Are the noughties just a bad eighties re-run?

Big hair, hi tops, drain pipe jeans, relatives emigrating, rambling dole queues. Is anyone crying déjà vu?
Weather you lived through it he first time or were told about it by your parents it’s easy to see how these staples of life in the 1980s are creeping into the lives of the noughties population.

Yesterday on RTE News they featured a segment on emigration. For the first time in well over twenty years more people are leaving Ireland then there are coming in. Canada and Australia apparently being the hot spots for emigrating Irish looking for jobs and a better life. This begs the question, is history repeating itself more vividly than ever, in twenty years have we learned anything?
Fashion is a notoriously fickle and ever changing market. Each season some new cutting edge, innovative designer comes up with an ‘eighties inspired look.’ Blazers, shoulder pads, oversized bows, prom dressed, stone washed denims are all stocked and overpriced ready for us to consume in shops nationwide. If that’s the case one trip to my mothers wardrobe will make me the fashionista of 2010! Even websites are devoted to styling you head to toe from the eighties. Personally I love the idea of ‘vintage’ and ‘retro’ but I can’t decide if I’m a fool for letting designers get away with not creating new ideas or creating them myself.
Music seems to be all about recycling or ‘remixing’ for the noughties. Synthesisers were popular in the eighties and now feature heavily in alternative and indie type bands of the last few years. The house music created in the eighties is being rehashed and remixed to this day. Even the best selling mainstream artists have covered, remixed or borrowed lyrics or backing tracks from eighties songs; Craig David, Westlife and Flo Rida to name a few. It is said that the kids who pop today will rock tomorrow and every year Irish pre and young teens discover puberty, how much they hate there parents and of course rock music. Each year bands who either began or ruled the charts in the eighties blare from the bedrooms of Irish teens; Nirvana, Greenday, AC DC, Iron Maiden.
The starkest resemblance between now and the eighties is the state of the Irish economy. As I mentioned above there are huge emigration rates. Job losses plague every county. The country is in an even worse recession than then. The number of people signing on to the live register is still rising. We studied the hardships of the eighties, we wrote them in our history books but have we learned from it?
There is a positive note here however, I can identify two industries that have progressed since the eighties. They are Media and Technology. Publications in this country have evolved and adapted as required by our society. Once just print, each title now has a website, pod casts, sound slides and are accessible via phones for constant up dates on the go. More recently the iPad offers the experience of reading your broadsheet on screen. Media has come on leaps and bounds from typing to metal plates.

Technology pushed media to adapt and change and the industry has done so. However, who or what is going to push our government and other industries to change?

Yes, media has bettered itself along with technology and to a certain extent science. However I personally think it’s a little sad that in twenty years, excluding the aforementioned developments, all we’ve learned to do successfully is make phones smaller and Tvs bigger.

JM