Introduction | Modernism 1900-1950
Popular culture 1900-1950 | High culture 1950-2000
Pop culture 1950-2000 | Culture and technology
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Culture and technology

In the second half of the century, culture was revolutionised through technology.

• Film Although cinema attendance fell in the West with the arrival of television, widescreen projection was improved through various devices – such as Cinemascope, Cinerama, 3-D effects and Dolby sound – which emphasised the grandeur of the experience. Later, computer graphics made it impossible to distinguish between the real and the fake, and made it possible to do just about anything on screen.

• Radio The invention of the portable transistor radio, with its long-life electric battery, enabled people to carry music around with them. If pop music was the soundtrack of 20th-century life, it was now available to everyone everywhere.

• Television The boom in television ownership, which began in the 1950s, meant that domestic leisure and entertainment replaced activities such as going to the cinema. A more family-based or individual culture began to replace the mass culture of the 1930s and 1940s. This was accentuated in the 1980s and 1990s with the excessive multiplying of television channels through cable, satellite and digital delivery systems. No longer did everyone watch the same thing ...

• Record players With invention of the long-playing record in 1948, the way was open for the 1950s' boom in sales, which benefited both lovers of classical music and pop music fans. The rapid growth of the market for singles, whose sales were ranked in weekly top tens, also gave a shape to popular taste.

• Cassettes In the 1970s, portable cassette players, which could also record sound, allowed people to take the music of their choice everywhere. Being easily copyable, the cassette tape did more than anything else to spread the sounds of the second half of the century.

• Video In the 1980s, the video cassette recorder created the possibility of watching any film, opera, play or television programme at home, although the small size and square format of the television screen remained a drawback. Video recording of standard television programmes also substituted individual gratification (watching whatever programme you want whenever you want) for the simultaneous experience of mass viewing. The mass ownership of video cameras also began to change what we viewed: not only were there programmes consisting solely of amateur video clips, but virtually every newsworthy occurrence was filmed by someone.

• Walkmans and CDs In the 1980s and 1990s, a further leap in technology enabled individuals to enjoy their own private world of sound by using earphones. In addition, CDs (compact discs) enhanced the quality of music in a way that would have been unimaginable just a few decades earlier. Once again, this seemed like another step towards the complete isolation of individuals.

• Internet The new digital technologies of the late 1990s held out the promise of unlimited film, pictures and music sent on demand to each individual's home.

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