Top 18+ Things You’d Have a Hard Time Explaining to a Time Traveler from the 1950s

It can be easy to get stuck in a rut and forget that the world is in a constant state of flux and forward motion. As time progresses, we collectively learn to adjust to the changes, especially if new technologies are directly affecting our everyday lives. It must have seemed like a miracle when the first telephones were installed in people’s homes, but now we carry around an international database in our pockets. What seems normal today was an adjustment just a short while ago, so can you imagine how far-out our society might seem to a time traveler from the 1950s? Let’s play a little thought experiment as we look at 18 of the hardest things to explain to someone who hasn’t had the last seventy years to roll with the punches!

#1: The Internet and Social Media

This is, perhaps, one of the trickiest things to explain to someone who lacks any and all prior knowledge of the technological advancements we’ve undergone in the last thirty years. “There’s a place in our computers that knows everything…” Would that land with a time traveler from the 1950s without inducing them to ask a flurry of “How??” questions?

#3: Online Shopping

Logically, I’m sure this concept wouldn’t be too hard for someone from the 1950s to register. Fairly similar to mail-order catalogs, online shopping is merely done, as the name implies, online. It’s the speed at which items today might arrive that could boggle a time traveler’s mind. Where items used to take weeks to arrive, we are now receiving deliveries the same day we placed our orders. Wild!

#4: Streaming Services

Limitless programming was a concept that very few people could even conceive of in the 1950s. At a time when even having a home television was seen as a luxury, viewers were somewhat held hostage by whatever the local station would play for the day. But to have thousands of films and television series available for your viewing pleasure at the push of a button surely must have seemed like an actual dream of futuristic impossibilities!

#6: Online Dating

Many people today would side with a time traveler from the 1950s on this one, but online dating is a modern marvel that directly challenges society’s norms in the days before the internet. Dating, at its core, is about meeting people face to face and finding out if you enjoy one another’s company. Swiping left or right on an app is merely a catalyst to that first in-person meeting, but it also acts as a lens into our increasingly antisocial society, a concept that would be hard to swallow if you normally lived in the 1950s.

#7: Robots and AI

In cartoons and movies, robots were depicted as stiffly mechanical, boxy entities with metallic-sounding voices and claws for hands. Their presence was either associated with the end of the world or were viewed as domestic helpers. Today, however, we’ve transcended this concept of binary robot helpers and now use AI in nearly every category of life. Anthropomorphic robots, as well, have become infinitely more sophisticated, though they remain on the fringes of our everyday experiences.

#9: Influencers and Content Creators

Because of the internet and the sophisticated media production technologies (editing services, phone cameras) we now have at our fingertips, just about anyone can become a celebrity, even if most of the world will never hear of them. Niche content creators can have mega followings because of the internet and sites like YouTube and Instagram without ever once appearing on TV. But before this DIY approach to fame, “content creators” were artists and musicians, and “influencers” were the people we watched in movies or our favorite television series.

#10: The Gig Economy

We’re unsure if the 21st-century gig economy concept would excite a time traveler from the 1950s or cause them considerable anxiety. Seventy years ago, job security was a common occurrence, where individuals would stay with a single, large company for the span of their entire careers. This type of security is much rarer today, and people have begun to favor time freedom and flexibility over a steady paycheck. Freelance work and ride-sharing services, for example, would likely seem foreign to someone from the ’50s who had the same desk job for the last twenty years.

#12: Fast Food Delivery

The convenience of a drive through was the standard for food delivery in the 1950s, never mind someone other than the pizza delivery boy bringing dinner to your door! Apps like Uber Eats and Doordash are lightyears ahead of what someone from the 1950s might be able to conceive of. Food delivery technology has not only given us access to more dining choices than ever before; it has made our lives exponentially more convenient, even at the cost of making us lazier!

#13: Electric Cars

Forget self-driving cars; explaining a car that merely runs without the use of gasoline would be a doozy for someone from the 1950s! In an age where the economy had begun to boom with the rise of gas-powered vehicles, explaining the infrastructure changes needed to support the rise of the electric car would be enough to blow our time traveler’s mind. Inventions like charging stations and extremely powerful batteries might seem like a notion from a science fiction movie.

#15: Virtual Reality (VR)

Immersive virtual reality technologies weren’t entirely foreign in the 1950s, but they were nothing like the rise of VR participation today. Unlike any other experience in the history of humanity, you can now wear a relatively lightweight headset with intuitive hand controls and become completely immersed in another time and place. The rise of VR in gaming, workout regimens, and work productivity has further ingratiated AI into our daily experiences.

#16: Feminism and Gender Equality

It’s been well documented across all types of popular media that the 1950s were a time of much more rigid gender stereotypes. While the Second World War caused thousands of female homemakers to enter the workforce (an experience that proved especially liberating for many of these women), it was generally accepted that the wife stayed home and the husband went to work. When a woman sought employment, her options and salary were far more limited than a man’s. With the mainstream rise of feminism, however, gender roles began to shift. The world today might be unrecognizable to a traditionalist from that bygone era!

#18: Space Tourism

Let’s be real here. Space Tourism is anything but accessible. However! It does exist. In the 1950s, we hadn’t yet put our men on the moon, let alone enable billionaires to see Earth from a removed angle. It might seem plausible to a time traveler that our nation would still be obsessed with space travel, though we’ve had our ups and downs as a galactic-faring nation. Surely, the existence of companies like Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, and Blue Origin would only seem like details from a science fiction novel to a person beamed here from the past.