From the VCR (my parents used to have a top-loading VCR similar to that one way way back in the day) to the compact disc (CD) to the personal computer itself, a lot of the technologies that we take for granted today have sprung from new products that arrived on the scene in the 1980s. The first PCs went mainstream in the 80s, CDs became a viable way to store information in the 80s, and along with CDs came consumer lasers – laser technology had been around for a while, but no one had bothered to investigate its applicability in consumer settings prior to the 80s.
One of my favorites? The first video game consoles appeared in the 1980s, thus heralding the rise of video games in the living room in America…and the subsequent beginning of the death march of the American arcade.