I'd say culturally more like today, but technologically more 60s as PCs, Internet, and cellphones were not mainstream than whearas the only widely-used advances from 60s tech were color TV, cable, and video games, really. 

Overall, I'd say the 80s are more like the 2000s though.

ima go with the 80s being more like today. there's actually a gen-x/gen-y thread that gets into this a little bit; i personally think the late 70s/early 80s this consumer culture started to take hold and after that society stopped thinking of itself as pursuing bigger ideals and it became a lot more about naked consumerism. and in the 70s and 80s this was on the wane and round about the late 80s culture (american culture, anyway) got to be mostly about wonton consumption and ever since then that's pretty much the way it's been. which is sorta a drag.

80s are probably closer to today. Technology, consumerism & lots of yuppie fashion.
The 60s was totally against everything like consumerism, money, material possesions etc & technology was very crude at the time.
It's funny cause if you look at any footage of Woodstock their was not one bit of advertising or any banners of that sort & the music festivals of the 90s & now are just plastered with avertising banners everywhere. Everything is about big business now & really hasn't got as much heart & soul as in the 60s. That's probably why just about all music sucks total a** these days. The TV is loaded with people who are sopposedly "artists", but who's real agenda is to make big money & sell products for the likes of Pepsi, Sony & iPod. Real artist & musicians are broke, struggle for years & work hard before they get recognised & get any kind of success & also they have one key factor, musical ablity & talent. The people that pop up over night, like Briney Spears, Fred Durst & all those rappers disappear as quick as you can say payola & rightfully so, because they suck, have not a musical bone in their body & should stick to being barkers hocking their a**es & selling their souls to Coca Cola.  The 60s was easily a far more interesting decade. This decade is very bland & has no identy or character. I loved the 80s & i have so many fond memories of the 80s, but most of what the 80s stood for i hate. To be honest i can't really compare this decade with the 80s though because the 80s was still hands down better. We definitly had the best kids toys, TV shows & cartoons in that decade thats for sure & there was still some decent music, mainly in the underground though. We might not have had some of the convenient technology, but we managed just fine without it back then. I think people have become too dependant on technology. There is an up side to it though, technology is a good thing in the area of medicine & health & communicating with distant friends & relatives via the internet.

^i totally agree. this decade is very bland. (the "'00s"! the naughts! that just seems appropriate somehow.) the degree of consumerism scares me, the size of multinational corporations, how hard it is to start your own business in anything except "information technology"... i think we might be on the cusp of another revolution, though; i think these are very troubled times and when times are bad people look for ways to express themselves. i think that's what the real meaningful cultural movements were about -- woodstock, punk, the low-budget independent movies of the 70s, you know. i think, at least i hope, that the internet music thing will make the big labels obsolete and people will start making interesting music on their own.

i guess the only thing is that there's such a glut out there, with so many people making independent music, that it's hard to sort through all the carpola to find anything that's any good.

ah, i'm probably wrong. things'll probably just keep suckin'.

I'd say the "world" of the 80's is much more like today, but the pop culture of the 80's is (somewhat) more like the 60's.

In other words, there were countless political, social and technological changes from the 60's to the 80's. Black & White TV, widespread racism towards blacks and minorities (where it was still acceptable to do so), the Vietnam War, it was all a distant memory by the 80's.

However, what makes both those decades more alike, is I think both were more of a "rock" culture, as opposed to hip hop everywhere you looked. The following is a cliched, generational statement, but both the 60's and 80's were also alot more friendly IMO. Just the average person in a store or walking down the street tends to be very "in their own world" and rude these days, especially in big cities. I think cellphones and all that are a contributing factor.

Of course that's not true with everyone, I'm just basing it on my own experiences. Then again, when I was a kid in the late 80's, we lived in a suburban town, and since 1996 I've lived in a huge metro area, so that could explain it a bit too. ;)

(We were talking about this a bit in PPP recently too.)

Overall, I think the 2000's and 2020's will be even MORE similar than the 80's and 2000's are. We're basically slowing down in every way, except for conveinences and technology. As time goes on, each decade will blend into the next more and more, IMO.

The kind of changes that happened from, say 1955 to 1975 was unparalleled. I wouldn't expect that anytime soon.

Overall, I think the 2000's and 2020's will be even MORE similar than the 80's and 2000's are. We're basically slowing down in every way, except for conveinences and technology. As time goes on, each decade will blend into the next more and more, IMO.




THIRTY YEARS OF THE NINETIES??

Oh my gosh.

I do have to agree about how the 80s and 60s (pretty much the 40 years between 1955 and 1995 actually) are more of a rock culture. The Nineties are about 55% rock and 45% hip hop I'd say, they are 20th Century culturally but incredibly borderline; I almost consider the 1990s to be the first decade of the 21st Century rather than the last of the 20th.

I also think that while the 80s was certainly closer to today in mindset and look it really is closer to the 60s in technology.  As far as Ipods, the WWW, cellphones, and the like the 80s had very little as even computers with graphics were rare until the late 80s.  In the Eighties people were still using typewriters and records which are a technology of the 1800s!

People probably are more rude now; nobody wants to have fun anymore and people have no sense of humor.  I dislike cell phones and refuse to get one also; they just seem like a pain and I can't stand them.

About the 2000s and 2020s being more similar than the 80s and 2000s: although reason tells me otherwise in my guts I fear you may be right.  Although I think hip hop really doesn't have much more of a future as it is so silly now and good rap would never sell to the masses.  It has to end pretty soon; Gen Z ain't gonna dig it and it's only getting dumber.

Going into hip hop, hip hop kind of defines the 2000s, I mean even the early 90s seem rockish compared to now.  The 2000s are easier to pinpoint than the 90s I think despite the fact that they share so much DNA with the 90s, however I think the whole "whatever" quality of the Nineties is in a sense what the decade was all about.  The 2000s is much more of a one-tracked, "Good and Evil" sort of decade.

I imagine that the 2010s will sorta be just be a "whatever" decade like the 90s were.  Especially with the rise of peer-to-peer technologies and the fact that rap will probably be uncool by then and nothing can really take its place as you can't get more controversial than rap without going into a genre exclusively about porno and stabbing people (better not give the media any ideas! ;))  By the 2020s the 20th Century pop culture ideas will probably be totally gone  :\'(

I bet by the 2010s the 90s and 2000s will be considered old though, and the 60s and 70s will start to look like the 30s and 40s do now.