In retrospect, it seems that an unlikely and enormous phase was taking hold of American society in the 1950s. The nation had emerged victorious from a great war, and American prestige was at its highest. With this prestige came a reinforcing of traditionally American values, and a sense that the country could return to and rejoice in absolute solidity and prosperity. What actually occurred was dissent from within, and this was embodied in the rise of rock and roll. It is widely felt that the emergence of rock was far more than a symptom of cultural change; it was cultural change actually exploding. Rock encompassed a variety of social elements undergoing radical transformation, and was by no means limited to a youthful rebellion in musical tastes. Issues of sexuality. Political unrest, and Civil Rights were a part of this new phenomenon (Hall, 2005, p. 65). In essence, this music would provide a cultural platform for drastic change, and destroy forever the American culture’s established sense of a stable identity.
Elvis Presley alone represents vast shifts in the culture, and in more than one way. To begin with, the rock music identified with him was sexualized in a manner utterly shocking to mainstream America. He was flamboyantly sexual, defying all boundaries regarding sexual expression, and the media attacked him as fiercely as the young people embraced him. Important newspapers and public figures referred to him as animalistic and degrading (Ashby, 2006, p. 342). This music was essentially the physicality of America’s youth asserting itself, and deliberately ignoring behavioral norms. The propriety of the idealized 1950s American home, so desired as the achievement of the war years, was simply not wanted by the young people. Then, Presley’s sexual physicality echoed another shift. Just as his critics were attacking his “vulgarity,” they were equating it with their perceptions of African American behavior (Ashby, 2006, p. 342), and the young people lost no time in expanding ideas of generational freedom to include the imperative of Civil Rights. If Presley drew heavily on black music sources, the white youth of America was all the more eager to exalt that marginalized population, and it is likely that racial awareness erupted as never before.
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It is unusual for a culture to undergo great change in one arena and not in others, and rock had this exponential effect. To speculate as to how American culture would exist without these shifts, in fact, is virtually impossible because the impacts were exponential. As rock took over the nation, rebellion of all kinds was validated. A decade later, young people were turn out in the thousands to oppose their government’s war policy. American traditions of marriage and home were shattered because the rock underscored the unwillingness of American youth to conform to standards of propriety and pursue financial success. A counterculture was created that was so immense, it reshaped the culture itself. With rock providing a sense of defiance and personal liberation, women, gays, blacks, and other minorities rose and attained levels of power fully capable of altering the status quo. To then consider how American culture would exist without this influence is to ask how a culture could survive in utter stagnation, or with no driving force within it. The changes represented in, and fueled by, rock were just that impactful.
It may then appear that isolating the impact of the personal computer on American culture is more reasonable. It is, after all, only an advance in technology, and very different from the diverse social and generational currents moving the rock revolution. The reality, however, is that this is an impact at least as significant, and consequently just as difficult to identify. The PC, like rock, is more than a single thing; it was and is a portal to unprecedented types and degrees of communication, commerce, and every other kind of interaction human beings conduct. It is difficult to assess the impact of the personal computer on American culture simply because the impact encompasses virtually every sphere of living. On one level alone, the rise of the PC has altered the ways American actually perceive existence. By the 1990s and the massive adoption of the Internet, there was a sudden and pervasive acceptance of “twin realities”: the literal and the virtual (Foertsch, Harrison, 2010, p. 186). For the first time in history, Americans were exposed to a new conception of how life itself could be lived. Boundaries accepted as permanently in place were gone, and in multiple arenas. For example, the individual holding strong view on politics, previously confined to expression only through mailing campaigns, could establish a website and attracts hundreds of thousands of supporters. The technology translated to empowerment, and of a kind limited only by the individual’s efforts. Suddenly, everyone was in a space wherein everyone else could be heard and seen.
Not insignificant is how this revolution reshaped personal relationships. Empowered in other areas, people were now able to view themselves as marketable commodities here as well, with access to an untold number of potential friends and romantic partners. With the PC and the Internet, American culture was being redefined one individual at a time, and in terms of millions of individuals seizing upon these opportunities for self-expansion and promotion. Changes in the ability to communicate must equate to changes in the essences of the communicating agents, simply because so much more is possible. It is debated that the impact of Gutenberg’s printing press changed the world in incalculable ways; factor into such an event the interactive nature of the PC technology, and there is no way to estimate the cultural significance. This understood, however, it may be reasonable to return to the element mentioned before as defining how the technology changed the culture: personal empowerment. Americans have now grown accustomed to being, not merely the strongest presence in the world, but the most influential, and they perceive this as occurring directly from the interactions they choose to conduct online. If Americans formerly held senses of entitlement, those senses are all the more amplified because, in a very real sense, a global audience is set out to take in what the individual wishes to relate. This equates as well to increased expectations on the part of the American to obtain whatever it is they seek. In no uncertain terms, the technology revolution is one reflected in today’s culture of unassailable and personal entitlement.
- Ashby, L. (2006). With Amusement for All: A History of American Popular Culture Since 1830. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.
- Foertsch, J., & Harrison, C. (2010). American Culture in the 1990s. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- Hall, M. K. (2005). Crossroads: American Popular Culture and the Vietnam Generation. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
