1980’s meets 2016 / 4BC Drive
I got a call from 4BC’s drive time host Chris Adams this afternoon wanting to chat 1980’s tech nostalgia and also wanting to know what 2016’s tech might be.
1980’s was when I began my career and sounding like an absolute dinosaur, the first tech revolution I was involved in was the changeover from telex to fax machine, quickly followed by the personal computer (I’m still not sure if everybody will ever have or need one of these) through to the dot matrix printer.
They all seem so long ago and so inconsequential, but the rise in new horizon tech was significant and the beginning of a revolution that was set to change what it meant to be human and how we worked, lived and played.
What about the mobile phone – from brick to pocket, commodore 64 computers, floppy disks, answering machines, videocassette recorders, tetris, world-wide web, lotus notes, ms dos and Microsoft windows and so many others were all ground breaking in their day and so old hat now.
Looking ahead to 2016 we chatted about the next big things (and more than likely tomorrow’s old hats) of virtual reality headsets, personal robots like jibo, pepper, amazon’s echo, furo and others and the rise of artificial intelligence.
A great blend of where we’ve come from, what we’ve already achieved and what may be ahead.
Have a listen now (8 minutes 6 seconds) and then add to the list of your favourite 1980’s nostalgia and what you hope 2016 may bring you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Why do periods of uncertainty and rapid change produce nostalgia-driven culture?
The nostalgia-in-uncertainty dynamic is psychologically consistent: when the present feels unstable and the future feels threatening, the past (particularly a specific version of it — the decade of one’s childhood or young adulthood) offers a sense of stability, coherence, and known possibility; the 2010s nostalgia wave for the 1980s coincided with the rapid disruption of digital technology, the post-GFC economic anxiety, and the social media fragmentation of shared cultural experience; the particular appeal of 1980s nostalgia reflects the generational position of the demographic groups with the highest current spending power and cultural production influence — the millennials whose formative years were shaped by 1980s popular culture; and the commercial exploitation of nostalgia (revivals, reboots, remasters, reunion tours) is so prevalent because it offers a known audience for a known product, reducing the creative and commercial risk of genuinely new cultural production.
Q: What does the nostalgia economy reveal about the relationship between cultural production and generational identity?
The nostalgia economy relationship to generational identity is revealing: every generation constructs a mythology of its own youth — the sense that the decade of one’s formation was a particular moment of cultural vitality, genuine community, and better values; the 1980s mythology (strong economic growth, optimistic consumer culture, simpler social arrangements) is partly accurate (it was a period of genuine prosperity in developed economies) and partly constructed retrospectively through selective memory; and the commercial success of nostalgia products depends on capturing both the actual memory for those who lived it and the aspirational mythology for younger consumers who are drawn to the aesthetic without the lived experience. This dual audience — the nostalgic and the vintage-curious — is what makes 1980s aesthetics commercially durable well beyond the generation that actually experienced them.
Q: What does the nostalgia signal reveal about how organisations should think about heritage, authenticity, and cultural positioning?
For organisations, the nostalgia signal has strategic implications: heritage brands (those with genuine provenance in the cultural memory of significant consumer groups) have an asset that is genuinely rare and cannot be manufactured — the challenge is to activate it without making it feel like commercial exploitation; the authenticity dimension of nostalgia-driven brand revival depends on whether the revival respects the actual cultural meaning of the original or simply harvests its aesthetic for contemporary commercial purposes; and the risk of over-indexing on heritage is that it positions a brand in the past rather than the future — the most successful heritage brand activations use the past as a foundation for a contemporary point of view rather than as an escape from it. The nostalgia economy is real, but it coexists with a parallel appetite for genuine novelty.
Q: How can I book Morris Misel for a cultural trends, consumer behaviour, or generational dynamics keynote?
Contact the team at morrismisel.com/event-organisers.
I got a call from 4BC’s drive time host Chris Adams this afternoon wanting to chat 1980’s tech nostalgia and also wanting to know what 2016’s tech might be. 1980’s was when I began my career and sounding like an absolute dinosaur, the first tech revolution I was involved in was t.
When signals like 1980’s meets 2016 / 4BC Drive emerge, organisations that engage early have the advantage of choosing their response rather than reacting to events. That gap between those who prepared and those who did not is where competitive positioning is actually made or lost.
The most important question is not whether 1980’s meets 2016 / 4BC Drive will matter, but how quickly it will matter in your specific context. Leaders benefit most from mapping the ripple effects early — not just the direct impact but the second and third-order consequences that arrive later and hit harder. That is the practical work of foresight.
