Golly, that's a big subject. It was a vastly different time, growing up in the 50s - 60s. Things were much slower, and there was far less information. You heard music on the radio, and if you liked it, you went to the record shop and bought the record. You got your news from tv, radio, newspapers and magazines. More complex information from books. So it might take you years to find out the details about any given subject. Now you can Google it and know in seconds. I think the biggest difference between then and now was the concentration of power in the mass media. There was mainstream and almost nothing else. The underground press was just that: underground and not visible to the masses. My finding out about Bukowski in the 60s was a small miracle. It was much more likely I would never have heard of him. My older brother picked up copies of The L.A. Free Press on his trips into L.A. (probably visits to record stores in black neighborhoods), and Buk's "Notes of a Dirty Old Man" columns were in there. Later, in college, when a friend mentioned Bukowski's poetry, the name was familiar to me and I looked into it, discovered Black Sparrow Press, etc. Anyway, it was nothing like today, for better or worse.