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What Wall Street People Sounded Like In 1979. Are They Different Today?

2025-04-04 News & Politics
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32.8k
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David Hoffman
David Hoffman
1.4m subscribers

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Description

These man on the street interviews were recorded by me a long time ago. 1979. At the time, the concept of an information society, and information economy, the end of the industrial age, was a new idea propelled by Silicon Valley startups. I was the director of a documentary called the information society which ran on national public television in 1979. One of the ideas I had was to record little clips of people around the country answering questions. I directed them to answer largely with one word for montage that I was going to build, and these are the outtakes. I found a can of 16mm film and magnetic audio in my basement and had them copied to digital. Of course Wall Street is a unique place on the planet and we knew that the people we would interview would be smart and to some extent, involved with computers and information technology. In 1979, so-called man on the street interviews were still new and folks gathered around me and my soundman as we recorded little statements for our television special. You can see the entire one hour television special by searching the words "information society" my YouTube channel. So many of my subscribers have commented on this clip saying that so much has changed in some ways and in other ways, things are pretty much the same. I would love to return to Wall Street today and conduct the same kind of interviews about AI and the coming of new machine learning technologies. I would also love to contact these people and find out how their lives went after the day that we grabbed them in the street for a short interview. Unfortunately, many viewers have recognized the streets in the Wall Street area of New York and I believe that the buildings look mostly the same as they did back then, but no one has contacted me who knows someone in this video. Many of the videos I have posted have over the years, found the people that I felt back then but not with this one. I once had releases but they burned in a fire that destroyed much of my archive in 2008. Please continue to support David at Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/allinaday12 Patreon: patreon.com/allinaday Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/davidhoffmanfilms

Top Comments (10)

@oceansunset6147 2025-04-06

Things I noticed: - trash everywhere on the ground - people are very curious, aware and alert wondering what the camera is all about - people verbally repeat what the interviewer asks making sure they understood the question right to be able to answer the question correctly - big ties with no top button done up - people don’t seem to like their jobs much - everybody was slim - there seems to be a little caution in being confronted by camera man - polite - people seemed more laid back and chilled even in the middle of New York

4.5k 188 replies
@paulmaag6958 2025-04-06

I was 26 years old in 1979. The people really were like that. Beautiful, inquisitive, smart and deliberate with common sense. We were proud to be American's. It's striking how much the American people have deteriorated. It brings me to tears watching this film.

4.5k 359 replies
@ElectrikMe 2025-04-07

I like how no one tries to be a smart ass and is pretty straight forward with their answers.

3.9k 62 replies
@PrashantKumar-pl8tv 2025-04-10

Please please please David, go to Wall Street and record this again today for us. You're the OG YouTuber.

2.5k 74 replies
@mentak2593 2025-04-15

The woman who said we’re going to OD on information and that it’s inevitable because of innovations in technology- wow, she was spot on.

2.4k 34 replies
@MURPHSLIFE 2025-04-26

No middle fingers. No rude comments. No sarcasm. Just humans interacting with other humans. In New York too. Pretty cool to witness this

1.8k 47 replies
@brasshouse-fireball 2025-04-06

Man, this is what YouTube was made for. David is becoming a national treasure.

829 3 replies
@tomjohnson8881 2025-04-05

Its weird to the the 911 events were closer in time to when this was filmed than where we are today.

819 64 replies
@fabiashii 2025-05-06

I'm 16 years old and this is definitely the best piece of media I've ever come across. Thank you so much for sharing this gem with us.

211 16 replies
@GeorgeGlass298 2025-10-28

I'm pretty sure that first guy was my math teacher in the '80s. He used to be a big shot New York trader and lost everything and ended up teaching math at a middle school. He never stopped complaining about it.

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