Booth believes the media has sanitized us, sapped us of all original thought. Conformity is the gospel of the mass media, but many who consider ourselves creative types gravitate toward Retro, as old stuff reminds us of when life wasn't so complex. Modern life's complexity is directly a factor of the Great Lie of Technology. The speed with which computers enable us to do our work was supposed to give us more leisure time. But computers only make us work faster, harder and longer.
Booth is old enough to actually remember a simpler time.
Others, like travel writer Bill Bryson, are left to pine for a place they've never been. In his book, A Sunburned Country , Bryson describes the sensation of examining photos taken during the 1950s at Surfer's Paradise. You could see it in the easy, confident gait and sun-drenched smiles of the vacationers in every photograph. These people were happy . Today's citizens don't have that happiness in their faces any more.