@Ray,
Yes, you're right - life was MUCH easier then, here's a few examples:
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As a kid in the 80s, whether you'd be a teenager or younger, you could have fun with your peers without dire consequences, this could include activities like snooping around at night to see what your classmates where up to or running around in the forest with walkie-talkies playing night-ops or something.
If you do this as a kid today, you'd most likely get arrested and your entire future destroyed, along with psychological nonsensical treatments for this-and-that, best case scenario would be to be the futureless wacko in town.
- In the 80s, you didn't have to lock the doors in the smaller cities (10-200.000 citizens or so...small), you just went home, slammed the door or not, straight into your room without a care in the world.
If you do this today, even go out to mow the lawn, some oportunistic bastard could be lurking and walk right in and steal whatever while you're busy with something else, even at night they'll sneak in...try not to wake you up, and haul some stuff from you.
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In the 80s, you could bring home any kind of people, just as long as YOU trusted them, the entire family was okay with this.
Try doing that today, and you'll most likely be googled, suspected and arrested before you've even said HI!.
And there are many more examples (I was merely mention the EASY-GOING nature people had back then). Funnily enough...the place I've moved to...is sort of stuck in the 80s, but thats another thread.
@Pathologist,
Well, that's kind of like me when I decorated one of my rooms to match the 50s theme, I got some old tube-radios (big furniture), 50s furniture and 50s magazines,lamps, tables, shelves etc. to complete it, and I wasn't even born then, way before my time, but certain elements (such as seen in Back to the future) are very cool from that era. I really like the tube-radios, the glow...the warmth from the set...all built in wood, the naive ads in those old 50s magazines.
I've already lived my life as a "future-kid", having all the latest gadgets, used to have ALL of that, after a while - you start to collect the good things from life, and age & time doesn't matter anymore, whatever you like....is what you like. This crazy obsession with the latest & greatest doesn't lead anywhere, it's a dead-end road, you'll only crave the next thing, while already having 10-30 copies of its past versions that already work just fine for their purpose.
I love collecting second hand stuff, and using it too, I don't care to manically collect them like in pristine unopened boxes like crazed collectors do, no...I just get them for their actual purpose (using them), the oldest computer I still use is 15-years old, that one is still one of the SMALLEST pocket computers (full-computer, not WINCE, PocketPC crap) in the world, and I use it for programming robots
People use Arduinos today, fine.., but it's the same game, same result, same speed...fun stuff to do.
Now that I have my entire own house out on the countryside, I can do pretty much what I want, so I plan to build a MAME-Arcade machine that'll have artwork from the typical 80s arcade machine.
I'd love to get a few pinball machines in here too, but they're insanely expensive, even defective ones, and I don't mind repairing them...I have an entire lab for that sort of stuff.
Rant rant rant...
mg: mostly losers in there anyway 
