Oh, and to elaborate on a point:
ParanoidObsessive posted...People who grew up in an age where trains and planes were starting to come into being for the first time, it was very easy to believe that even more outlandish stuff like being able to fly to other planets might be possible someday.
I always used to point out just how ridiculously things have changed over the last few generations of human history. When my great-grandmother was born, if you wanted to go somewhere you were either walking, riding a horse or a carriage, or
maybe a train. Her great-grandmother probably grew up thinking that trains were incredibly dangerous, because anyone who traveled faster than 30mph or so would probably die from the sheer speed.
Meanwhile, my grandmother was born just as cars (and bicycles!) were becoming a significant thing in society for the first time, and she would have grown up watching planes go from being almost fictional to becoming a powerful weapon of war, then incredibly useful for transport, and ultimately becoming almost ubiquitous (and capable of flying faster than sound itself). She watched as cars went from being impractical toys for rich idiots to becoming common, then becoming almost a vital necessity, and then a fundamental cornerstone of our whole society and culture.
Huge aspects of our daily lives were changed by cars, from how we date to how we shop to how we work and live. She saw the entire concept of "the suburbs" becoming a thing (because suburbs basically need cars to exist). She basically watched the entire "entertainment industry" (music/movies/television) be born, grow into a massive part of our lives, and ultimately become something we all take for granted.
When she was born guided rockets didn't exist - before she died, she'd seen rockets put men on the moon. And watched as humans started launching satellites into space that were designed to literally leave the solar system and report back.
When she was born home radio and TVs didn't exist, and even film was a relatively new medium (her father actually worked for Edison). By the time she died, radios had gone from being a wonder to being commonplace to being almost obsolete, and color TVs were in nearly every home. Over her lifespan computers when from being fully mechanical to massive warehouse-filling electrical wonders, to ultimately become small units that would just sit on a desk in offices everywhere and many personal homes.
She saw the invention of air conditioning, and got to see the massive changes it led to in terms of lifestyles (and where people chose to live - cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas couldn't exist without it, and even cities like Houston didn't boom until it became common). Even on a personal level, she grew up in a house with well water and an outhouse, and had to shop in a general store - by the end of her life she had full plumbing, electricity, and paved roads she could travel on to visit her local supermarket.
It's not much of a stretch to say that the world she died in was almost an alien planet compared to the world she was born into.
It's easy to take all of that stuff for granted (especially us on the tail end of it now), but it's kind of insane when you realize just how much changed in any given person's lifespan once the Industrial Revolution started. But especially people who were alive during the 20th century.
Meanwhile, for those of us who were born in the 70s and 80s, it mostly just feels like everything's mostly the same, only slightly better (or sometimes worse). We never really got our radical culture-changing innovations until the Internet and smart phones became omnipresent, and even now we're still sort of in the beginning of the process of watching them shift how we see the world through our own sociocultural lenses (and with things like dating and shopping and how we work, live, and entertain ourselves shifting once again).