Every February you'll be my valentine.
from Eating the Dinosaur
Before Fox plays "Johnny B. Goode" at a high school dance, he tells the audience, "This is an oldie...well it's an oldie where I come from."
Chuck Berry recorded "Johnny B. Goode" in 1985. Back to the Future was made in 1985, so the gap is twenty-seven years.
I'm writing this essay in 2009, which means the gap between 1985 and today is twenty-four years. That's almost the same amount of time. Yet nobody would ever refer to Back to the Future as and "oldie," even if he or she were born in the 1990s.
What seems to be happening is a dramatic increase in cultural memory: As culture accelerates, the distance between historical events feels smaller. The gap between 2010 and 2000 will seem far smaller than the gap between 1980 and 1970, which already seemed far smaller than 1950 and 1940. This, I suppose, is society's own version of time travel ( assuming the trend continues for eternity).