Kottke breaks down the cultural logic of old, by showing the half-life of movies and music. "Watching The Godfather today is like watching Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (1936) in 1972." While this is certainly true in purely linear terms, I wonder if something has happened (postmodernism!) to cause the timeline to shrink in the past couple decades.
Technology could be a part of it; when it comes to movies, we reached a peak in terms of film quality/resolution in the '80s/'90s. Same with music: the peak of recording/production (to my ear, at least) occurred in the early to mid-'90s (almost any album from that period sounds like it could have been made today; you can't often say the same for '80s albums in the '90s).
It's even evident in the automotive industry: the look and feel of cars changed drastically between the 1960s and the '80s, but there hasn't been even nearly as much evolution in the looks department since then.
posted by MacDara at 5:05 AM on November 15, 2008 
Welcome to postpostmodernism!
posted by taulpaul at 1:07 PM on November 15, 2008
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