<div class="header-image"></div> <table class="table-header"> <thead> <tr> <th colspan="2"></th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>2024-05-08</td> <td style="text-align: right;"><a href="About.md" class="internal-link">About</a></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> # The Passing Freedom of 70s Americana ![70s travel](Assets/70s.jpg) The other day I put out a little request on Mastodon for a recommendation for a new music player, with some specific requirements, and someone recommended Tauon. I have no idea what the name means. So, as one will do when testing a new music player, I spent an evening trying it out, listening to music. As it happened, I was at a cottage in northern Ontario, and listening to early 70s era southern rock. This always gets me fantasising about 60s/70s era Americana, and Americans' lust for freedom. There was a *lack* of technology in the 70s, that gave people a freedom we don't have any more. They existed in a real technological sweet spot, where they had the freedom of movement and travel, and the inability to answer to anyone. If a person knew how to fix cars, and owned one, he could travel almost indefinitely with a paper map and a small amount of cash. Even without owning a car, hitchhiking was a reasonable option. Getting under-the-table jobs was a normal thing then too. Traveling from town to town, getting odd jobs, working at various garages, was a reasonable way to see the country. This is the sort of person I imagine when listening to CCR, or Lynyrd Skynyrd. There's a certain *manliness* to that music, to that aesthetic. Today, if anyone tried to do something like that, their cell phone would be ringing off the hook. Even if the phone was left behind, their car would be tracked, and many of the components in modern cars cannot just be dealt with on the side of the road. In the 70s, with an American Car and tools, it was possible to be completely self-sufficient. Even if a part needed replacing, it could be found in a junkyard or nearby garage. If one was not within walking distance it was easy to hitch a ride. One look at a man next to a broken down car hitchhiking would tell you all you needed to know about the situation. No need for phones or GPSes. No one had to know where you were, where you were going, or even *who* you were, if you'd prefer to keep that information to yourself. Everything was paid for in cash. There were no video cameras, and even regular cameras were fairly rare. People owned them, but didn't just go walking around with them. And when pictures *were* taken, they weren't instantaneously shared with the entire world. Moments were forgotten. Days and *weeks* disappeared into memory. Today, with every moment being recorded by security cameras, with a digital recording and communication device in everyone's pocket, *nothing* is forgotten. Every embarrassing moment is stored, waiting for retrieval. There is no freedom to make mistakes, no freedom to just be yourself. Everyone is always performing. It's this sort of freedom that I miss. I think I took advantage of that freedom in my own life while I could. My youth was much like I described above. But the writing was on the wall. Security cameras started being introduced while I was in my late teens. Camera-phones in my 20s. It was the proliferation of cameras everywhere (video cameras, especially) that really changed everything. The world now seems stifling. It was supposed to be a world of sharing, communication, levelling of the status quo, and unlimited access to information, but this brave new world we have, is a perversion of what we imagined it would be. Sharing is illegal piracy. Communication is a culture of shame and ostracism. True information is lost in a tidal wave psudo-experts and influencers telling lies and selling snakeoil products, and the status-quo is based on the whims of twitter mobs rushing for a dopamine fix. I sometimes wonder if there's a kind of escape, a return to that classic 70s, or even 90s, aesthetic that's at all possible. To leave the connected world behind and live off-grid. I think the only way to do that is via complete isolation, and that isn't freedom. There would have to be some sort of collective of like-minded people who are also willing to leave behind any tracking devices. It's an interesting thought, but realistically, that world is a dim memory, lost in the annals of time.