, but fully describing the assemblage and connections of neurons. People will begin paying for this service less than 5 years later…most likely automated. Mostly with the hope of being given a body, virtual life in the future, launched into space or transmitted into space.
    By 2030 they will be able to show in great detail what you should look like from your DNA and at any age, and by comparing what you actually look like (inside and out), determine and identify what damage has occurred due to malnutrition, fetal alcohol effects, past infections, injuries, and many other environmental influences. By comparing the two they can identify and treat more than they would recognize by conventional exams.
    By 2030 many movies will be made using dead actors or rejuvenate actors, and will be fully convincing video and audio. Combined with rendered sets, this will become cheaper than hiring A-list actors.
    By 2030 3D scanning, high bandwidth (for high detail), and VR headsets will transform online shopping.

  3. Trust me, even if you can make 80s the new seventies it would be already huge.
    If you can make 80s the new 60s as a quality of life and mortality it would already be enormous.
    Source : my parents’ health.
    and 70s being the new 40s well then you have essentially solved aging.

  4. MSRs are still powerpoint reactors. It will take at least 10 more years to get mainstream regulatory approvals after one instance is built and operational for a few years. The issue is not technical but rather societal. (well if MSRs were 10 times cheaper than coal it would be much easier).
    With the current prices of natural gas it makes no sense to produce synthetic hydrocarbons. Pressurized methane can be used as is in ICE engines, heating and for electrical generation. Probably with some chemical processes it could be converted to methanol/ethanol for car fuel , if the electrical cars don’t win.

    Antiaging – senolytic drugs – we have a bunch of them already approved for other uses. So in the narrow technical sense it is already fulfilled. But on the other hand approving a new drug takes 7 years, so if we have new candidates researched now, patented in a couple of years, and approved by 2030… And we need correct human protocols and main stream acceptance. I would reword the prediction that the senolytics will be accepted by the mainstream medical science by mid 20s and by the end of the decades they will be widely used with new drugs coming in droves.

  5. Mask wearing is driven by irrational fear and ego, not science. Eventually, this will be widely accepted.

  6. 2030s – hydrocarbon fuel production from MSRs takes off and permanently caps the oil price leading to the fall of petro dictatorships across the world and the end of the “oil tax” on rich country consumers.

    PRT on micro monorails in the air, not tunnels and self driving cars eliminate traffic jams. The missing piece of PRT is cheaper location. So the self driving car might end up killing itself. Or this is like Henry Ford saying that if he’d asked his customers what they wanted they’d have asked for a better horse and buggy.

    Antiaging – senolytic drugs are approved in the mid 2020s and extend human life by 5 -10 years on average.

  7. I think most of the early pushbutton ones were for two or more lines. There were buttons at the bottom that light telling you which lines are active. They were just as heavy and had a fat wire. I think the payphones changed to the buttons fairly quickly.
    You did not generally own the phone either. You paid for it but it still belonged to the utility…somehow. If you wanted another one you had to turn in the one you had. That heavy thing bounced off our floor many times…kept working. Can’t think of anything similar that can take that abuse.

  9. The model 500 was the dominant phone from 1950-1984. There were less rugged and slightly lighter and cheaper phones. Push button phones were used in some offices. There were the wireless handsets and some colors.

  10. Camcorders were expensive. They were generally $1,000 for years. Still, they sold like hotcakes. Laser disk was also very expensive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserDisc
    They were used for movies. You had to flip them over for the other half of the movie.
    DAT was popular until CDs became burnable. But it was pricey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Tape
    The handheld calculator was a big deal. Not talked about a lot, but made a massive improvement in productivity for engineers and such. We were not allowed to touch my grandfather’s calculator. He made a stand for it to hold it out of fine wood. It was a treasure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-35

  11. Telephones were still heavy and clunky in the 1970s and roughly halfway through the 1980s. Most people did not bother to get newer phones until cordless phone prices came down (affordable ones were mostly made by Japanese companies), or if they wanted more phones in the house.
    In the 1980s there were a lot of handheld electronic games. They generally just played one game. And there were game-watches. 
    https://www.pinterest.com/jayfor80s/80s-game-watches/
    https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2499334.m570.l1313.TR9.TRC1.A0.H0.Xhandheld+electronic+games.TRS0&_nkw=handheld+electronic+games&_sacat=2540
    Many of the handheld games were crap. Tomytronic 3D was pretty good. Merlin was good. 
    There was also a transition from walkmans that played audio cassettes/radio to ones that played and generally scratched up CDs. There were also black and white handheld TVs. Those were like a grand, and never really got cheap…and consequently never became really popular. They projected on an angled screen. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=handheld+1980s+tv&_sacat=2540&LH_TitleDesc=0&_osacat=2540&_odkw=handheld+electronic+games
    And the minivan totally killed the station wagon. The Volvos were the only ones to hang on…because of their safety reputation.
    SUVs grew more slowly. They had been arround as off road or dirt road capable taller waggons. Probably so you don’t hit your head as easy. Jeep wagons were the first in 1946.

  12. 1945-50’s – Post Bretton Woods artificial prosperity
    1965 – Vietnam: Huge capital outflows/debt beginning of the end
    1969 – Last hurrah
    1971 – It’s offical what many had known for some time – Euro is conceived
    1970’s – Saudi ‘Deal’ buying time……

Comments are closed.